Vipers And Ukraine: Reclaiming The Sky
In a matter of weeks Ukraine's air force will receive its first truly modern combat jets. The days of unimpeded orc glide bombing attacks are finally coming to an end.
Over the past week Moscow’s summer campaign has remained mostly stalled, advancing by little more than a couple tree lines or streets on any front. This isn’t for lack of effort, though, with 8,000-10,000 additional orcs killed or wounded over the past week, an average of about 1,200 per day.
Ukraine’s own losses are harder to pin down but have been reported as reaching about an eighth of Moscow’s on the Kharkiv front. This is typical for the middle of an orc push, but something closer to a 3:1 or even 2:1 casualty ratio is more typical when Ukraine counterattacks. However, even a simple average of the two estimates indicate that russia, not Ukraine, will bleed out first.
Though you won’t hear that story from the English speaking press anymore. Most anything American is busy spreading the Biden Administration’s preferred message about Ukraine already being saved, with more fighting too risky because Moscow might escalate.
Ukraine is treated like too many domestic violence victims are: a temporary object of social pity that eventually gets blamed for demanding everyone’s ongoing attention and support. Like pretty much every abusive spouse ever trying to isolate their victim from outside support, Putin exploits this nasty tendency of western leaders in a perverse co-dependent relationship that makes Ukraine responsible for its own suffering.
Yet slowly and painfully the countries that understand the hard truth about Putin’s malignant empire are forcing leaders like Scholz and Biden to accept reality. If only thousands of Ukrainians hadn’t died to prove so many convenient elitist illusions about russian power for what they are!
So many red lines have been crossed over the past two and a half years that it’s comical to look back and think that people ever took any grand pronouncements by Biden or Putin seriously. The dirty little secret about the world system is that no one is in control - there isn’t a unipolar or even multipolar world order presently emerging, but a nonpolar one. This won’t be anarchy, but a world where it’s so manifestly difficult to exert direct control over populations that the very idea of a Great Power or Empire in the classic sense is manifestly ridiculous.
You only get a truly anarchic, war-torn future if Ukraine is forced to accept a premature ceasefire that leaves territory in ruscist hands. Not because territorial control itself matters, but because the main alternative to a world where imperfect but functional ideas like borders separating legal jurisdictions is one where raw power rules. This winds up being bad for everyone because vast amounts of time and effort get wasted testing and proving how powerful everyone is, often through violence.
To avoid this fate certain core principles must be upheld whatever the cost. Ukraine’s physical integrity as well as NATO’s right to deploy troops wherever it pleases on friendly soil without Moscow having any say are the fundamental issues of the day. If Putin is allowed to interfere, he wins. No matter what threats or bluffs he issues, they have to be ignored until Moscow retreats because the regime’s behavior demonstrates a sincere desire to destroy NATO.
With a hard standard set, the next steps of Ukraine’s allies are obvious. They must Boost its combat power as swiftly and comprehensively as possible so Kyiv can throw punches as efficiently as it blocks them.
This week’s post is going to be very aviation heavy because the imminent arrival of F-16s will finally offer a partial answer to Ukraine’s glide bomb problem. Though it might seem odd given how much I focus on the ground war, military aviation was always my original interest in defense affairs.
As a kid in the nineties I was an avid player of light flight simulators like Janes Navy Fighters and Falcon Gold. I spent many hours flying digital sorties over Ukraine from the Eisenhower carrier battle group operating in the Black Sea to halt a russian fascist invasion of Ukraine. Mission Two in the Janes campaign featured a raid by F-18 Hornets on the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea after ruscist troops seized Ukraine’s ships and bases.
And people say the future is unpredictable. Hardly!
Anyway, at university I looked at becoming a military pilot after graduation. I was enjoying a fairly carefree college experience outside of summers as a result of California covering tuition for students of lower to middling incomes and my parents working extra jobs to pay for living expenses, so ROTC didn’t much appeal. But I considered heading to officer school after finishing my degree, serving with either the Marine Corps or Navy.
The Marines are big on their pull-ups, though, and even when I was at my best in the Army I could only ever manage about six to eight - quite low for a prospective Marine. I submitted an application to the Navy but wasn’t successful because the roles I applied for - aviation, surface warfare, and intelligence - were all brutally competitive at the time. You generally needed connections for the latter especially; it was a popular specialty for the kind of person who wanted to put combat veteran on their resume but also have a near guarantee of staying close to a heavily guarded base during the majority of their deployment.
The Air Force should have been a natural choice, but at the time it was pushing hard into drones. Supervising the liquidation of alleged terrorists from a cubicle in Florida was a more likely outcome than taking the controls of an F-22 or A-10. I’ve also never liked the F-35 and figured if I did get to be a pilot I’d wind up in one since it’s the USAF’s favorite child.
So why did I ultimately enlist in the Army? A combination of factors. Chief among them was the GI Bill, which would have paid for graduate school had I served a full three year term. The signing bonus didn’t hurt, though naturally after I joined up they doubled it. Also, an enlisted soldier with a college degree can apply to go to officer school at any time, meaning that I could get quality combat training then choose to go officer - or finish out my term of service and move on. I could also fly helicopters if I wanted to commit to aviation. Going Army kept my options open.
I knew that I stood a very high chance of going to Iraq. It might sound crazy to take the risk of a year or more in a combat zone to pay for more schooling, but as bad as Iraq could be it still wasn’t Ukraine. A one percent chance of being seriously hurt or dying doesn’t seem that high in your early twenties. And when you grow up rural, military service is how you get to see the world.
Also, I chose a specialty - Cavalry Scout - that is focused on staying hidden… in theory. I thought my job would be pulling security for the people kicking in doors. Like generations of young people before me I failed to understand the difference between how a military job is portrayed and the lived reality of the thing - especially during war. After a couple years of muddling around Iraq the Army was in dire shape and it didn’t matter what your specialty was - if you could walk, you were going on patrol and kicking down doors. If not you could still probably pull gate guard or handle checkpoints. Scouts were infantry like everybody else. At least we were trained for fighting in a pinch - the poor dudes who signed up for artillery work were the ones who really got screwed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and co. You go to war with the leaders you have, unfortunately…
Luckily I never had to experience real combat, only simulated. Just shy of a year in uniform, around six months of that being intensively trained by combat veterans determined to compensate for the Army’s institutional shortfalls and keep as many of us alive as possible and the other half working in a tactical level headquarters, I pulled the trigger on going officer.
I was never an outstanding soldier - mainly for physical reasons - but recognized as a competent one. My chain of command was pushing me to put in an officer packet by the third month of initial training in Kentucky; once at my duty station it was soon the same. A few folks on the enlisted side encouraged me to go officer and return to the unit, something that remains one of the biggest votes of confidence I’ve ever received.
I mean, it was mostly because I got pulled into office work and was able to use the magic of a simple Excel spreadsheet to track where people’s leave and award paperwork had last been seen, but I could also lead a scout patrol and call in fire support while making sure any Abrams tanks following us didn’t drive over a bridge that couldn’t handle their weight. This of course meant that I was always assigned to carry the radio.
In truth, though, coming in with a degree meant that I didn’t fit anyone’s standard image of an enlisted soldier. Once officers decided that I wasn’t a hippie communist infiltrator they assumed that I was a wayward member of their tribe. Sergeants and other NCOs were divided - some deeply suspicious of what anyone with a degree was doing on the enlisted side, others just glad to have a soldier they didn’t have to worry about getting into stupid trouble off post.
From day one I was in an extremely unusual situation. Later being trained in the methodology that anthropologists use to understand themselves as participants in their studies, I realized that I had been like a covert lieutenant lacking any of the intellectual baggage that soon encumber junior officers in the American military system - but also none of the responsibility. Coming off of months studying international relations, I got to see how a vital and immensely complex institution actually functions on the inside. And as much of military life is incredibly boring, there was plenty of time to reflect.
I have about as much formal military training and experience as a typical European conscript, with one possible exception: the folks who trained me had all just been to Iraq, some for the second time and a few 1991 Gulf War veterans a third - many in units that suffered ten or even twenty percent casualties. After finishing the first four months of training that all cav scouts went through in Kentucky in those days, right after I reached my assigned unit in Georgia me and a bunch of other new scouts got shipped off to Louisiana for a month of role playing as Iraqi Army soldiers working alongside an American unit that was supposed to be training us. It was… an experience.
While these training deployments are meant to be tough and the unit going through them is supposed to routinely fail at basic tasks, I saw stuff go down that simply should not have happened in a functioning Army. A brigade from Texas prepping for its imminent third trip to Baghdad was visibly exhausted and had massive discipline problems. Some of its officers were a disgrace, and one incident will always stand out in my mind.
Working at a small dusty outpost one afternoon me and a group of other soldiers had the delightful experience of sprinting between the medical tent and a refrigerated trailer filled with bags of ice in a desperate bid to help treat a couple of soldiers experiencing heat stroke. And not just feeling under the weather or playing a role in the exercise but physically convulsing on the operating table surrounded by anxious medics. I overheard a senior sergeant say that water supplies had run out while soldiers were kept sitting in hot, muggy fighting positions for hours without any good reason.
I remember looking up at the medical evacuation helicopter landing to whisk the stricken soldiers to a real hospital and wondering how incompetent an officer could be to fail to arrange a water resupply when the nearest base was literally just half a kilometer away. I decided then that if I was going to be part of this insane machine I wanted to be in a position to mitigate the suffering caused by fools who let career get in the way of their duty of care to the people under their command. Building toughness is one thing, but you just don’t mess around with nature when lives are at stake.
As it turned out, my own feelings were rendered irrelevant by the fact that I also wasn’t very bright in a lot of ways. I didn’t know how to properly size footwear for high arches, something I only learned many years on is why, until I entered training where a nice defense department employee measured my feet to select the right shoes, I routinely had leg and knee trouble after running. I was routinely handling twenty to thirty kilometers a week until a well-meaning corporal decided that my shoes were too worn and told me to buy new ones.
I did, unaware of why the last ones had worked. A few weeks later something popped in my knee while warming up before a run. I hoped that the few months off from physical training between my discharge and starting ROTC would resolve the problem. It didn’t. So much for all those grand plans of a military career!
That’s a long digression, I know. But there’s a danger in writing about a topic that interests you where you’ve done a lot of research but have only limited practical experience, most of it in simulations. I’ve sadly never flown in a fighter jet or actually planned operations. But you can glean a lot by reading the testimony of aviators, which is typically very precise, and even evading missiles in old flight sims is a useful tool for understanding the challenges of fighting for the skies over Ukraine.
I have felt an odd connection to Ukraine’s aviators since day one and guys like the late Andrii Pilshchykov, known to the world as “Juice,” have been a real inspiration. Though he won’t get to live out his dream of flying a Viper, dozens of Ukrainians will take to the skies in F-16s in the coming years in part because of his advocacy.
These aircraft will not win the war alone, but they have the potential to save a lot of lives. Assuming, of course, that they are properly armed and employed.
Before that, a brief trip to the mud and blood that defines the life of most combatants in this or any war is in order. While an individual combat pilot can have an outsized impact relative to a soldier in the trenches, it still takes someone holding the line to keep air bases safe to operate, after all.
Weekly Overview
A lot of action for little visible result is an excellent way to sum up this week of ruscist operations in Ukraine. Whatever Moscow was hoping to achieve on the Kharkiv front three weeks ago, barring a massive new influx of troops the existing offensives towards Lyptsi and Vovchansk aren’t viable.
Ukrainian sources are even talking up the possibility of mounting major counterattacks to drive the orcs back across the border. The 82nd Air Assault Brigade has been fighting on the north bank of the Vovcha in Vovchansk while ruscist moves to cross the river on either flank keep failing.
Now that the US is partially lifting the ban on using American munitions inside russia - at least for HIMARS launchers on the Kharkiv front, a key orc advantage is set to evaporate. Like every other ruscist formation operating in Ukraine, their command and logistics nodes have to stay at least 60km from the front lines, 80km if they’re wise. Moscow’s S-400 and S-300 SAMs in the area should be pushed back a bit too, giving Ukrainian F-16s some more breathing room once they arrive. ATACMS hits are still banned, which is irritating given how effective these are proving to be against air defense systems, but HIMARS is at least something.
Ukrainian leaders have been warning of a potential extension of the Kharkiv front to the west, with a ruscist group forming that could soon strike towards Kharkiv or Sumy. My expectation is that if it does engage, it will mostly try to extend a buffer zone rather than seek a deep penetration.
In general, Moscow appears to be responding the failure of its “surprise” offensive in Kharkiv by shifting towards simply intensifying assaults on every possible front. Forcing Ukraine to stretch its forces to enable small tactical advances at many points is all Moscow is able to accomplish now. It’s a strategy reminiscent of what Imperial Germany tried in France in 1918, committing to a series of offensives that failed and bled out Germany’s weary forces. Berlin was trying to strike before major American reinforcements could bolster the French and British positions; the net effect was to leave it vulnerable to the Allies’ final offensive later that year. Putin also wanted to move before new aid arrived.
Over the past week the hottest sector has once again been the portion of Donbas between Chasiv Yar and Avdiivka. Kyiv is calling this the Pokrovsk front because in theory the sum total of the ruscist attacks is moving the front line slowly towards this hub. My sense of Moscow’s plans here is that a series of tactical level envelopments are meant to force Ukraine back one small chunk of the front at a time.
It’s a pretty straightforward strategy that relies on Ukraine running out of forces blindly fighting to hold the line everywhere instead of letting Moscow walk into a series of traps. It explains why Moscow keeps on attacking in places it always loses troops without making meaningful gains for weeks or even months as well as outright stupidity.
Down in Robotyne the result of this kind of play is apparent in Moscow finally managing to position troops in the ruins without losing everyone to local Ukrainian counterattacks. A similar style of constant pressure has allowed Moscow to enter a couple villages that Ukraine liberated in the Mokri Yali valley last year. It’s also led to the orcs seizing a foothold in Krasnohorivka, south of Avdiivka, that Ukraine appears to be determined enough to contain that it moved the 47th Mechanized Brigade from Avdiivka to cover this sector.
Last week I wrote about the philosophy of science and the nature of paradigms; it’s fairly clear at this point that Moscow’s theory of war looks about like so:
What We Know: We are russia, and russia is strong - the Great Patriotic War made it so, and we can repeat the experience. (Idealist Ontology)
How We Know: God says so, and the proper authorities in Moscow speak for God. (Authoritarian Theist Epistemology)
Procedures For Knowing: Deep study of the glorious victories of our immortal grandfathers. (Hagiographic Methodology)
Practice Of Knowing: Imitate the story of our glorious grandfathers in every respect, including using cannon fodder to give more experienced troops the illusion that command cares about them more than others. (Pyramid Scheme Structure)
Why We Seek To Know: We are russia, and russia is strong, so we must prove that no one can stand against us to ensure that they know that russia can’t lose. (Self-reinforcing Logic Loop)
The consequences of this cruel paradigm are felt most of all by the frontline orcs, whose ranks increasingly include mercenaries from all over the world. A Chinese guy who fights for Putin also posts regular video blogs, one of which I ran across the other day. It offers compelling confirmation of how Moscow wages war and the impacts on personnel, the soldier reporting that command leaves people to die and that the conflict is unwinnable.
And this is Ukraine fighting with insufficient artillery ammunition and precious little air support. Once fully armed at the proper depth, Ukraine will have a chance to seize the initiative as early as this fall.
Ukraine and Putin’s empire continue to trade long-range strikes, the latter managing to bomb civilians in Kharkiv again. This time a market and a publishing house were struck, Moscow apparently operating under Israeli targeting rules where if an excuse can be made for blowing something up it absolutely will. Not to digress, but I had to laugh when right on schedule the Biden Administration signaled that Israel’s attack on Rafah doesn’t rise to the level of a “major” operation - none was ever going to.
In any case, Ukraine’s bombardment operations continue to be more surgical and effective than Moscow’s or Israel’s. In a complex operation drones, ATACMS, and Ukrainian conversions of the Neptune anti-ship missile that sank the Moskva pounded the ferry network that now supports most ruscist troops in occupied Crimea across the Kerch Strait. Putin’s precious bridge might actually not be an important military target any more, with Ukraine reporting that prior attacks have left it unsuitable for heavy rail cars.
Moscow’s ferries, on the other hand, along with a number of patrol boats, were pummeled. Ukraine pulled a neat move by using ATACMS to hit the ferries in occupied Crimea but Neptunes to strike the russian side.
Other Ukrainian drones this week targeted portions of the ballistic missile defense radar network Moscow uses to watch for incoming nuclear attacks, strikes that have rather horrified Biden and company. Since Putin’s all-out invasion began and the risk of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and russia became very real the US took the unprecedented step of having ballistic missile submarines, usually hidden deep underwater, surface in the Indian Ocean. This sent a signal to Moscow that if things did somehow go nuclear it couldn’t possibly hope to successfully disarm the US through a first strike or do enough damage to survive America’s retaliation intact. That’s how deterrence works sometimes.
Now Moscow has suddenly lost the ability to detect missiles coming in from that exact direction. Even I had a brief moment when I saw the news where I thought what the hell, Budanov? before I understood the ruthless but solid logic behind the move.
It has recently been confirmed that Ukraine did, in fact, use Patriot missiles to down five aircraft over russia’s Bryansk province in a grand bushwhacking a year ago and the Biden Administration was livid, even threatening to end Patriot deliveries. At the time I thought the use of S-300 missiles guided by Patriot radars was more likely for exactly this reason. After all, US Patriot missile parts landed on ruscist home turf, the sort of thing Putin had previously declared a red line demanding retaliation.
With this latest attack Ukraine has directly pointed out that it crosses Putin’s supposed nuclear red lines pretty much every single day. And nothing happens; Moscow doesn’t let the nukes fly like Medvedev threatens. Biden is implicitly being called out too. That’s probably why he lifted his prohibition on firing certain weapons into russia - though not ATACMS.
Another recent Ukrainian strike further illustrates why it needs full license to use whatever weapons it has wherever it needs to, including on air bases, depots, and troop concentrations deep inside russia. About 65 km behind the front lines in Donbas, just out of HIMARS range, Ukraine recently caught an S-400/S-300 long-range SAM system with an ATACMS strike. In what is kind of like the neighborhood alley cat defeating the meanest local guard dog, at least one ATACMS with a cluster warhead made it past several interceptors to annihilate most of a battery worth a billion dollars.
A HIMARS or M270 rocket launcher can swap out its normal payload for two ATACMS with cluster warheads with a range of over 160km. Even if launchers come no closer than 25km to the front line to avoid ruscist artillery, they can still neutralize any long-range air defense battery capable of shooting Ukrainian aircraft operating over friendly territory. HIMARS pushes the air defense systems back 65km, but ATACMS makes it almost 150km, making even S-400 intercepts over Ukrainian airspace very difficult. The door is then open for F-16s to operate close enough to hit ruscist jets carrying glide bombs, and even six Vipers can swiftly have an impact.
What F-16s Will Do For Ukraine
Modern combat aircraft are best seen as flying Swiss Army knives. They are platforms that can carry missiles and other ordnance that are capable of dealing with an array of problems. However, their crew members are highly trained professionals that can’t be quickly replaced. Crewed aircraft are rarely faster or more agile than a missile designed to kill them. So much as I predicted in the 2040s plot thread of Bringing Ragnarok, the concept of the front line is deeply meaningful for the warriors of the sky as well as the ground.
The threat terrain is everywhere defined by the range of one weapons system or another. To cope with jets you need Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). Bigger and more expensive ones have a longer range, in the case of the ruscist S-400 up to 400km - in theory.
But missiles have a maximum flight range, a maximum effective range, a no-escape zone, and a minimum firing distance. The second and third are most relevant, with ruscist SAMs rarely scoring kills beyond 200km unless supported by aerial radars which Ukraine is taking care to make both less scarce and less able to come close to the front. HIMARS rockets are a natural counter to large air defense systems which have to set up to fire, making them visible to drones that might be nearby. While Ukraine doesn’t bring HIMARS closer than about 25km to the front to avoid the threat of ruscist tube artillery, that still allows it to shoot around 60km past the front line.
Still, an S-400 safely 80km behind the front poses a serious hazard to any Ukrainian aircraft coming within 100-150km, likely even if it has jammers. Similarly, Ukrainian Patriots can fire 160km with a no escape zone of around 110km, meaning that a roving launcher 50km behind the front can easily intercept Sukhois toting glide bombs flying at high altitude - at least until their range is extended from 60km to 90km. Still, once Ukraine finally has three or four more Patriot systems - Germany recently announced that it will send another - ruscist aircraft will be at risk any time they try to offer close air support.
Yet SAM systems all have the same basic problem: limited numbers relative to the space they need to cover. While roving SAM launchers can pose a hazard to aircraft, a large enough flight can wield enough anti-radar missiles and jamming to make the cat and mouse game even more dangerous. And SAM systems are of course vulnerable to tactical ballistic missile strikes if they linger in one place for too long, something true of both S-400s and Patriots.
A further issue with SAMs is that without support from aerial radars they have trouble tracking aircraft flying very low to the ground. This only benefits aviators behind friendly lines, however, because both sides make extensive use of mid-range SAMs like the Buk, Iris-T, and ground-based AMRAAMs used in the NASAMS system. These can shoot out to the horizon, meaning that coming within 10km of the front line is almost suicidal for crewed aircraft. That’s why both sides use Su-25 jets as airborne rocket launchers, popping up behind the front to fire before running away.
The old dream of air superiority died decades ago. The easy defeat of Iraqi and Libyan air defenses was a function of their relative obsolescence. Moscow’s military machine might be far less effective than most people believed before the war, but its SAM systems are still potent enough. This remains true despite the damage done to inventories by Ukraine’s constant effort to hunt down and destroy them.
F-16s and other modern NATO standard jets have a few tricks up their sleeves that Ukraine’s older Flankers and Fulcrums lack, however. And despite not being able to wrest control of the skies, even once Ukraine has even a few their presence will be swiftly felt.
The first reason is electronic warfare. Particularly with Moscow having lost substantial quantities of sensitive gear over the past two and a half years, it’s safe to say that the technical specifications of the radars used by orc jets and missiles are well known. No F-16 will leave the ground without one or more electronics countermeasures - ECM - pods. How effectively these will knock back ruscist radar gear is unknown. And after a few weeks of being jammed the orcs will start to try alternatives that will reduce the impact until Ukraine adapts.
But along with sophisticated ECM, F-16s can tote around an impressive arsenal of stand-off weapons that let the jets deliver damage from well behind the front lines. Perhaps more important than that is their ability to integrate with other friendly systems, like Patriot, allowing AMRAAM missiles fired by the F-16 to receive targeting data from a different source. The F-16 doesn’t have to switch on its own radar and give away its exact position.
In effect, Vipers can act like flying high-speed Patriot launchers, at least of the PAC-2 variety meant for shooting down jets as opposed to PAC-3, which handles ballistic threats. Not nearly as vulnerable to counterattack because of their speed, F-16s can restore much of Ukraine’s ability to intercept ruscist bombers lost when it had to get more careful about sending roving Patriot systems close to the front. Assuming that Ukraine receives at least a few hundred of the AIM-120D model missiles with their 160km maximum range, this should allow Ukrainian Vipers to take down ruscist glide bomb carriers from up to 70km behind Ukrainian lines.
The orcs are dropping around 100 glide bombs every day on suspected Ukrainian positions, with each aircraft carrying between two and four. On average Moscow dispatches around three dozen jets to bomb Ukraine every day, most often a pair of Su-34 bombers covered by an Su-35 fighter armed with long-range air to air (AAM) and anti-radar (ARM) missiles. That translates to one of these flights arriving somewhere on the front lines every hour and a half.
Fortunately for Ukraine, to maximize the range of their weapons - and thereby minimize the risk of losing their jets - the orcs fly in at high altitude. This means that ground based radars spot them coming several hundred kilometers out, well on the ruscist side of the border. If a jet is flying in at 1,500km/h and is spotted 150km from its launch point 90km from the front lines, that gives Ukraine about six minutes to respond - barely enough time for a roving Patriot launcher to set up and fire, but enough for a pair of jets near Dnipro to dash in on full afterburner. The map below is cluttered, but as a diagrammatic representation it gets the job done:
Because Moscow will be scouring Ukraine with satellites, drones, and spies to find Ukraine’s F-16s once they arrive, it’s safe to say that the Ukrainian Air Force will do all it can to keep as many airborne at a given time as possible and only land well away from the border. Notably, the first six Ukrainian pilots have graduated in Arizona, likely joined soon by another six from Denmark with similar numbers following 4-6 weeks in their wake. Even if Ukraine only has six F-16s in service by late June it should be able to almost perpetually maintain two on station at a point where the flight can rush in to intercept any inbound glide bomb attack close enough to hit before fuel becomes an issue.
Assuming that each airframe is flown four times a day and every pilot goes on two missions lasting up to two hours, that should make for a dozen hourlong periods where two jets orbiting Dnipro - far enough to not be tracked on orc radars - can race in to unleash four AIM-120Ds on a group of three inbound Sukhois. Out of four fired at maximum range one or two should hit, on average. If Moscow has a flight hitting the front line somewhere every hour or hour and a half, at least a couple times a day a Ukrainian flight should be in the right position fuel-wise to effect an intercept.
Moscow temporarily pulled back on glide bomb operations and made them more difficult to predict after losing one Sukhoi a day for almost two weeks earlier this year. If Ukraine starts knocking down two or three for even a week Moscow will be forced to curtail operations until a solution is found. It simply doesn’t have enough Su-34s or pilots to sustain such high loss rates.
Now, this is a dangerous strategy, to be sure. It requires that Ukrainian Vipers be able to survive flying up to a hundred kilometers inside the technical S-400 danger zone. It will only be possible if ECM is up to snuff or Ukraine is able to push the enemy’s long range SAMs even farther back from the front. This could happen thanks to ATACMS in the occupied parts of Ukraine, but not along the border with Belgorod oblast, at least until the prohibition on Ukraine using ATACMS on ruscist home soil is lifted. Regardless, the threat of roving launchers is real enough that ECM has simply got to be effective.
One way to mitigate the risk is to have the F-16s accelerate to maximum speed in a steep dive as soon as they get the order to engage. They’ll hug the ground to hide in the radar clutter then switch on their jammers once hostile radars have picked them up, something that will be clear thanks to their threat warning receiver. An F-16 can approach 1,500km/h at low altitude so the flight to their launch point should take no more than five to six minutes - just enough time. About a minute from their launch point the pilots will execute a hard vertical climb, firing their missiles once they reach thinner air to maximize their range then turning and diving back towards the Dnipro.
Escorting orc jets have radars that boast a longer range than the one on the Viper and missiles with an even longer range, so pose a major threat. Here too the Vipers will have to rely on the power of ECM and their speed. They’re basically going to get an order to intercept, switch on the afterburners and follow a roller-coaster path into the danger zone, then activate ECM to get close enough for the AMRAAMs to reach their targets. If an S-400 or S-300 radar lights up, a HARM or two should force it to shut down or at least cause a distraction. As soon as weapons are free, the pilot runs. Thankfully all a Patriot operator has to do is get the AMRAAMs close enough that their own radars can take them the rest of the way.
Modern beyond visual range combat is a bit like jousting. It is entirely possible for each side to take shots then have to run away from the enemy’s. Sooner or later an orc will get a lock on an F-16, and there will inevitably be losses. But in this sort of duel the Viper jock has certain advantages. They’re in a much smaller aircraft, for one, boasting a smaller radar and thermal signature. There is also the possibility of shooting down an S-400 or R-37 missile with Patriot if an F-16 is in dire straits.
The cost makes this less than ideal, but as a backup option to save a highly trained pilot’s life it’s a definite plus. With only six jets you can’t sustain more than a single loss, which is why I can absolutely see Ukraine holding the F-16s back from combat until at least a dozen jets with two dozen pilots are ready, probably sometime in August.
Six or twelve, their inaugural sortie could even be a mass strike on the remnants of the Black Sea Fleet using anti-ship missiles. I’ve focused on the air to air and anti-radar potential of the F-16 so far because if Moscow’s glide bomb campaign is interrupted, advances on the ground will be almost impossible. Reduce the glide bomb impact and restore Ukraine’s artillery supplies - both of which should be in full swing by July - and all of a sudden Putin’s summer campaign looks downright delusional.
F-16s should mainly be used in the counter-air and suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) because that’s where they can do the most good relative to other assets in Ukraine’s arsenal. Their arrival will release MiG-29s and Su-27s to serve as pure bombers, delivering GPS guided weapons like JDAM and the Small Diameter Bomb to knock out targets that don’t move too often. Assuming that additional Patriot batteries and the arrival of F-16s forces ruscist jets to only operate in large groups capable of overwhelming a single pair of Vipers, more responsive close air support becomes a real possibility.
Here too F-16s will often prove valuable. They can be equipped with a weapon that I very much hope the US, Canada, Finland, Poland, Greece (yeah right), Turkey (same), or even Australia (a definite maybe?) will supply to Ukraine: the AGM-154 JSOW, a glide bomb with a 110km range. It and HARM are two weapons that Ukrainian F-16 pilots can use to hit targets of opportunity as requested by units on the ground.
GPS guided weapons are becoming more vulnerable to ruscist jamming, meaning that other forms of guidance are becoming ideal. Infrared images can be used to guide weapons without any risk of signal interference if they’re pre-loaded. Laser guidance is in many ways the ideal solution as inexpensive designators can be attached to drones or carried by troops. Laser guided rockets are another option, one that in theory can be easily adapted to a wide variety of platforms - A-10s could replace Su-25s in this role starting next year.
Crewed aircraft aren’t going anywhere in warfare; soon they will become control hubs for drones. I see aircraft like the EA-18G Growler, a variant of the Super Hornet, as indicative of the future of combat aircraft design. With two seats, two engines, and a whole lot of electronic hardware, they’re meant to jam enemy radars and shoot SAM sites to let other aircraft get close to targets. Over time they’re being armed with a lot of the same weapons used on multirole combat aircraft, but having a second body to handle drone control and the power to control the electromagnetic spectrum in an area are extremely important capabilities to consider.
The future of Ukraine’s air power is a fascinating topic, but a little ahead of the game right now. First Vipers have to be successfully introduced and the infrastructure required to operate them protected. They need multiple small airfields free of debris to force Moscow to play a shell game when it tries to bomb them. A pair of fighters upon landing have to be towed immediately into shelters, rearmed and refueled, then send back up in under an hour to minimize the risk of being destroyed on the ground.
Two in the air and two preparing to fly have to be matched with another pair in deep maintenance to sustain constant operations. This third pair has to be in a buried shelter, probably within the coverage area of PAC-3 Patriot interceptors, because the Kinzhals will rain down eventually. Decoys have to spring up at potential sites all over Ukraine to confuse the enemy, which is very likely saving up missiles for the Viper hunt.
Fortunately countries like Israel, Sweden, and Finland have pioneered a lot of the strategies I expect Ukraine’s Air Force has already adopted. Until Ukraine has hundreds of jets it will be forced to play a kind of aerial guerilla war, something NATO officers haven’t ever needed to game out.
But in this domain too Ukraine is on a better trajectory than the media will presently allow. I think it’s safe to say that the world is about 4-6 weeks away from orc jets mysteriously disappearing from radar. Moscow will first issue the usual denials, then claim a spate of friendly fire, and finally launch a mass nationwide air raid it will insist has wiped out every F-16 and dozens of NATO mercenaries.
But the shootdowns will continue, and orc aviators will make their “eternal flights” instead of freely leveling towns like Vovchansk and Chasiv Yar. And as the weeks go by, the Vipers will multiply. After them will come Gripens, and possibly Mirage 2000s too. A few Growlers, too, if Ukraine is very lucky.
The Swedish Gripen is kind of like a super F-16 and a lot of observers have been eager for Ukraine to get a squadron. Interestingly, this week it came out that unnamed countries have requested that Sweden delay Gripen deliveries until the Viper pipeline is operational. So far, however, no Gripen transfers have ever been confirmed. This raises the question of whether Ukrainian pilots are secretely training on Gripens somewhere, which could result in a much faster adoption of the fighter than has been the case with F-16s, potentially as early as late 2024.
It’s not something that I can confidently forecast, but the potential is there. And the Gripen is probably the ideal aircraft for Ukraine, able to carry all the same stuff as a Viper but cheaper to operate and rugged enough to land on stretches of highway to quickly refuel, rearm, and get back into the skies. If only Saab and Boeing would work out a way to combine the Gripen and Growler…
A Note On Geopolitics
The only sustained success that Moscow has had anywhere of late is in the Information domain, where journalists and politicians abroad are still parroting Putin’s preferred narrative. Almost every story emphasizes how tired Ukraine’s troops are and highlights the difficulty of recruiting new bodies compared with how it was at the start of the war. While true, context is everything.
Ukraine’s hardest days are drawing to a close, though it probably won’t feel like it if you’re in the trenches for another month or so. Starting in June the Czechs will begin delivering a hundred thousand shells every month. US and EU supplies will reach that level by the end of summer. Soon Ukraine won’t have to rely on drones to stop ruscist pushes. Moscow’s casualty rate isn’t going down unless Putin calls off offensive operations.
In the real world, thanks to most losses being recorded on video, Ukraine’s estimates of ruscist casualties are very similar to those made by foreign intelligence services. All agree that Putin’s military has crossed the ignoble threshold of half a million casualties, up to two hundred thousand of these fatalities thanks to atrocious orc medical evacuation services.
The fewer bodies that come home the better from Putin’s perspective. Those that simply disappear don’t generate a payout for their family. Unfortunately this attitude extends to prisoners who aren’t valued specialists like pilots, meaning that thousands of POWs languish instead of being exchanged.
Ukrainian forces are suffering too, but not to the degree that most reporting in foreign outlets seems determined to believe. Earlier this year Zelensky confirmed over 30,000 military fatalities, so the toll is likely approaching or past 40,000 by now, the count not including the thousands of civilians. At least as many soldiers, possibly twice as many more, have been injured so badly that they can no longer serve. It’s a tragedy - one that’s at least partly the fault of Ukraine’s allies - but also a kind of triumph. Ukraine has managed to evade a series of lethal traps throughout this conflict and stand in a position where it can actually contemplate turning the tide once and for all later this year.
Putin’s most successful campaign throughout this conflict has been the one at the grand strategic level. Ever since it became clear months before Putin went all-in on Ukraine that he was committed to his crusade, political leaders in NATO countries have been divided into two camps. One wants accommodation at any cost and uses the threat of nuclear escalation to justify appeasing the beast. The other recognizes that war with Putin has already begun: a threshold has been crossed and certain consequences are now necessary to avoid a global conflict spiral.
Thankfully, though many thousands of Ukrainian lives too late, the latter camp is beginning to prevail. After almost three years of blogging about this conflict - the first half on my old site - it is deeply frustrating to see obvious and necessary policy choices from as far back as 2021 being made only now. While I was firmly in the camp of those who believed before 2022 that Ukraine would have to trade some land for peace, this was because NATO and the USA had spent eight years stringing Ukraine along.
Once Putin demonstrated just how ruthless he truly was, prewar theories about how to deal with the threat his empire poses to the world had to give way to the new reality. That, sadly, is that there’s no safe way out of the fight any more short of Ukraine’s triumph. Both Putin and Biden have repeatedly set red lines that have never proven real. No one really knows who is bluffing, which in a critical time like today leads to gambling.
The net effect has been, as Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders have noted repeatedly of late, Ukraine’s allies being about a year behind where they ought to be in terms of offering support. Right now NATO leaders are finally considering the possibility of shooting down orc missiles and drones approaching NATO airspace from Ukraine. France is actually going to start sending trainers back into Ukraine, which hopefully will lead to deployments of air defense assets to protect them. NATO should long ago have adopted a posture that openly disdains concern for escalation in favor of a simply articulated general principle: make Putin retreat.
Thankfully a growing number of countries are getting with the program. Sweden in particular seems to get the situation of late, this past week unveiling a major support package that intends to hand Ukraine all of a retired model of armored personnel carriers, probably numbering around 200. Even better, Sweden is also committing a pair of small AWACS planes which can make a huge difference for Ukraine, enhancing Patriot battery efficiency and giving advance warning of jets approaching the border, allowing F-16s to set up even more effective ambushes.
Denmark is another leader, having already donated all of its artillery and confirming that it is willing to let donated F-16s and other weapons strike into russia. Norway is in the F-16 mix too, as are the Dutch. The Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Poles all understand the stakes of this war with perfect clarity. But other European countries are finally coming around too, Spain recently committing to substantial levels of additional support. Some governments around the world back Ukraine quietly, and I expect that a fair few countries formerly on the fence with regard to russia and China have begun sending Soviet style gear to Kyiv in exchange for access to allied markets.
Of course, with some NATO leaders still hesitating on a number of vital issues, it’s unknown whether all gear donated to Ukraine will have to come with a sticker saying whether it can be used in russia or not. If a flight of F-16s does hit the remnants of the Black Sea Fleet in Novorossiysk this July, I guess the pilots will have to make sure they climb into jets once flown by Danes instead of Belgians.