Can Ukraine destroy Russian air-defences with F16s? | WION GAME PLAN

It is always a challenge to appear on feature programs of WION, India’s premier English-language global broadcaster.

The display of newly arrived F-16s on Ukrainian territory was the subject of the day in my 12-minute chat on WION yesterday.

 

Considering that the half dozen or more WION newscasts yesterday about the American jets ran no longer than 2 minutes each, I was especially appreciative of the opportunity to delve into the broader context of these planes finally coming into Ukrainian hands.

I opened my discussion with WION’s presenter Shivan Chanana by making reference to Swiss military expert Jacques Baud’s overarching view of the objectives of the U.S. and NATO in assisting Ukraine in their fight with Russia: namely to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia to inflict a humiliating defeat on the Kremlin that might precipitate regime change and the eventual break-up of the Russian Federation. At a minimum, their objective is to get Russia bogged down in Ukraine so that it cannot respond to other global challenges and so give the U.S. a free hand to perpetuate its global hegemony. To achieve this, the war in Ukraine must be drawn out as long as possible. This is why NATO ‘s deliveries of military hardware to Kiev have repeatedly and consistently been ’too little, too late.’  Such is the situation with respect to the F-16s.

Recovering Ukrainian land and sovereignty is a secondary or tertiary consideration of the Western powers. The massive losses that Ukraine is experiencing in men and materiel count for nothing. Hence, U.S. indifference to what is becoming a genocide in Ukraine as ever younger ‘recruits’ to its military forces deplete the country’s reproductive stock.

For those of you unfamiliar with Baud, I heartily recommend that you look him up in Amazon and acquire his latest of several books about the conflict. In my estimation he is the most authoritative of all the Western commentators about the war from the standpoint of military science.  In that connection, I eagerly look forward to joining Baud in a three-man Round Table discussion of the BRICS Summit, and of the Ukraine war as well, that will take place in Greater Brussels on 26 October. For anyone interested in attending a live as opposed to virtual discussion of these key issues in geopolitics, please feel free to contact me directly for details.

I will not set out here the course of my discussion with Shivan Chanana. In due course, a full transcript will be appended to this report when I receive it from a loyal volunteer.

I close this note by mentioning the latest evaluation of Ukraine’s chances of maintaining its fight into the late autumn coming from panelists on the widely viewed and very well informed Russian state television talk show The Great Game per last night’s edition: https://rutube.ru/video/2cedd7b3f68ed9ebdbc4a730ff8fd686/

In short, thanks to enormous exertions of its recruitment officials patrolling the street of all cities and towns, the Ukrainian army is scooping up about 30,000 new recruits per month, giving them one week (!) of training and sending them to the front. This number roughly corresponds to the number of Ukrainian soldiers and officers killed or seriously injured and withdrawn from combat in the same time period.  Given that training for a live war normally takes 60 days, those who are being sent to the front today cannot make a serious contribution on the field of battle and are just cannon fodder.

Meanwhile, there is widespread discussion in the Ukrainian media about the numbers of conscript age men (18 – 59) who are actively evading the recruiters by going into hiding or fleeing abroad. These range from several hundred thousand to 800,000. That tells you a lot about the enthusiasm level of the broad Ukrainian population for continuing the fight against Moscow.  Polls also indicate that over the past year there has been a dramatic increase in the percent of the population wanting to end the war now while accepting the permanent loss of the territory that Russia has captured.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Transcript

Shivan Chanana, WION: 0:00
Ukraine has received 10 F-16 fighters from Western countries, and by the end of the year their number will increase to 20. That's what is expected. Now Kiev hopes that the new fighter jets will help beat Russian forces or at least push them back, allowing them to regain air dominance on the war front. This is what Ukraine expects. What's Ukraine's F-16 game plan? Can they get past Russia's formidable air defense systems?

Welcome to "Game Plan". I'm Shivan Chanana. To discuss this further, we're being joined by Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs analyst, author and historian, joining us from Brussels. Dr. Doctorow, always a pleasure speaking with you. Do you feel F-16s will make a difference in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:41
No, and it's not my personal opinion. I think there's a consensus of expert opinion that the effect on Ukraine's defense and attack possibilities from the acquisition of these several F-16s will be nil. I can get into why that is so in a moment, but I'd like to look at the bigger issue. That is, what is NATO doing in and through Ukraine? And here I make reference to a well-known Swiss military expert, Jacques Baud, who has from the beginning held the opinion that the NATO approach to Ukraine is to use the country as a battering ram against Russia.

And NATO from the very beginning of this conflict, going back to February 2022, was never interested in Ukraine winning the battle and freeing its territory. Its only interest was in causing maximal damage to Russia, hopefully inflicting a humiliating defeat in one way or another on Russia, and thereby precipitating a regime change in Moscow and the eventual breakup of the Russian Federation. This is what he has said, and I subscribe fully to that as the overarching explanation of what has been going on. If Ukraine is battered, if Ukraine suffers enormous human and material losses as has been the case, that is of no concern to its backers or nominal backers in the United States and NATO.

2:13
So, the acquisition of these F-16s is put in this overall context of always too little, too late, always under-equipped, because the victory of Ukraine is not what is the objective. Drawing out the conflict, bleeding Russia, hopefully bringing Russia into a swamp of of long-term warfare with Ukraine that distracts Russia from the other geopolitical challenges that it faces across the globe.

WION: 2:49
Dr. Doctorow, now as far as the larger vision behind this Russia-Ukraine war is concerned, from NATO's side or from the West's side, of course there are varying opinions. If you ask someone from the West or rather from the US or who understands or backs NATO's understanding, they will perhaps say that they are trying to keep Russia from invading and rather they want to get Russia out of Ukraine, and that's why they're arming Ukraine with the F-16s. But Ukraine from its perspective will be using the F-16s to the best that they can. Do you feel Ukraine will have to destroy Russian air defences to make the F-16s effective? And when I say Russian air defences, can they get past the likes of Russia's S-300, S-400, S-500, their formidable air defense systems.

Doctorow: 3:37
Well I think you know the answer to that, and it's negative. Of course they can't. As I said, it's mission impossible for Ukraine. If these airplanes ever take off, it'll be a miracle. The Russians know very well which [are] the remaining air bases on Ukrainian soil, where these can be based. Most people are pointing to the far west of Ukraine, the area close to the Rumanian border. The Russians also can read the map, and they know very well what bases they are left to attack to make it physically impossible for Ukrainians to fly these planes from their own territory.

What does that mean? It means that they would be flying them from Rumania or from Bulgaria or from Poland, and it invites the conflict to escalate to a direct Russian-NATO war. However, I doubt that things will reach that critical impasse, because the world has more than one hearth of conflict and military confrontation. And it may well be overtaken by a regional war in the Middle East or the Western Asia that becomes the new center of attention and of all military efforts for the United States and its allies, whereby Ukraine will fall to the rear and have less support and less global media attention than it does right now. We'll see. But everything is going to play out in the immediate weeks before us. So what I am now prognosticating is not something for the distant future. It's something that we will all watch closely in the days ahead.

WION: 5:27
Dr. Doctorow, now I just want to take from what you mentioned, that Russia knows exactly where their air bases are, and Russia has been targeting these bases that may house the F-16s and has vowed to shoot them down. I want to understand from you, do you feel this is a preemptive measure by Russia to avoid any damage which F-16s may cause to the Russian forces if they are used and deployed and if they take off?

Doctorow:
Well, there are multiple objectives on the Russian side. One of them is, as you say. The other is to humiliate the United States and to demonstrate that Russian hardware, including aircraft and air defences, are superior to anything that the United States is trying to sell abroad. I think that message already, at the present stage of the conflict, has been well established among global procurement officers for military equipment, including India's own. The achievements of the Russian arms developers have been manifestly demonstrated, and the ability of Russia to adapt itself very quickly to the changing challenges on the battlefield with new equipment, with drones and other devices which were unknown to warfare two, three years ago. Russia has demonstrated an ability to master these skills, to implement and produce in numbers equipment that meets these challenges.

7:00
So Russia in every way has outperformed what the Pentagon and its allies in Western Europe have assumed was the case for Russia. So, on the level of global salesmanship of Russian military hardware, the experiments going on on Ukrainian territory, including what we are about to see as the likely destruction of F-16s on the ground, if not in the air, is in Russia's favor.

As for changing the war, it is by general consensus of military experts, 10 airplanes, even 50 airplanes, will be meaningless in the ongoing conflict. The Russians have hundreds of planes, many of them high-performance, capable of shooting down the F-16s if there were ever to be a dogfight. But I don't think it will get to that. I think these planes will more likely be destroyed by strikes of Iskandar or if necessary by hypersonic missile like Zircon or more likely Kinzhal before they ever leave leave the airport. I know very well that the United States and the Ukrainians are counting on the hardened nature of air bases that Ukraine inherited from its Soviet past. These were unusually well defended and with concrete bunkers, concrete hangars for planes. Nonetheless, Russia's firepower with these hypersonic missiles is capable of defeating any of the existing air bases in Ukraine, not to mention the neighboring air bases in Rumania or Moldova.

WION: 8:59
Doctor, you mentioned that it will be a miracle if these fighter jets even take off. Now, I understand that you don't think even, you know, that for them even flying within the country, even that is going to be a miracle. But as of now, it's still unclear what missiles the F-16s will be equipped with or what missiles are being sent to Ukraine to arm the F-16s with. More importantly, what range will they have? Do you feel Ukraine would use these F-16s to target inside Russia, even if they take off and they're within Ukrainian airspace?

Doctorow: 9:33
I think that's the only interest that the Kiev authorities have in these planes. To talk about self-defense again, or they're using them to destroy Russian air defenses is nonsensical. But the Ukrainians are hoping to use these planes to deliver long-range missiles, which, to the best of our knowledge, the United States has not yet authorized for equipping the F-16s. We'll see. Everything is always a bit lagging.

10:05
The point about the the destruction of these planes on the ground is-- we just have to remember what happened in the past week. It has not been a subject of discussion in major media in the West, but there are-- in Russian media, there is discussion of the destructive attack using Kinzhal missiles on a rebuilt and revamped base west of Lvov, very close to Lvov, that was the host to numerous, dozens if not hundreds of NATO officers engaged in training and guiding the Ukrainian armed forces. If this base can have been so utterly destroyed, vaporizing, as they say, 200 or 300 officers, many of them senior NATO officials, then what is the chance of any F-16, based on anywhere in Ukrainian territory, evading the revenge attacks of the Russians? I think nil.

WION: 11:18
All right, Dr. Doctorow, thank you so much for sharing all your insights and sharing things that perhaps the regular public would not get to hear because majority of the narrative which goes out comes from the West. But this is a narrative which also needs to reach the ears of people who would be interested in matters and seeing where the Russia-Ukraine war is really heading. As of now, Ukraine has got 10 F-16s. They're expecting more by the end of the year, and even more by next year. What kind of impact [will it] have on ground? As you mentioned earlier, we won't need to wait too long to see that actually play out. Thank you so much for joining in on "Game Plan". Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs analyst, author and historian, joining us from Brussels. Always a pleasure speaking with you, sir.

Doctorow: 12:00
Thanks so much to you.