The West is Learning the Wrong Lessons about Airpower in Ukraine

July 27, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - A recent article appearing in the US-based Business Insider titled, “Russia’s showing NATO its hand in the air war over Ukraine,” would provide a showcase of the deep deficit in military expertise driving increasingly unsustainable, unachievable foreign policy objectives. The article summarizes a number of interviews conducted with Western “airpower experts,” exhibiting a profound misunderstanding of modern military aviation, air defenses, and their role on and above the battlefield. 

The article claims:

Russia botched the initial invasion by failing to establish air superiority from the start, and it has been unable to synchronize its air and ground forces.

This is based on the assumption that Russia could somehow establish air superiority over the battlefield and infers that had the United States and the rest of NATO been in Russia’s place, air superiority would have been established. But this is false.

Fundamental Misconceptions 

At the onset of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) Ukraine possessed a formidable Soviet-made integrated air defense network consisting of some of the most successful and effective air defense systems in the world. This included long-range air defense systems like the S-300 as well as mobile systems like Buk, Strela, and Osa, as well as a large number of Soviet-made man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS).

The United States and its allies have not operated in airspace as contested as Ukraine’s since the Vietnam War. Over the skies of Vietnam the US would lose over 10,000 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to Soviet-made air defenses employed by Vietnam’s armed forces.

In subsequent conflicts, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, US-led forces would face either no significant air defenses at all, or air defenses consisting of old equipment operated by poorly organized, poorly trained, and poorly motivated troops, as was the case in Iraq.

Amid the US proxy war against Damascus and the US occupation of eastern Syria, US military aviation has been confined by Syria’s relatively modern air defense network, forcing both US and Israeli warplanes to conduct the same types of stand-off strikes Russian military aviation is conducting in Ukraine.
The article would claim:

Russia has demonstrated that it’s unable to suppress or destroy enemy air defenses, fly effective counterair missions, or run complex composite air operations like those the US Air Force pulled off in the opening days of Desert Storm in 1991 and then in the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Beyond the factually incorrect nature of this statement, the obvious differences between Iraq and Ukraine appear entirely lost among the “airpower experts” interviewed by Business Insider.

The Business Insider, citing these same “airpower experts,” also claims:

On the battlefield, effective airpower should aid the advance of armored combat vehicles and infantry by striking an enemy’s strongpoints, as well as the reinforcements and supplies they depend on.

Because of the vast differences between previous US conflicts around the globe and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine now, the type of rapid maneuver warfare utilized by US-led forces in Iraq would not only be inappropriate in Ukraine, it would be disastrous. The 2023 Ukrainian offensive before which NATO trained, armed, and directed Ukrainian forces, ended in catastrophic failure, comprehensively defeated by Russian defenses utilizing land mines, artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS), long-range ballistic missiles, a wide variety of drones, and both infantry and attack helicopters utilizing anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) – all elements absent among the armed forces of the various nations the US has invaded and occupied since Vietnam.

Space-Based Warfare: America’s Dominance Challenged

July 23, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The Battlefield Above

The United States had throughout the Cold War and within the first decade of the 21st century established dominance in terms of space-based military capabilities, including satellite navigation through its Global Positioning System (GPS) and a wide array of reconnaissance and communications satellites. These enabled US forces to access targeting data and coordinate their forces anywhere on Earth. 

Satellite navigation has resulted in an array of GPS-guided munitions including the 155mm Excalibur artillery shell, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rocket fired by the HIMARS and M270 platforms, and the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) dropped via US warplanes.

Longer-range precision guided weapons using both GPS and a process called Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator (DSMAC) utilize images provided by reconnaissance satellites to find targets, obtain specific coordinates, and to guide the munitions themselves.

Such weapons were used in various US wars from the 1990s onward to great effect.

While the Soviet Union created its own satellite navigation system, Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) which the Russian Federation still employs, the use of this system for guiding weapons was not widespread until relatively recently. Large-scale use has only been observed in Syria from 2015 onward, and most recently in the Special Military Operation (SMO).

Soviet and Russian reconnaissance satellites, based on publicly available information, have been employed in far fewer numbers than their American counterparts. And while both the US and Russia have communication satellites, the US is the only nation with a low-earth orbit (LEO) internet constellation, Starlink, consisting of over 6,000 satellites.

Starlink provides low-latency internet connections anywhere on Earth. For military forces using Starlink, it not only enables troops to communicate with each other, but also to guide remote-control platforms like aerial and maritime drones far beyond what traditional transmitted radio signals could achieve. Such drones would only be limited in range by their fuel or electric charge as long as a connection with Starlink was maintained.

While this has provided the US and its allies with advantages even on today’s battlefield, these advantages have been countered, and similar capabilities are being developed by not only Russia, but also China.

Countermeasures 

Such US weapons had until recently defined modern combat, leading many Western analysts into believing the US and its allies enjoyed unparalleled advantages on the battlefield. While the Soviet Union and initially the Russian Federation did not prioritize the production of precision guided weapons using space-based capabilities, both recognized the danger of US-NATO weapons using these capabilities and invested heavily in countermeasures.

This has resulted in the creation of Russia’s modern air and missile defense systems as well as a variety of electronic warfare capabilities, both of which are considered some of the best in the world.

The Philippines: Why it is Choosing US Destruction Over Chinese Construction

July 3, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - While the ongoing conflict in Ukraine continues to dominate headlines, occasionally news stories surface regarding growing tensions in the Asia-Pacific region as well. Driven primarily by the US, these headlines also include the proxies Washington is using to stir up an Ukraine-style conflict in the region. 

Among these proxies is the Southeast Asian archipelago nation of The Philippines.

The South China Morning Post in a late June 2024 article titled, “China-Philippines ties on ‘brink of total breakdown’: unpacking the collapse,” would claim to provide an explanation as to why once constructive ties between Beijing and Manila have deteriorated into what may possibly become a destructive confrontation.

The article describes how concrete pillars of a rail project being built with China, have since been torn down, and instead, construction in the Philippines now consists of military bases to be used to point missiles at China.

The article claims:

What began as a story of infrastructure cooperation has morphed into an epic tale of betrayal and confrontation, the once-chummy relationship between Manila and Beijing giving way to escalating geopolitical rivalry.

As with many pro-Western accounts of growing Chinese-Philippine tensions, the article omits the political transition from the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte to that of now President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and how the independent foreign policy of President Duterte was overwritten by the pro-Washington policy of President Marcos Jr.

US-Ukrainian ATACMS Strikes on Crimea Vindicate Moscow

June 28, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In the last week of June 2024, Ukraine carried out what appeared to be another unsuccessful ATACMS strike on Crimea. Of the several missiles launched, all but one were intercepted. The last missile was initially reported to have been defected where it detonated over a beach, killing several civilians, including children, and injuring many more. 

What could have been concluded as a tragic accident ended up incriminating Kiev, not because of anything Moscow said in response, but because of what a senior advisor to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said regarding the missile strike.

The UK Telegraph, in an article titled, “Crimean sunbathers struck by deadly shrapnel shower from Ukrainian missile,” would initially report:

Shrapnel from an intercepted US-made missile fired by Ukraine hit a beach packed with sunbathing tourists in occupied Crimea on Sunday. Russian officials said at least five people, including three children, had died of shrapnel wounds – and they expected the death toll to rise.

However, the Telegraph in a regular audio report titled, “Ukraine: The Latest,” would then cite Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak as saying:

There cannot be any “beaches,” “tourist zones” and other fictitious signs of “peaceful life” in Crimea, temporarily occupied by the Russians.

Crimea is definitely a foreign territory occupied by Russia, where there are hostilities and a full-scale war. The very war that Russia unleashed for genocidal and invasive purposes only.

Crimea is also a large military camp and warehouse, with hundreds of direct military targets, which the Russians are cynically trying to hide and cover up with their own civilians. Which in turn are considered to be… civilian occupiers.

The quote was confirmed by pro-Ukrainian media platform, Ukrinform.

Podolyak’s words suggest that what at first appeared to be the accidental death of civilians, was instead part of an official Ukrainian government policy of targeting, terrorizing, and eliminating Crimea’s population of “civilian occupiers.”

While even the Telegraph podcast’s commentators found Podolyak’s words shocking and indefensible, to those following the development of Ukraine’s crisis from 2014 onward, this comes as no surprise, and in fact, serves as only the latest evidence of both Washington and Kiev’s attitude toward Russian-speaking Ukrainians as well as Russia itself, and the fundamental threat the US and its client regime in Kiev posed to not only the rest of Ukraine, but also to neighboring Russia.

Crimea Was Always “Russian,” According to US Government Polling 

A year before the US government openly overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, its agencies including USAID and the International Republican Institute (IRI) conducted polling across all of Ukraine, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Why Washington’s Plans to Turn Taiwan Strait into “Hellscape” are Fundamentally Flawed

June 24, 2024 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The Washington Post in an opinion piece by Josh Rogin titled, “The U.S. military plans a ‘Hellscape’ to deter China from attacking Taiwan,”  lays out a fundamentally flawed assessment of a US Department of Defense strategy relying on unmanned systems to fight off the Chinese military for up to a “month” before the US and its allies can mobilize their armed forces.

And even as the Washington Post attempts to sell this strategy as plausible, it itself calls into question the window of opportunity in which it could be implemented and actually succeed.

A Flawed Strategy Laid Upon an Equally Flawed Premise 

Before even examining the flaws of the strategy itself, it must first be pointed out that the entire premise upon which this strategy would be utilized, “defending Taiwan,” is entirely flawed.

The US State Department, upon its own official website under a section titled, “U.S. Relations With Taiwan,” unambiguously admits, “we do not support Taiwan independence.”

If the US government does not recognize or support Taiwan independence, by implication Taiwan is a “dependent” of another state. According to the United States’ own “One China” policy laid out in the 1972 Shanghai Communique, that state is China, whose sole legitimate government is the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The 1972 document explains in detail:

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.

Thus, any interaction between Taiwan and the rest of China is a matter of Chinese internal political affairs, amid which the US has no ability to interfere in accordance with international law and more specifically, under the UN Charter and its guarantee of a nation’s territorial integrity and political independence.

The UN Charter says unequivocally:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. 

Quite clearly Washington’s unofficial support for separatism in Taiwan, in contradiction of its own agreements with Beijing regarding the status of the island province, is a violation of international law to begin with. Any plans by the US to use any kind of military force, including unmanned systems, to intervene in China’s internal political affairs, begins from an entirely flawed, indefensible position under international law.

Why a Drone “Hellscape” Will Not Work 

China has a multitude of ways to deal with US-sponsored separatism and other violations of Chinese sovereignty over the island province of Taiwan beyond an amphibious invasion US military planners envision their drone armies fighting against and winning.