America’s JASSM air to ground stealth missiles and Russian plans to use tactical nukes

My remarks in today’s report of latest news from Russia’s premier talk show ‘The Great Game’ will be brief and to the point:  the  USA is continuing to provoke a sharp escalation in the conflict with Russia over Ukraine that brings us two giant steps closer to a Russian nuclear attack on a NATO country.

See https://rutube.ru/video/8a303bf6f37548f702f5dab2342d87be/

The latest development worthy of discussion in last night’s edition of the talk show is the likely fitting of America’s air to ground JASSM missiles on the F-16s that have been and will continue to be delivered to Ukraine.

The acronym of this Lockheed produced weapon stands for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and its salient features are its range and its nearly undetectable characteristics in flight. The missile apparently has two basic variants, one for approximately 400 km and the other for 900 km.

The logic for fitting a couple of these missiles on an F-16 is to enable the jet to strike deep into Russia, as far as Moscow and beyond, even if they fly well back from the Russia-controlled territory in Ukraine to be safe from Moscow’s advanced air defense systems.

Thus far, what Washington has acknowledged supplying to Ukraine’s F-16s has been solely useful for defense in dogfights with Russian planes and for striking near-lying ground targets within Russia-occupied Ukraine. In short, the materiel delivered so far does not threaten Russia’s air bases and munitions caches at strategic depth within the Russian Federation, as Zelensky has been demanding.

From the Russian perspective, as explained on ‘The Great Game,’ when Washington says it is considering delivery of the JASSM to Ukraine, that means that the weapons have already been shipped to Poland and/or Romania for handover to Kiev. It may also mean that these missiles are already in Ukraine. And this poses an entirely unacceptable threat which Russia is obliged to neutralize. 

In practical terms, the only way to stop JASSM in flight is to destroy the F-16s that launch them. What this means is for Russia to use tactical nuclear weapons against the air bases hosting the F-16s. These are most likely in Moldova and/or Romania. 

Moldova is not yet a NATO member, so the consequences of such a Russian attack would be mitigated. Romania is a full NATO member and should it be struck, the final red line, the Rubicon, will have been crossed and there will be no turning back from WWIII. Again, from the Russian perspective: so be it. This is obviously what the Biden team wants for purposes of electoral advantage at home, insane as that may sound.

Before closing, I share a couple of other important news items from last night’s talk show.  In the preceding 24 hours, Ukraine fired 12 U.S.-made ATACMS cruise missiles at the Kerch (Crimea) bridge. All 12 were intercepted by Russian air defense and were destroyed. Good work, but had one or two gotten through, as sometimes does happen since no air defense is 100% reliable, then the bridge could well have suffered severe damage. It is a feat of Russian military engineering that they have found ways to neutralize ATACMS and HIMARS.  By the way, they identify Great Britain as standing behind this latest attack on the bridge, as it had been the mastermind in previous attempts including by use of water-borne drones. I would not put a high value on London real estate if the conflict with Russia escalates much further.

Finally, the presenter of ‘The Great Game’ provided some information about the FBI’s search a couple of days ago of the Virginia home of their fellow presenter Dmitry Simes. What he said goes well beyond anything you would have read in The New York Times about this case.

For those unfamiliar with Simes, he holds both American and Russian citizenship. He came to the States as a Soviet dissident about 50 years ago, entered into a close working relationship with Richard Nixon whom he served as interpreter and general assistant on Nixon’s travels to Russia after leaving the presidency, and he was the co-founder and long time president of what became the Center for the National Interest in Washington, D.C.  In the new millennium, Simes became the U.S. anchorman for Vyacheslav Nikonov’s project ‘The Great Game.’  For this, Simes encountered increasing hostility in the United States and at the very start of the Special Military Operation in February 2022 he moved back to Moscow to take up his now regular position as expert commentator on U.S. and Russian affairs for the state television channel Pervy Kanal. He has not touched foot in the USA ever since.

Apparently, the FBI team that went through Simes’s house and took away a trailer-load of documents and other property was accompanied by a Ukrainian government agent.  And in addition, at the same time Simes’s U.S. bank accounts were frozen.

Last night’s presenter described the FBI action against Simes as one more egregious case of intimidation against someone who has broken no American laws to shut him up and remove from the public information agora a voice as well informed and well-connected in Republican Party circles as Dmitry’s.  They put this development back to back with the FBI visit to Scott Ritter’s home and confiscation of his archives and draft manuscript for a coming book, back to back with actions taken against Larry Johnson.  In this connection, mention was made of measures taken to silence Judge Andrew Napolitano. Perhaps the Russian broadcaster knows more than you and I as to why ‘Judging Freedom’ has been unable to upload its interviews onto youtube since this past Thursday morning.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024