One of the more absurdist episodes in Biden’s blundering and naïve effort to help Ukraine defeat the Russian invasion was the ridiculous public discussion of Poland giving the MiG-29, NATO designation “Fulcrum,” fighters it inherited through its former membership in the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact to Ukraine.
The MiG-29 is a 1970s era fighter designed to destroy hostile air targets within radar coverage limits and to destroy ground targets using unguided weapons in visual flight conditions. It is a good airplane and certainly better than no fighters at all, but it is hardly the war-winner that the armchair warmongers on TV made it out to be.
Plus, the public back-and-forth was perhaps the dumbest diplomatic and national security gambit of the modern era, unless it was intended to draw Poland – and by extension NATO – into the war.
Plus, there’s no proof, other than the fake news reports of the “Ghost of Kiev” that the Ukrainians have enough (or any) pilots who are capable of flying the missions Ukraine needs flown to repel the Russians.
There is, however, another weapons system that we know Ukraine has operated to great effect, and that is the Turkish-built TB-2 UAS (drone). There have been a number of verified TB-2 successes against Russian armored vehicles and, as far as we know, none of the Ukrainian TB-2s have been shot down.
The problem is that the Ukrainians don’t have enough of them and the munitions to arm them, but there’s a solution to that problem that might even make the Progressives in the Biden administration happy.
A friend with inside knowledge of the Biden Pentagon reports the US Air Force has around 300 MQ-9 armed Predator drone that the administration wants to take out of service. The entire infrastructure to operate them is in place and could be run on a GOCO (Government Owned- Contractor Operated) basis with Ukrainian trigger-pullers.
Our friend suggests that with 300 Predator drones available to supplement the Turkish TB-2 UAS they are already operating Ukraine could be rid of Russian armored vehicles as well as tube and rocket artillery systems in 72 hours.
And as long as Biden, Blinken or Harris didn’t blab about it on TV no one would have to know.
Russian military doctrine calls for avoiding urban combat until the opposition is more or less leveled as it was in Grozny in Chechnya and the siege of Aleppo in Syria where entire sections of the cities were leveled with their civilian populations buried in the rubble.
With Russian armor and artillery in static positions waiting to pound Kiev and Kharkov into rubble now would be a good time for a massive wave of drone strikes against those positions.
If Biden was serious about driving the Russians out of Ukraine and defeating Putin’s Eurasian ambitions contracting-out the Predators he already wants to get rid of would be a win-win and might be the best way to do it… if he were serious that is.
Ukraine
Vladimir Putin
NATO
Russian invasion
predator drones
Poland MIG 29
Ghost of Kiev
Turkish-built TB-2 UAS (drone)
MQ-9 armed Predator drone