And now they are talking MiG 29s, a generation newer than the 25s first mentioned.
White House weighs three-way deal to get fighter jets to Ukraine
The U.S. remains in discussions with Poland to potentially backfill their fleet of fighter planes if Warsaw decides to transfer its used MiG-29s to Ukraine, four U.S. officials tell POLITICO.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/white-house-weighs-thre…
Steve
Several Eastern European countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia retain dozens of Russian-made aircraft in their inventories and have been hesitant to give up those planes without guarantees from the U.S. that they could replace them.
Poland has been modernizing its aircraft fleet since 2006, when it first started flying F-16s, and in 2020 signed a $4.6 billion deal for 32 F-35s, the first of which will arrive in 2024, making those older Russian-made planes expendable.
After Zelenskyy’s impassioned Zoom call with senators on Saturday, during which he urged the U.S. to send planes, drones and Stinger missiles to Ukraine and impose oil sanctions on Russia, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) sent a letter to President Joe Biden throwing their full support behind backfilling Poland with F-16s if they were to hand over their Russian planes, saying they would work to ensure there was funding to finance the transfer.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/05/white-house-deal-fi…
Jaak
Would the planes fly from Polish bases carrying arms? I’m not against the idea, but pointing out that it risks getting Poland directly into the conflict (including implying those with reciprocal protective alliances).
Jeff
I’m not against the idea, but pointing out that it risks…
This is one risky planet we live on but Musk is working on getting us to risk free Mars. 
The Captain
Would the planes fly from Polish bases carrying arms? I’m not against the idea, but pointing out that it risks getting Poland directly into the conflict
(including implying those with reciprocal protective alliances).
Jeff
True enough, but I can’t get over the surreal picture the world has unfolding “in plain sight”, and tsk, tsk, tsk’ing Putin’s Russia while they rape a major sovereign European nation.
Kind of like the recent news stories about commuters standing by and watching a rape on a subway and not lifting a finger to help the victim.
Ukraine, left to be devoured by the Russian Bear, will not be the last. There will be more. Haven’t we all seen this movie before? Certainly sounds familiar here. Possibilities of any good ending diminishes the longer that it takes to act. Sanctions are a start, but…
Would the planes fly from Polish bases carrying arms? I’m not against the idea, but pointing out that it risks getting Poland directly into the conflict (including implying those with reciprocal protective alliances).
Jeff
==============================================
NATO is already shipping weapons into Ukraine. What is the difference? I am all for the plan. We need to ship every weapon we can to the brave Ukrainians. Putin can not do any more than he is currently doing without going nuclear. He would lose the nuclear war.
Jaak
He would lose the nuclear war.
Jaak
+++
+++
The WORLD would lose in a nuclear war.
MAD will work.
sunrayman
The WORLD would lose in a nuclear war.
MAD will work.
sunrayman
Sunrayman,
I agree. But we are staring down that barrel. There is no flinching as if it will go away. Putin will pull out the nuclear threat for years to come. If we flinch now he will more assuredly use them when we finally do not flinch.
Damned the torpedoes full speed ahead.MAD will work.
MAD doesn’t necessarily work if one of the participants actually is.
MAD doesn’t necessarily work if one of the participants actually is.
Sadly, Warrl is right.
Over the weekend, I heard General Wesley Clark interviewed on MSNBC television. Clark pointed out that the US military is intimately familiar with the actual “wargame” plans used by the Russian military in their annual training exercises and maneuvers.
According to Clark, essentially all of Russia’s conventional wargame exercises end with Russia prevailing in the same manner, as follows:
Russia’s established wargame strategies anticipate that eventually, Russia utilizes a controlled, small-payload Tactical Nuclear Weapon, which brings the conflict to an end or to a resolution satisfactory to the Russian military objective.
One may reasonably assume that a number of the other nuclear states (especially the smaller ones with die-hard dictators) also have established plans whereby their military are training for use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons. The following illustration from an old Outlook India webpage explains the concept explicitly:
https://images.outlookindia.com/public/uploads/images_old/tn…
https://magazine.outlookindia.com/story/amp/just-what-is-a-t…
In World War II, our benevolent USA established the indisputable fact that the use of nuclear weapons can quickly bring a protracted war to an end.
General Wesley Clark’s assessment of Putin’s possible military endgame left the MSNBC news interviewer speechless. It left me speechless as well, so much so that I was relieved when the host cut short General Clark’s interview for a commercial break.
As unthinkable as tactical nuclear warfare might be, my earlier post about the “neutron bomb” that NATO wargame experts discussed during the 1970s was precisely such a weapon.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/neutron-bomb
Also during the 1970s, the neutron bomb was considered by some American military planners to have a convenient deterrent effect: discouraging an armoured ground invasion of western Europe by arousing the fear of neutron bomb counterattack. At least in theory, a defending NATO country might sanction the use of the bomb to annihilate Warsaw Pact tank crews without destroying its own cities or irradiating its own population.
I seriously hope that in the face of Western financial and economic warfare on Russia, China’s President Xi Jinping has sufficient influence over Vladimir Putin to convince Putin not to carry out his well-practiced tactical nuclear game plan.
By forcing Russia instantly into virtual economic servitude to China, Western economic sanctions may be our saving grace. China is no doubt aware that Putin’s behavior during this Ukraine invasion proves him to be emotionally unstable.
Let’s hope that President Xi and his CPPCC (The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), as successors of the ancient Mandarins, have sufficient foresight to understand that if Putin dares to utilize even a tiny nuclear weapon in an effort to force Ukraine into submission, he may impair China’s future plans to subjugate Taiwan.
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R41007.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_(bureaucrat)
With Russia utterly dependent upon Chinese credit, banking, and petroleum purchases, Putin just might be forced to accept whatever friendly “advice” President Xi may provide in regard to Putin’s ill-fated and strategically idiotic total war against Ukraine.
Let’s hope “cooler heads” may prevail - even if those cooler heads just happen to be in the form of Putin’s sole “friend,” fellow dictator, and tyrant, Mr. Xi.
Russia’s established wargame strategies anticipate that eventually, Russia utilizes a controlled, small-payload Tactical Nuclear Weapon,
If Ukraine devolves the way Afghanistan did for them, who are the Russians going to nuke? Their own troops that occupy the cities? Of miles of open country?
Steve
Kind of like the recent news stories about commuters standing by and watching a rape on a subway and not lifting a finger to help the victim.
It’s not like that at all. Unless the rapist had a large bomb strapped to their body (that can blow up the entire train) with a dead man switch attached to it.
