ahhh … right … when the 16.000 syrian fighters were pouring into the war - to help russia taking Kiev…
given that this news piece was from late march, those syrians should be arriving any moment now (assuming they were walking in the right direction)
it is really not that complicated: If your problem is an ORGANIZATIONAL problem, more people dont mean fewer problems, rather more people mean more problems .
source: Management Science class 101, late 1980ies/eary 1990ies
I agree completely that an essential element and innovation of blitzkrieg was the integration of the Luftwaffe as the first really effective tactical aviation. As a former tactical aviator myself it’s a topic near & dear to my own personal concept of warfare.
You’ll notice I said fast-moving “equipment”, not “tanks”. What do you suppose powered the Luftwaffe? ICEs, that’s what. I also mentioned “combined arms warfare”, which is exactly the integration of ground and air forces.
The longer I’ve thought about the situation with the F-16s and other modern western weapons, the less the hesitancy to fully arm Ukraine makes sense to me. It seems to me that if Putin plans to go nuclear should he lose, he isn’t going to care what weapons Ukraine was using. A loss is a loss, whether it’s to a Ukraine that at times has had to resort to using WWI era weapons like the Maxim machine gun or if he lost to a Ukraine armed with large numbers of the latest tanks, attack fighters, bombs, and missiles. As such the west might as well go all out in the weapons being supplied.
There is a legit concern that we want Ukraine to fight on former Ukrainian territory, not presently internationally-recognized Russian territory.
If NATO is to preserve the fig leaf that it is totally a defensive organization, it cannot be conducting offensive ops on the opposition’s territory, period.
To be sure, just as we saw in Korea, and Viet Nam, allowing the enemy a sanctuary where they can assemble attacking forces without threat of pre-emption is a huge concession tactically. But one that may make sense from a a statecraft POV even as it is a nonsense from a purely tactical military POV.
Until we are willing to have our own people fighting on Uktaine’s front lines according to our red lines we need to be circumspect about giving the Ukrainians tools whose capabilities far exceed the red lines we’re unwilling to cross.
If the attackers in Ukraine were somebody less formidable than the Russians this would not matter. Had e.g. the Polish or the Moldovans invaded Ukraine we’d have gone all-in a long time ago and squashed their sorry asses. Might doesn’t make right, but might does make deterrence. And deterrence has nothing to do with rightness.
Sure, but can’t the US and its allies impose conditions on the use of the weapons they provide to Ukraine and expect that Ukraine, in order to keep the supply coming, will comply with those conditions?
I’m not sure how well that kind of leverage works it’s way down to individuals on the battlefield. One pissed off Ukrainian F-16 pilot could start WW 3.
If this drags on and on long enough, could there come a point where Putin is no longer around but the war never got to the is-a-loss point of going nuclear?
Its not simply convincing the Ukrainians “Here’s some F-16’s, don’t strike Moscow or else the imports stop”, but also convincing Russia to trust us that Ukraine won’t use them on Russian soil, and when a bomb ends up being dropped in Belograd anyway, convincing the Russians that it was really from a Ukrainian MiG-29 and not an F-16 that happened to be housed at the same airbase.
I don’t know about Moldova, but probably not Poland. That whole “NATO” thing. Not that being in NATO gives one express license to engage in wars of aggression against non-members (although there was that whole US invasion of Iraq thing…), but being so-aligned might tend to give one implied license to engage in wars of aggression without much interference from other NATO members. I suspect if Poland had invaded Ukraine, the US would be playing a role something akin to China right now: trying to put on a show of being “impartial peacemaker” while not really having much credibility at all to Ukraine (because, duh, the US is one of Poland’s NATO allies, so of course it will be biased in favor of preserving its own alliances and other interests).
I also question whether if Ukraine found itself in a war with Moldova that Ukraine could not win on its own the US would get involved. Because (1) if you can’t defeat Moldova on your own, some propped up US support isn’t going to do a whole lot for you in the long run, and (2) why does the US care what Moldova does to Ukraine at all? Countries get invaded all the time and the US does nothing unless it threatens a US interest.
Even in the case of a draw, (Korean War style?, Iran vs. Iraq style?) it wouldn’t matter what weapons Ukraine has. What matters are the results in terms of who is actually occupying what territory. Of course I don’t see how it would actually end in a draw. Modern weapons are modern weapons, whether they’re being operated by Americans or Ukrainians. If Ukraine can’t win with large numbers of Abrams, F-16s (although I’m still wondering why the F/A-18 Hornet gets overlooked), and so on, then it’s better to find out now when the front line is in Bakhmut rather than later when the front line is in Warsaw. But I doubt that would happen. If the 1991 and 2003 Iraq wars are anything to go by, Ukraine would easily beat Russia if they had modern NATO weapons.
If these are the kind of remote hypotheticals that are keeping us from sending our most modern weapons, then I agree with @FlikTheBlue – just send them!
All the more reason to send them. I’ve been itching for WW3 since Feb-24-2022, and I’m not joking or sarcastic. (As long as it stays nonnuclear)
But in reality, the Dutch, Belgians, Portuguese, Danes and Norwegians + USA could easily collectively chip in a hundred F-16Cs. Keep maintenance and logistics simple that way. Then give JASSM-ER, JSOW, SLAM-ER, Raytheon Peregrine and AIM-120D as well.
This is already what’s been happening over the last year; it’s really a non-issue. The US has told Ukraine not to use any of the long-range munitions we’ve been providing them on Russian soil, and they’ve complied with that, as on the most basic level they know any potential benefit of using them on Russian soil is overwhelmingly outweighed by the response of the US and the West cutting them off from aid. Ukraine hasn’t fired HIMARS or GLSDBs or even (as far as I’m aware) HARMs into Russia proper. All Ukrainian attacks into Russia proper has been conducted with Ukraine’s own preexisting weapons from the Soviet era or their own home-built weapons.
If I can paraphrase Perun’s last video on the topic of arming Ukraine, escalation doesn’t mean doing things that make Russia angry. Russia has warned and threatened against providing Ukraine with a wide range of weapons, and then after said weapons are finally provided, Russia’s reaction has been to do nothing; there’s nothing additional they actually can do that they aren’t already doing in response short of the nuclear option, which they aren’t going to do any more than the US did in Korea, or Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Soviets in Afghanistan, or the UK in the Falklands.
I’m certain Ukraine will get F-16s or other modern Western aircraft eventually, the only question is when. The taboo against supplying Western made tanks and IFVs has gone away, the taboo against directly supplying Soviet-era aircraft has gone away, and Denmark and Poland are both offering F-16s.
I think it was in the same Perun video that he discussed near the end a couple of more off the wall options that exist but that are very unlikely to be provided by the US. One is to provide Rapid Dragon, a system for firing cruise missiles by dropping pallets of them out of the back of cargo aircraft. Another is that Ukraine has requested cluster munitions; providing them would be problematic in that many nations, including NATO nation but not including the US have banned their usage due to the problems they present in post-war unexploded munitions clean up. Russia has been using cluster munitions in Ukraine, and neither Ukraine nor Russia are signatories on the ban. The US isn’t a signatory but has complied with it nonetheless and hasn’t used cluster munitions since ~2004, but still maintains stockpiles which are slated for eventual disposal. The GLSDB actually uses recycled MLRS rocket bodies for decommissioned MLRS DPICM (dual purpose improved conventional munitions) cluster rounds. If the US were to decide to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, it has a couple of hundred thousand tons of DPICM lying around awaiting eventual disposal, which includes a couple of million 155mm DPICM shells.
But that’s just it: would it be, “in terms of who is actually occupying what territory”, a win or a loss or a draw for Russia if (a) they’re actually occupying part of Ukraine that they weren’t so occupying before the war started, even while (b) there are huge parts of Ukraine that they’re not actually occupying?
Other than the fact that the war is still ongoing, that describes the current situation. The fact that Russia is still fighting rather than saying “it’s a draw, we’re going to switch to defense only mode” seems to me to strongly suggest that Putin would consider that a loss. The only way that turns from a loss into a draw is if Russia loses so much offensive capacity (both men and material) that they are forced to stop attacking by the reality of the situation.
On the other side, the only way Ukraine also accepts that situation would be for the same reason, if they simply run out of the ability to launch an offensive against the fortified Russian positions. That could very well happen given their current capacity plus a dozen or so extra MiG 29s, a low double digit number of Leopard 2s, and the low double digit number of Abrams that we’re sending. But if we sent weapons in the same numbers that we used against Iraq in the 1991 and 2003 wars, I expect the result would be the same as those wars. Russia would lose within a few weeks to a month.
Consider this time travel hypothetical. Is there any chance (barring nukes) that Russian forces as they currently exist, would be able to hold on to their occupied territory if they were going up against the army that liberated Kuwait in 1991? My guess is that the chances are less than 1%. They’d probably lose in less than a month, maybe as little as a week. So why not give Ukraine that capacity?
Putin is going to be just as angry either way. He won’t be any more angry if loses to the hypothetical coalition army that fought Saddam in 1991, or to the current actual Ukrainian army receiving western supplies in just barely enough amounts to maintain the status quo but that ends up grinding out a win when Putin gets the short end of the attrition stick.
I think his decision making about whether Russia is going to push the Big Red Button in the event of a loss isn’t really going to be affected by what kind of weapons were used by the army the army that defeated them.
I think the “draw” (lose-lose) scenario is Russia annexing the Ukrainian lands they occupy and a rump Ukraine joining NATO and putting Western forces right on the new Russian border.
Right. Which is why I think the only way he stops is if / when Russia loses so many men and weapons that they reach the point that they are incapable of launching any further attacks.
If Ukraine had the weapons available to NATO countries, we could get to that point in a matter of several days rather than many years, and with much fewer deaths on the Ukrainian side (and probably the Russian side as well).