This war is a catacomb of complexity, and unnerving, but we need to plow on
11 March 2020 (Krakow, Poland) – Ukraine has pilots ready to fly and fight Russians, but it can’t compete with Russia’s air power. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told U.S. lawmakers that fighter jets are his country’s top priority, even over antiaircraft missiles that Ukraine has been getting from its allies:
“If you can’t do a no-fly zone, at least get me planes”.
In an unusual move, Poland offered to send a number of Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine via an American air base in Germany, blindsiding U.S. officials, who said they had not been consulted. Poland requested that the United States send it replacement planes, presumably newer, U.S.-manufactured F-16s, which would constitute a major upgrade. The United States and Poland had been in preliminary talks about some kind of plane swap to help Ukraine get more fighter jets. But Poland proposed Tuesday that the United States step in to move the planes to Ukraine, which was not part of Washington’s plan. In a statement the Polish government said:
“Poland is ready to deploy — immediately and free of charge — all their MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America which would in turn provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities”.
And it is MiGs because that’s what Ukrainians are trained to fly.
The offer would have been a win-win for Poland: it would help Ukraine in its fight with Russia, which Poland also sees as a threat, and bolster the Polish air force. And it wouldn’t have to take direct responsibility for getting the planes to Ukraine. For obvious reasons, Poland is worried both about the war next door in Ukraine and about Putin finding a pretext to invade other parts of Eastern Europe. The United States is also worried about the war spreading to Ukraine’s neighbors, some of whom are also NATO members.
But the shift of responsibility for delivering the fighter jets — and the risk of confrontation with Russia — on to Washington in a very public way made the U.S. reject the proposal. Said John Kirby, press secretary for the Pentagon:
“We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one”.
Poland’s offer would require the United States and NATO to play a lead role in getting the planes to Ukraine. Even in the context of broad Western effort to arm Ukraine, Putin could easily construe jets taking off from a NATO base in Germany to eventually fight Russians as NATO fighting Russians. That, Kirby said, “raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.”
Left unsaid is that if Washington does find a way to get fighter jets into Ukraine, it wants to do it as quietly as possible. My military contacts said the U.S. is trying to find a low-visibility way to send planes to Ukraine as opposed to holding a news conference to announce they’re trying to do it.
But, said my military connects, it is a hell of a lot more complicated than that. In fact, they said, the proposal was insane. The following is a mashup of their analysis.
They appreciate the idea that was floated but it was absolutely insane. Everyone with any kind of knowledge of the military field knew it was insane. But that didn’t stop ignorant pundits from writing about it. They told me every responsible analysis would have indicated:
a) there would be problems with pilot training in general
b) there would be problems with maintainers (supporting the aircraft)
c) there would be problems backfilling aircraft to whichever country transferred the MiGs
d) there would then be specific problems with pilot training in the new, backfilled aircraft
e) there would be major neutrality problems
f) just a few MiGs are going to have much less military impact than surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) of which Russia has a bountiful supply
g) none of this could happen in the timeframe needed by Ukraine. Such a thing is not possible in three days or three weeks but might be possible in three months. And at this point we need to seriously entertain the prospect if Ukraine will continue to hold the territory necessary for fixed-wing operations in three months.
The major objection my military team has is that you would need a minimum of three months to train pilots in modified existing Polish aircraft, which would be backfilled from a variety of sources, and also set up maintenance and supply infrastructure, work out procedures to transfer without violating neutrality, etc.
And, yes, granted, perhaps now is the opportunity. The Russian air force might itself be suffering from some serious attrition from Ukrainian air defenses, along with Russia’s legendary shoddy maintenance, accidents, etc. so maybe the timing is right.
But pouring a bunch of poorly prepped pilots in sketchy aircraft into the fight now is insane. The introduction of a new, trained, equipped Ukrainian air force in, say, June might make a larger impact. So US/EU/NATO policy should not be to give up on a transfer, but to proceed at a deliberate pace designed to maximize effectiveness of the aircraft and maximize potential impact – while, in the meantime, degrading Russian airpower in whatever means necessary without violating neutrality.
I have been scanning social media and my defense blogs and I told them “But it seems the reason why Poland offered these planes is because Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly them and they have parts and personnel to maintain them”. They countered:
“Saying that Ukraine pilots are trained to fly them is a gross oversimplification. There are so many different upgraded and modification suites on all of these planes that almost no two are alike. Even at U.S. bases it’s not uncommon for the same airframes to run three different types of radar so that U.S. pilots trained on a fighter jet … say a F-35A … needs to be retrained on another F-35A because it has a completely different configuration”.
One thing I pondered but which I have not had time to think through: why was the scheme ever revealed to the press? These types of things are normally carried out in a clandestine manner. So did this all work tactically to the Ukrainians advantage to have the Russians fairly distracted by this possibility? I mean, as soon as the story broke the Russians began breaking up that 60km tank convoy working its way to Kyiv, and many parts of it were attacked by waiting Ukraine Special Op units (you’ll see video footage and my analysis in my weekend post). So was this an intentional psyop on Putin and his generals? They seem to have taken the bait, even if this wasn’t an intentional baiting. But to be fair, the Russians also immediately bombed infrastructure supporting MiG operations, and aircraft maintenance, across Ukraine.