By Scott Graber
It is Wednesday and I’m in Port Royal. This morning I’m on a recently rebuilt deck that enjoys a small, constricted view of the river. I know that I have an hour of outdoor writing before the heat sends me back into our airtight, foam-insulated home.
This morning’s Wall Street Journal tells us that the counteroffensive in the Ukraine is not moving fast enough for some people — mostly Republicans. Our Republican kinsmen know that a successful counter-attack could re-elect Joe Biden. They don’t want that. Defeating the President concentrates their thinking and consumes their consciousness.
The Ukrainian infantry is bedeviled by the fact that it does not control the sky over the battlefield. It does have some aging MIG-29s, but not enough to stop the Russian Kamov-52 attack helicopters that have been recently brought to the fight. The K-52 is a remarkably durable helicopter — it can take a hit — and comes equipped with tank-penetrating missiles having a range of about 5 miles.
Last month there was wide spread jubilation when a Ukrainian Javelin (a shoulder-fired missile with a range of 2.5 miles) shot down a Kamov.
But now everyone is waiting for the arrival of the venerable F-16 fighter jet that has been around for many years. Ukrainian pilots are being trained in Denmark and the Netherlands and it will take about 4 months to bring these young men up to speed on the NATO workhorse.
There are about 5,000 of these jets in service around the world; and many countries are now ready to trade their F-16s for the newer F-35. Some of our allies might insist on some written guarantee of getting a specific number of F-35s before sending their aging F-16s to Ukraine.
The F-16 is a complex, multi-task airplane originally designed to do a large number of jobs — but it was not the best weapon in every war-fighting category. In a few categories it is inferior to the Russian MIG-31, especially in terms of the range of its air-to-air missiles. Most experts agree that in the short run the F-16 will not tilt the balance in favor of Ukraine. But in the long run, the F-16 will definitely help.
It will help because it can serve as an airborne platform for the JASSM air-to-surface missile that can hit Russian barracks and ammunition depots well behind enemy lines. This F-16 can also shoot down Russian cruise missiles and give some additional protection for the apartment buildings that Putin is fond of blowing up. In fact, a single F-16 can knock down a dozen cruise missiles when configured with two, under the wing missile pods. And, of course, it can take out the Kamov helicopters the Russians have recently deployed.
But there will, no doubt, be dogfights between the F-16 and the MIG-31 and the MIG will win some of these shoot-outs.
But as long as the Russians understand there are more high performance aircraft in the supply pipeline, more weapons of all types pouring in from Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, they will soon feel like the Wehrmacht (in World War II) that realized it was facing a firehose of Shermans, Thunderbolts and Flying Fortresses from America’s factories — factories that were working 24 hours a day and were not being bombed.
The Russians will realize taking out a few F-16s is as futile as knocking down a dozen Liberators over Italy. They will discover that their inept, convict-conscripted, North Korean-supplied army is effectively check-mated by the weapons-making capability of 30 different countries.
In World War II, Republicans realized that Roosevelt — hated for his New Deal — was prescient at picking generals and forming alliances. They admitted FDR played a seminal role in transforming our Packard and Pullman Railcar-making factories into a Plutonium and P-38 making conveyor belt.
In some instances, our weapons were inferior to the German weapons — but we made so many that it didn’t really matter.
Republicans who loath the President should recognize that Biden has done a decent job in revitalizing NATO and getting certain countries — Germany in particular — to retool and re-imagine their role in the defense of Europe. They should understand that winning this war is more important than defeating Joe Biden. Congress should not cut and run if it wants to keep the voracious, xenophobic Bear at bay.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
