With American Air Cover, Ukraine can prevail
As the war initiated by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine enters its second week, the fierce resistance being offered by Ukraine’s armed forces and citizenry is exceeding all expectations. Putin apparently thought he could waltz into Ukraine and take over an unresisting country within hours. He even sent a company of riot police in with his first wave to suppress the kind of opposition expected from Moscow peace demonstrators. Instead, he has found himself in a slugging match against a people who can take whatever he can throw and dish it out right back. As for the riot police, they are unlikely to be heard from again.
Yet despite the courage and determination displayed by Ukrainians fighting for their national existence, they remain dangerously outgunned. NATO nations are now belatedly trying to ship vital anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine in quantity. But the shipments, which must come now in by truck, are exposed to destruction by Russian jets that now rule the skies over Ukraine. If these shipments cannot make it to the frontline troops, Ukraine will lose.
Can the West allow that to happen? I think not.
Vladimir Putin has made his intentions abundantly clear. He wishes to restore the Russian and Soviet empires, which once included not only Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, but Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. If these ambitions are to be checked by means short of nuclear war, NATO needs to have an army. Currently it doesn’t have one. With American troops in Europe cut from 500,000 at the end of the cold war to 30,000 today, the British largely gone, and the German army cut from 12 divisions to 4, the only credible NATO force east of the Rhine is the Polish Army, 180,000 men. It’s not enough.
But the Ukrainian armed forces amount to some 450,000 men (and now women in the citizen militia as well) and they are showing themselves to be valiant beyond measure. Given the situation we are in – facing a revanchist Russia – it would be the greatest of all follies to allow such a valuable ally to be deleted from the West’s order of battle.
The Ukrainians have numbers, commitment, and fighting spirit. What they need in order to win are weapons, airpower, and space power. The West is finally willing to supply the necessary weapons. Now we must provide the other two essentials.
The Ukraine war may not seem like a space war, but it is. The Russians are using space-based communications, reconnaissance satellites, and GPS-guided munitions. Disabling these would greatly weaken the Russian forces’ capacity for aggression. The US has cyber warfare capabilities that can do the job, and if we were to share some of this know-how with our Ukrainian friends, they could really throw the Russians off their game.
Taking this step would help a lot. Without satellite reconnaissance, the Russians would know much less about Ukrainian troop and supply movements, significantly reducing their ability to use air power to dominate the country.
But Russian airpower itself must be curtailed as well. We have the means to do it. Our fighters are much better than anything they have. Based in Poland and Rumania, they could fly into Ukraine, and together with Ukraine’s plucky little air force – which against expectations has not yet been eliminated – challenge Russia for control of the skies. We might not be able to achieve total air supremacy over Ukraine, but we could certainly take away Russia’s ability to safely use helicopters or transport planes to move airborne forces within its borders, or to have its ground attack aircraft wandering around looking for trucks, trains, or other targets of opportunity to shoot up. This would make all the difference.
Vladimir Putin knows we have the ability to do this, which is why he issued a stark warning to anyone who might “interfere” with his invasion. This threat cannot be honored. It has no limiting principle. Russia has no more “right” to bomb Kyiv than it does to bomb Warsaw or Paris. If we submit to this threat now, on what basis would we choose to resist it when Putin demands that we not “interfere” when he invades the Baltic States? The fact that they are NATO members does not provide any more basis in international law to make these countries sacrosanct from invasion than Ukraine – not that it would matter if it did. On the contrary, all the arguments against taking a stand to stop Putin would be even stronger after Russia’s might has been increased by the conquest of other nations.
The claim that having our fighters engage Russia’s over Ukraine would lead to nuclear war has no basis. Our fighters engaged Soviets fighters over Korea and Vietnam, and Russian fighters over Syria. These engagements did not result in nuclear war, or even conventional war between the superpowers. The reason why they did not is because neither power wanted that. Russia is having a hard enough time taking on Ukraine. The last thing they want is to bring NATO fully into the fight.
So, as far as combat is concerned, what happens in Ukraine will stay in Ukraine. But the question of who wins in Ukraine will have consequences for the world. If Putin wins in Ukraine, he and his Chinese allies will be emboldened, and we will have more wars to fight, with ever-worsening odds as we retreat from one to the next. But if Ukraine wins, then Putin will be discredited, and we may well see a change in Russia that will bring it into the Western camp. That would greatly strengthen our hand as we face the rising challenge from China.
So, the stakes really couldn’t be higher. We have it in our power to win, provided we, like the Ukrainians, rise to the occasion.
Robert Zubrin, @robert_zubrin, is an aerospace engineer. His latest book, The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility, was recently published by Prometheus Books.
