Arms deliveries to Ukraine
Why a modern bazooka couldn’t stop a Russian invasion
The Javelin is a powerful tank killer – but it will hardly be used.
© Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Service / dpa
Western states are supplying arms to Ukraine – primarily anti-tank missiles. But that will not be enough. Should there be an invasion, it wouldn’t be the repeat of the 2014/15 battles. Putin could defeat Ukraine with an Eastern Storm before a tank even moves.
Is Putin invading Ukraine or not? Nobody in the West knows that for sure. The Russian deployment in the border regions is huge, but rather too small for an occupation of the neighbor and a fight with the Ukrainian army. Many Western countries are currently delivering arms to Kiev – with the exception of Germany. The focus is on modern anti-tank missiles. The Javelin from the USA in particular is experiencing an almost mythical exaggeration – as if it were a silver bullet that could stop Putin’s army.
Neither the Javelin nor the comparable system from Great Britain can do that. Both are among the most modern tank killers in the world that infantrymen can use. But what can they do?
The main focus here is on the past battles in eastern Ukraine, where artillery and slowly advancing tanks, as infantry shields and swords, dominated the battlefield (analysis on eastern Ukraine – has the West completely misunderstood modern war?) Certainly could be effective Anti-tank missiles play a role in such battles. However, one should not forget that even then Kiev had anti-tank missiles at its disposal. Those were older systems like the Kornet – it’s roughly equivalent to the German Milan. But even they could not prevent the series of defeats of the Kiev troops. So there is little to suggest that a comparable, albeit more modern, weapon could now be a game changer.
Ukrainian patch with “Saint Javelin”
©PR
Above all, one should not think that a possible Ukraine war in 2022 would be a repeat of the fighting of 2014/2015. He would be the complete opposite. In the battles for Donetsk and Luhansk, Moscow quickly prevented Kiev from deploying its air forces. In this context, flight MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian separatists. After that, the war only took place on the ground. The troops worked their way slowly and laboriously through mined and fortified terrain.
No repeat of 2014/15
The Kremlin, on the other hand, has very different weapons at its disposal than the pro-Russian separatists, and should war break out in 2022, it will use them. Then there would be a new edition of “Desert Strom” in Iraq in the east, rather than a repetition of the dogged and costly struggle for individual villages. Before even a single tank moves, Moscow could use its vastly superior air force and missile weapons in the “Eastern Storm”. Modern Russian military concepts assume a short, high-intensity initial phase of a conflict. And in the case of Russia versus Ukraine, that would be a highly one-sided phase. Standoff weapons – bombs, precision guided missiles – are used against enemy troops and their infrastructure (military bases, air defense systems, airfields, transport hubs, etc.). Moscow’s crushing superiority would see Kiev lose its air force and air defense capability within days. As soon as this is done, Moscow could begin to use the scarce and expensive precision weapons only in a targeted manner and begin to destroy the enemy’s ground forces and installations with cheap “dumb” bombs.
Decision before the ground forces
The war would be decided even before ground forces are deployed on a larger scale. And should Kiev – against all reason – not capitulate in such a situation, the fate of the ground troops would also be sealed. They would hardly be able to receive the Russian troops in the prepared positions. The enemy will launch his attacks so flexibly that the defenders will have to constantly move their troops on the ground, without any protection against attacks from the air. This tactic would be neither new nor unknown to the West. This is how the US eliminated most of Iraqi forces in Desert Storm. Kiev could only counter this tactic with an effective defense against aircraft and missiles. Building such an air defense structure would be complicated, lengthy and very expensive. But without air defense, even modern anti-tank missiles will do little more than the Panzerfaust of the Volkssturm in 1945.