Why do the Poles want to fly their Ukraine bound Migs to a US air force base instead of flying or trucking them across the border to Ukraine? Do they want to be sure they get some nice shiny new F-16s in return?
They’re trying not to provoke Russia directly. It is a weird dance going on.
Also shiny new F-16s would be nice.
I was wondering and you explained it succinctly.
But they don’t mind if the USA provokes Russia?
They’re trying to dance around with some sort of legal-sounding niceties by pretending that it’s the USA gifting the Fulcrums to Ukraine, not Poland.
When in reality everyone can see it as the fig leaf that it is. Russia won’t be fooled for a moment.
Let’s say Poland does provide Migs directly to Ukraine, and Russia decides to retaliate against Poland because Russian jets are being shot down, which risks entanglement with NATO, which could escalate the situation into a massive war with or without nukes. If we believe Russia is willing to take that risk then arming Ukraine with jets is probably not a great idea unless you’re hoping for WWIII.
Clearly the US doesn’t want to either, which was why the response from the US was a big “WTF”? As much as I want Ukraine to have the planes, Poland’s position make sense.
“All right, so, here’s the situation. We disagree on whether to deliver the fighters to Ukraine, and if so, how it should be done. We’re at an impasse. So, in the interim, we’re going to park them at this airfield, a few kilometers from the border. We’ll leave the keys in the ignition, so to speak, in case we need to move them in a hurry. Then we’re all going to go into this nearby building, and close the door, and we’re going to talk about the situation. We’ll be very focused on this conversation, and not paying attention to any distractions outside. We won’t come out until we have a decision. It could take a while. A long, long while.”
Or we could just take Donny’s idea and paint a Chinese flag on each of them. That will really confuse the Russians.
It looks like it might be that none of the NATO countries wants to take credit for supplying offensive weapons to Ukraine, even though they publicly admit to supplying defensive weapons. From my point of view I don’t see the difference between a surface to air missile designed to shoot a bad plane down, or a good plane to shoot a bad plane down. Any “weapon” is designed to destroy the enemy.
But it seems everyone wants a fake cloak of “plausible deniability” to hide behind should things get ugly (aka escalate and drag in additional countries). I guess you can sit and wait for the enemy to come at you with a rifle or rocket launcher, but you have to send your planes out to attack them. It’s ridiculous as everyone is playing this silly game of pretending to half-believe the propaganda of each side.
To me this is like a bar full of drunk sports fans talking out loud and trying to figure out the cover story they’ll tell to the cops about why the fight happened before they start the actual fight.
Perhaps aircraft that can seriously damage the convoy is a lot worse than a few hand held rockets, the name escapes me, that can take out a couple of tanks.
the convoy is seriously self-consuming itself …(food, gas, spares …) - give it a week or two, and they will surrender (I really predict that they will do this)
I heard people refer to the convoy as the “worlds largest self propelled POW prision”
… and that is NOT too far off the thruth
I can’t believe that such a large army could screw up that much. These are not the guys who beat the Germans.
Maybe newly polished F-16s?
The guys who beat the Germans were fighting for their country, their homes, their families. These guys now are fighting for… what?
It’s the long-standing diplomatic practice called “let’s you and him fight”, as espoused by Ambassador J. Wellington Wimpy.
They were also raping women to death and stealing everything, even if nailed down.
Also a Raymond Chandler Marlowe crack.
I suspect there is a room full of analysts in the Pentagon who have concluded that the planes just won’t have enough affect on the outcome of the war to make it worth the geopolitical risks. We’re all armchair generals with only a fraction of the information used to make decisions like this.
Multiple people on the SDMB also had that exact same idea unironically, “Why don’t we just fire cruise missiles next to Ukraines borders into Russia and claim that it’s the Ukrainians firing them?!”