Western fighter jets seemed taboo in Ukraine, although the government in Kiev had been demanding them since the first day of the war. A frequent counter-argument from the West: risk of escalation on the part of Putin. Now it’s suddenly working, Ukrainian soldiers are being trained on F-16s, and the planes are supposed to come too. In addition, British and French cruise missiles. Security expert Frank Sauer on the opportunities these weapons open up for Ukraine and their limits.
ntv.de: At the G7 summit a few days ago, the following happened: A reporter told US President Biden that the Russians had said it was a “colossal risk” to deliver F-16s to Ukraine. Joe Biden then: “That’s it. For them.” Pretty dry humor for a step that put you off for 15 months.
Frank Sauer: When Biden made his statement, I sucked in the air between my teeth for a moment. The saying is cool, but also borderline given the seriousness of the situation. The scope of such decisions, such as the F-16, Storm Shadow or the latest German weapons package, must actually be played out in the way Biden and the White House have done in an exemplary manner: determined in action, sober in rhetoric.
Behind the fighter jet turnaround, security expert Phillips O’Brien suspects that Washington may now have a different assessment of the danger situation with regard to Putin’s nuclear escalation potential. Actually in such a way that a nuclear risk no longer exists. Can you see it that way?
That would be very good for all of us, so at least I hope it is. But hoping is not knowing. And for my taste, that’s too much speculation. I’m not aware of any other concrete evidence to which I could base such a conclusion about nuclear risk — ergo, unlike O’Brien, I can’t draw it. But at least it has become clear that the Biden administration, which has long been divided on the issue, has now decided on a stance. Such situations are complex and no one is just “deaf” or just “hawk”, but if we want to pin it down to people for the sake of simplicity, then until now there was camp Milley and camp Blinken. And with the F-16, the latter has caught on.
Frank Sauer conducts research at the Bundeswehr University in Munich and is an expert on security policy, which he regularly discusses in the “Sicherheitshalber” podcast.
So US Chief of Staff Mark Milley on the one hand, versus Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s position.
The military Milley brought up increased pressure for negotiations last year. At the time, he argued that Ukraine should cement its gains at the negotiating table after the offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson. Diplomat Blinken, on the other hand, argued that Ukraine still had to be helped to liberate more areas and to create different conditions on the battlefield before serious negotiations could be expected.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has also been part of the skeptical wing. Speaking to CNN, he said Ukraine was fully capable of attacking Crimea with US weapons. You haven’t heard a statement like that from him, have you?
The sound is indeed new. With the statements of Jake Sullivan and the decision on the F-16, the impression is created that the more courageous faction in the White House – at least for the time being – has prevailed. But one more sentence about Biden’s F-16 saying: It’s not even true.
F-16s are a colossal risk for Russia? That’s not true?
The operational range of the F-16 in Ukraine is – at least in the current situation – necessarily limited. As always, the F-16 is of course not “the game changer”. It will be very, very useful to the Ukrainians, but of course it will not bring air superiority overnight. The F-16 may not be obsolete, but it is It is definitely an older multi-role combat aircraft. There are numerous variants, but one can basically say: it has only low stealth properties, its radar cross section is not drastically smaller than that of the MiG 29. It follows inevitably that the Ukrainians also with the F -16 have to fear Russian anti-aircraft defenses.
Does that mean it is easy for the enemy to locate?
Therefore, Ukrainian pilots will have to continue to fly very low and be extremely careful not to get within range of Russian anti-aircraft defenses. Because it remains a threat to the Ukrainian Air Force, as well as Russian fighter jets with their long-range R-37 air-to-air missiles. All this limits Ukraine in its possibilities, even with the F-16. So you shouldn’t imagine it like Top Gun in the cinema. Things happen at great distances. It just wins who has the better radar and the longer range rockets.
But where does the F-16 show its strengths?
With it, a Western model is now coming to Ukraine, and that is good and right, because the days of Soviet weapons there are over. And it will be very valuable against Russian cruise missiles or as a platform for Ukrainian cruise missiles. But the ideas that Ukraine would suddenly take a giant step forward with the F-16, or that the delivery of the jet would certainly cause Putin to escalate, are both far from reality. Storm Shadow and SCALP are actually more significant than the F-16.
Is it more relevant that the British and French supply Ukraine with cruise missiles than that it gets F-16 fighter jets?
Yes. If we look at the larger picture and also include the weapons deliveries from Europe to the F-16, i.e. the announced German package with 15 Cheetahs and especially Great Britain’s Storm Shadow and France’s SCALP, then this is a really significant one from the West Decision made. And especially the cruise missiles, due to their range, will significantly expand Ukrainian military capabilities.
The Storm Shadow has a range of more than 400 kilometers, has its own drive and can steer itself to the finish line.
With the F-16 fighter jet on the one hand and the cruise missiles on the other, it was decided on both sides of the Atlantic to use these weapons to send a signal to Putin, in my opinion a clear and correct signal.
And how should the Russian President possibly understand this?
I think Putin continues to assume that he has the staying power and that this staying power will ultimately play into his hands. The West’s signal to equip Ukraine with weapons that can reach as far as Crimea says very clearly: “We in the West are determined to both hold out and expand our support.” And now, while everyone is waiting for the Ukrainian offensive, this is exactly the right signal to send to the Kremlin.
Since the beginning of the war, the West has been discussing which weapons Putin could escalate. Would a powerful message like this have the potential to do the opposite? That Putin is de-escalating?
That one weapon system that leads to escalation was largely a western soliloquy. Purely hypothetically, of course, it would be good to reach an agreement with the Kremlin on limits and risk limitations in warfare, by announcing: “Look, we’ll just give Ukraine whatever missiles you use against them “But I don’t see a chance with Putin. From a Russian point of view, you shouldn’t complain about Western cruise missiles like Storm Shadow if you yourself are firing cruise missiles at Ukraine all the time. And short-range missiles, and medium-range missiles, and disposable drones.
And all this on the civilian population.
In this ongoing, asymmetrical terror, Russia shoots everything it has and then throws a sink at it. The Kremlin then complains when Ukraine receives weapon systems with comparable capabilities in some areas from the West. Against this background, it is exactly the right signal to say to Moscow: “We do not accept this asymmetry and are determined to increasingly and permanently provide Ukraine with the skills it needs to beat you.”
Do you see in these decisions a Western conviction that arms supplies can no longer be limited in such a way that Ukraine merely does not lose, but that it must be enabled to really win the war? So that it doesn’t run into a long stalemate, during which a Republican president then turns off the faucet in 2024?
From both the rhetoric and these recent arms pledges, I get the impression that the West has taken some decisive steps toward believing that “We want Ukraine to gain and maintain the upper hand militarily in order to to be in a strong negotiating position.” For me, right from the start, it was crucial that the West find the right mix of determination and prudence. I think the current increase in determination is right and justifiable. In order to avoid a “long stalemate”, it is fitting that even French President Macron rejected the idea of ”freezing the conflict” this week, and that Chancellor Scholz is also increasingly expressing this more determined attitude.
Does that mean an end to “boiling the frog”, i.e. the deliberately slow increase in weapons for Ukraine, so that Putin does not feel too threatened and detonates the atomic bomb in panic?
I never believed in “boiling the frog” as a strategy. It always seemed to me a very convenient explanation, with which one can retrospectively sell any political strangulation as a clever, long-planned strategy. The memo from the White House, which says, “We are now starting the agreed ‘boiling the frog’ strategy, I would like to see that when the archives are accessible in 30 years. For me, the reaction to the Russian invasion of Western capitals seemed far too organically chaotic from the start for a strategy that had been systematically pursued over months to be behind it. Please do not misunderstand: that is of course a good thing. Democratic governments are not monoliths, and there were and still are different opinions among the population. All that remains for us democracies is to debate and muddle through – which of course is not only preferable to a dictatorship, but is also superior to it.
Frauke Niemeyer spoke to Frank Sauer