Former British Air Commander Makes The Case For Sending Fighter Jets To Ukraine

Radio Free Europe ^ | February 08, 2023 18:10 | Vazha Tavberidze

[Zhang Fei]

Ukraine ping

A British air marshal is the equivalent of a 3 star general. At the link, he suggests that experienced Ukrainian pilots and maintainers would require at most 2 months to get operational with F-16’s. In his view, the constraints are all political - Biden’s unwillingness to supply the planes, not any practical considerations, underpins the failure so far to ship them to Ukraine.

[JonPreston]

The Brits can send all they want. In fact this brave soul should strap himself in and go himself. But he won’t. They never do. If he didn’t have America standing behind him, he’d be selling shoes in Macy’s.

[2banana]

Another western warmonger who has no idea what he is asking for.

“And if you want to keep doing this, you are going to come up against the full might of Western industry and equipment, and we have a lot more than you do.”

[Olog-hai]

Fighter Jets? Weren’t they 7 and 10 this season?

[Zhang Fei]

Ukraine ping

Air marshal Bagwell: “it can fly well above the majority of the Russian sound systems in the area apart from the very, very specialized ones”

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“sound systems” looks like a transcription error, and should probably be “SAM systems”. That’s something I hadn’t heard before. If true, assuming SDBs and AMRAAMs are also supplied along with the F-16s, they could get much closer to the front lines than the MiGs currently in the Ukrainian inventory. Russian aircraft might have to fire their munitions from inside Russian territory, and Russian SAMs might have to retreat further behind the front lines than they currently are.

[Zhang Fei]

Ukraine ping

Air marshal Bagwell: “it can fly well above the majority of the Russian sound systems in the area apart from the very, very specialized ones”

---

“sound systems” looks like a transcription error, and should probably be “SAM systems”. That’s something I hadn’t heard before. If true, assuming SDBs and AMRAAMs are also supplied along with the F-16s, they could get much closer to the front lines than the MiGs currently in the Ukrainian inventory. Russian aircraft might have to fire their munitions from inside Russian territory, and Russian SAMs might have to retreat further behind the front lines than they currently are.

[buwaya]

Britain doesn’t have F-16’s

They are talking mainly of Dutch F-16’s, currently surplus, and IIRC many of these are already in storage in Belgium, as the Netherlands is converting to F-35s. Norway and Denmark are divesting F-16s too.

The talk is of conversion training in Romania, which also operates F-16s.

[EEGator]

Just another past his prime man who never got the hot war he thinks he was deprived of.
There is no shortage of people who risk nothing that want war.

[laplata]

BINGO!

[buwaya]

HARM plus sdb for SEAD.

S300 and S400 aren’t too mobile.
May make room for fairly deep JDAM strikes.

[buwaya]

Since you are all convinced that a global thermonuclear war is going to come whenever Putins feelings are hurt, then we all bear exactly the same risks. Be consistent dude.

[Zhang Fei]

Ukraine ping

Bagwell: [Ukraine has clearly been an incredible nation in so many different ways and I mean that very, very sincerely— not only the resilience of the entire nation to just keep going but to be able to effectively dull a country of so much greater size, aggression, military might, and hold them at bay. It is unbelievable. In many ways, they’re their own worst enemy, because actually it means we don’t see how desperate the situation is because everyone thinks Ukraine is having great victories and there are times when they have, but actually, they are still under extreme pressure.

And I think that half the problem is trying not to oversell how well Ukraine have done, even though they have done extremely well. They’ve clearly been able to match the Russian Air Force to a large extent on the terms that they can. Yes, some of these longer-range missiles are harder to attack. And yes, some of that is done through surface-to-air systems rather than air-to-air systems. I’d like to believe Ukraine will find a way no matter what. So, it isn’t a deal breaker, but I don’t want to say that because I don’t want people to give the impression that yes, well, they’ll probably be fine. Because I think the risks are too high of them losing if we don’t help them to the maximum extent.]

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Bagwell has plenty of astute observations, but the one he makes in the above excerpt stands out. “No good deed goes unpunished” is how I’d summarize it. It is astonishing that Ukraine is holding the Russian hordes back based on $50b a year in aid. We spent that amount every year for 20 years in Afghanistan, and it never looked like the Afghans could hold the Taliban back without US ground troops for most of it.

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2018-10/54219-oco_spending.pdf#page=20

And the Taliban were a bunch of rifle- and RPG-equipped part-time guerrillas lacking the fighter jets, bombers, cruise and ballistic missiles, tanks, APC’s, howitzers and even mortars that the Russians have.

[EEGator]

There is no “you all”. I speak for myself, so blow me warmonger.

[JonPreston]

Hush, foreigner.

[JonPreston]

Please modify your Ukraine Ping list to reflect at least two propagandists who are no longer with us.

[Sunsong]

Get Ukraine everything they need to defeat putin/russia

[mac_truck]

👍👍👍

[buwaya]

I am of course speaking of foreign things. Like Nato countries and the plans they are discussing. NATO guy, me.

So stuff it Russia.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

Evil deeds by evil people, you included. The final Judge awaits your sorry ass. Bring asbestos undies.