A couple of notes (all unclassified, of course) from a Senior Leader Conference I have been attending this weekend. An Air Force colonel (F-15 pilot by trade) who has been working with Ukraine under our state's partnership program since 2019 briefed a few things I was not aware of at all and a couple that I suspected but had not heard officially. Here are the highlights I'm comfortable with sharing: The official U.S. estimate for Russian KIA is approximately 60,000, roughly half of what Ukraine believes is the accurate number. The partnership officers closest to the Ukrainian government believe the U.S. estimate is too low and the most accurate number is between 80,000 and 90,000. Even the low-side estimate is staggering. If true, then Russia has lost more soldiers in Ukraine in one year than the U.S. did from 1964 to 1975 in Vietnam. If the high-end is true (probably not), then Russia has lost more soldiers in that year than the U.S. has in all wars total since 1945. Two initiatives that began early in the Trump Administration have paid enormous dividends for Ukraine since the war began. Everybody knows about the weapons, especially the Javelin and the Stinger. Most people don't know (at least I did not) about key aspects of the training, the first of which I will discuss in this bullet. Our fighter pilots taught theirs a technique for detecting and engaging Russian aircraft without the assistance of airborne radar. Now I don't know what that technique was, and I don't need to, but apparently it was instrumental in bloodying the nose of the Russian Air Force during the first critical 48 hours of the invasion, when Russia had planned for and expected to achieve air superiority. The inability of Russia to control the skies and keep Ukraine from prohibitively interfering with air operations has been key in keeping Ukraine competitive on the ground, despite the enormous manpower disparity. The second training that has paid off enormous dividends is teaching the Ukrainians to develop and empower a non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps. Until 2019, the Ukrainians followed the Soviet/Russian manpower model, which simply put has all leadership in the hands of officers and allows very little initiative to senior and mid-level enlisted personnel. Apparently, the Ukrainians took to the training much quicker than the advisers anticipated. Today, Ukrainian forces in the field are largely filled with NCOs willing to take initiative absent orders and exploit Russian vulnerabilities in the field when they arise. Russia, by contrast, still has soldiers who mostly won't take any action until specifically ordered to, even opportunities present themselves. For the last point, I'll tread carefully. I have long suspected and opined on here that our aviation was far more advanced relative to Russia than previously believed in the buildup to war. In a side discussion with the colonel, he confirmed my suspicions. Only our forebearance is keeping Russia from catastrophic defeat in Ukraine. If we can chastise Russia and get them back into their own borders without directly engaging them, then (while that won't be nearly as emotionally satisfying) that is a good thing. However, for everyone here worried what might happen if Russia forces limited war on us, understand that we will beat them badly.
We all know the real reason why the US has not officially faced off against Russia. A brutal beating would greatly tarnish the US military’s reputation as the dominant military force in the world. It’s not all bad though. Neither Russia nor China can beat us in football and NASCAR.
My father was a senior office in the Air Force. Retired now. He tells me the same thing based on what his friends have been willing to share. In a limited conventional engagement us and allied air power would utterly decimate Russian positions and logistics in Ukraine in a matter of days.
How many F-22’s and F-35’s falling flaming from the skies would Americans stomach ? Russia’s air defenses are the best in the world.
Germany warned that it risks isolation, fromthe international community, if it doesn’t cough up Leopard 2 tanks. The international community ...
Of course they are. Commentary: Israel ruined the reputation of Russian air defense systems, and it's hurting sales Russian S-300 Air Defense System Targets Israeli Jets in Syria: Report Russian-Operated S-300 SAM System Fired At Israeli Jets Over Syria Says Top Official
Fake news. Russia and Israel have a longstanding tit-for-tat arrangement in Syria. In effect, Israel is permitted to launch pinprick strikes from outside of Syrian airspace. Israel did transgress, on one occasion, and the plane was *pinged* by an S-300. Among US aircraft, the F-117 was the stealthiest, stealthier than the F-22’s and F-35’s. And two F-117’s were shot down by comparatively ancient Serbian missiles. Bottom line: if Israel enjoyed superiority over Russian air defenses, Russia could not have thwarted US aims, in Syria, as it has.
The advisors in Vietnam turned into troops because LBJ decided that he would not be the president who lost another Asian country to communism, after China was lost (primarily due to false information from CIA managers who ignored their own field agents during and after WWII). LBJ was too stupid to recognize that a small agricultural country like Vietnam would never be a threat to us unless we attacked them. So he attacked them. He was also too stupid to recognize that the "democratic government" that he was backing in Vietnam was highly corrupt, and highly abusive of its Buddhist population (which was 85% of Vietnamese). We were basically backing junior Hitler against his own people. It sounded good because we were backing a supposed Catholic/Christian against the strange Buddhist separatists. It was hopeless from the start. For a communist, Ho Chin Min was remarkably pro-western before LBJ attacked. He was actually an admirer of the United States. If the U.S. had allowed him to take over the country from little Hitler, we may have been able to persuade him to allow the country to convert to democracy when he was ready to step down. We could have saved a ton of money and a lot of lives. Few presidents were as ignorant as LBJ.
There is a 97-year-old out there who knows how to shoot down four MIGs at a time (while fighting off three others). Tell Russia we might have to unleash him on them again.
Re: the advisors hypothesis, it is hard for me to envision the US turning Ukraine into another Vietnam without a false flag or something which would really roil the masses. And the American public is arguably more fractured than it was in the 60’s. In any case, it would require mass-conscription. And it beggars belief that Americans would be onboard with that no matter how bad things get.
Russia only fire missiles as warning shots. No intention to scratch Israeli jets. Russia just let Israel know that they can fire missiles if they feel like it. Next time will shoot down jets. - Comrade from Kremlin.
Yeah, you know, but the reason those Russian missiles missed the Israeli F-16s is because is they didn’t want to hit them. The reason they have not detected, much less been able to engage, an F-35 is because they don’t want to detect them. And, of course, this is the new normal in the Russian way of war: leaving easy victories on the table because they don’t really want them. What we in the West don’t understand is, a long and bloody war is good for Russia. The massive casualties, the destroyed equipment, the loss of face in front of enemies and allies alike, the thousands of skilled workers who have fled, the emptying of prisons — all of these things are just part of a plan we in the West are too stupid to understand.
Timothy Snyder on why Ukranian victory is worth pursuing to preserve the kind of world we all want to lobe in
Good stuff altogether. Again, I am just a civilian that reads. But our NCO corps has long been considered the true strength of our military. That's without any desire to denigrate our officer corps. But almost no operation can go through without experienced NCOs, again from my reading. I view that as a corollary of democracies versus autocracies. One advantage of the West is that we are not worried about our military going rogue or turning against us. So we give them a lot more autonomy during battle than totalitarians will. That gets inside the decision loop. It is a greatly underappreciated advantage. Even outside the US Russia context, the 1973 Sinai War was one where the Egyptians got the early initiative as the Israelis had underestimated their bridging technology and their antiaircraft abilities to neutralize Israeli forces. Have the Egyptians pressed their advantage, the outcome might have turned out very differently. But they famously had to wait for the highest levels to approve every move and lost the initiative, in part because Sharon freelanced in a way that should've gotten them court-martialed and exploited a gap in Egyptian lines with his armor Corps and took out some of the antiaircraft umbrella batteries in a certain location which the IDF Air Force then exploited. But again, it was the fact that you actually trusted your military, because they were free citizens of the nation, ruled by a government with political legitimacy as the consent of the governed. One very small practical example was the projection of how US and Soviet pilots would do if they were charged with true dogfighting in the theater during the Cold War, which I don't think ever happened after the now declassified fights over Korea. See “Missing in Mig Allley” - Missing in MiG Alley — NOVA | PBS One gigantic advantage that US pilots had is that they had many more hours in the air in actual practical training, beyond the capabilities of the aircraft. A lot of that was because the Soviets as a matter of policy would never allow training missions with a full tank because they were afraid their pilots would defect if they could reach foreign territory, as occasionally happened, I believe with the Mig 25 FoxBat landing in Japan – my memory is correct, as confirmed Defection of Viktor Belenko - Wikipedia. It was not a risk that we had to worry about. It's a corollary of voting with one's feet. Whatever flaws we have in the West, and there are many, are citizens do not routinely desire to live under an authoritarian system and vote with their feet
