How Ukraine’s strikes on Russia could make Putin’s commanders rethink the war | George Barros

How Ukraine’s strikes on Russia could make Putin’s commanders rethink the war | George Barros

any commander has to make a choice between uh balancing two desirable things uh economic efficiency uh and expediency versus protection crudely speaking when you have a tank formation uh you can drive it in a column that is the one that ex you know that optimizes economic expediency and fuel efficiency but it’s dangerous because if you get caught with your pants down by the adversary you’re lined up and easy to be destroyed um the way that you would actually try to maximize protection would be you flare out you go into line formation you’re dispersed you move slower but if you get engaged you’re prepared to handle that threat right now this huge territory in the Russian Federation bordering Ukraine is optimized for economic efficiency and my argument is that if the Biden Administration uh follows suit like many European states have now done and removed all restrictions on what the ukrainians are allowed to Target in Russia then it will force upon the Russian command to make difficult decisions about to what extent do they reconfigure their rear and support areas uh in order to maximize uh protection or at least improve protection um in in exchange for supporting uh at the expense of efficiency concretely that’ll have a very important effects for Ukraine big Ammunition Depot will be partitioned to mors saliz into a series of dispersed and small ammunition Depots uh same for fuel um you won’t be able to have big accumulations of your forces as far as deep uh you’ll have to stretch your interior lines further and what we’ve seen is that the Russians perform a lot better when they have short interior lines versus long interior lines it’s also critical for uh the air operations that the ukrainians are are planning and the air capabilities are trying to build Russia has limited air defense and electronic warfare protection assets and right now the Russian command enjoys the luxury of being able to exclusively have to worry about protecting the frontmost areas of the theater um in Ukraine and they can really pile on all of their air defense Assets in a very geographically small relatively geographically small area as opposed to having to consider the need to deploy those inwards rearr the way that they have these limited assets deployed to protect important and vulnerable Targets in the rear and if we can actually get the Russians to redeploy some of those air defense assets instead of being at the front to the rear and that of course will make a uh a better operating environment for the the various different Western aircraft that are going to be going into Ukraine soon you mentioned moment ago the the air operations that Ukraine is planning as part of the defensive operations in the north of of Ukraine um Ukraine has launched an air strike using a Ukrainian Air Force jet uh for the first time um against what’s been called a a Russian command node um in belgorod how significant do you think that attack is yeah um it’s we’re working on trying to see what kind of battle damage assessment we can clarify from the extent of that attack but in general I think it’s very important I think it’s extremely important that we revisit collectively our assumptions about uh air power in this war for the first two and a half years of this war really air power has been sort of a secondary or tertiary uh afterthought when it comes to uh war and a large part of that is because I think it actually stems from the sanctuary right um we’ve assume that the ukrainians are not going to be capable of using air power the way NATO would use air power because the Russians have uh a very capable Air Force and they have uh a lot of air defenses air defense systems on the ground that were not able to take out and if we start to examine some of those assumptions right like why can’t we take out the air defense systems well um it’s because they’re based on Russian territory uh and we can’t strike Russian territory well if we check that assumption it no longer is axiomatically impossible that using scalp and storm shadows and attack of missiles the ukrainians could conduct a shade operation that seeks to uh destroy Uh Russian air defense systems s300 and s400s try to get the Russians to redeploy some of those from the front towards the rear to protect them and then it’s no longer sort of a crazy thought to say the ukrainians can start building towards over the course of many months and years a concept of operations where you actually do have Ukrainian uh aircraft um operating in the theater uh conducting strikes uh doing air-to-air operations and supporting uh combined arms I think this Ukrainian strike um if it’s confirmed against the bunker node in uh belgrad that’s going to be very important and I hope it’ll be uh the first heralding event for what will be uh A Renewed uh series of Ukrainian operations in the air domain since the Russians began their Harkey offensive uh in on May 10th the Russians have made very small tactical gains uh you can go measure it on the map but they’ve only penetrated you know such and thus kilometers not very far they’ve lost a lot of forces and they’ve been held up and pinned down in V Chans for a while they’ve yet to seize the entire city and Ukrainian forces have been conducting a series of tactical counterattacks to try to improve their tactical positions within the city um the Russians nonetheless they still maintain significant operational reserves uh for this operation by our estimates they’ve only committed about maybe about a third maybe a little bit more uh of their prepared Force for this operation and the Russians absolutely maintain uh the opportunity to be able to intensify uh their operations I’d note that you know over the last 24 hours uh the leader of CHA ramam kadirov just announced as of yesterday uh June 9th that uh some of his chesan forces actually crossed the border from KK into Su o Bloss and they claimed that They seized a a border Village uh we need to verify those claims but I would just add that it would be completely consistent with the Russian campaign design which is the Russians seek to open up a series of fronts put military pressure on the ukrainians so that the ukrainians then stretch themselves to thin across this whole theater of operations uh in order to generate opportunities uh and facilitate what could be some uh Russian breakthroughs in what we think is the priority area eastern Ukraine and those developments that you’ve just described since the US Aid package have they been smaller tactical gains on Russia’s behalf than you might have expected or or greater or indeed exactly what you would have predicted yeah so I think the Tactical gains around eviva that especially occurred in April were concerning because it seemed like the Russians were able to actually exploit the fact that the ukrainians there were underprepared underere equipped and they man maned to project west of Diva at a rate that surprised me faster than what I would have expected but recently it’s bogged down as the Russians have actually approached the main area where the ukrainians have built their main line of defense uh just west of Diva so it was fast at first but then it slowed down in a in a surprising way with regards to the Harkey operation um that was very interesting we were forecasting the Russians to actually start their heartkey operation uh much later than they actually did the time window we were thinking that they would begin it would be late May or early June they began it in early May on May 10 and also under strength um all the indicators suggested that the Russians wanted to create a operational grouping of about 50 to 100,000 uh forces uh Personnel for that operation and they committed to it significantly under strength of that Target somewhere in the ballpark of 30 to 50,000 so about half and um I I think the timing and the seem uh decision for the Russians to go after this uh offensive despite not yet being fully prepared to their desired strength is indicative of the Russians indeed wanted to seize the opportunity before the aid began to Surge uh to the front I think they expedited the timetables to try to make sure that they could get whatever they could create whatever effects they’re trying to create on the ground uh before the ukrainians would be able to rebuff them and there’s a risk there right um you take advantage of that opportunity when the AIDS situation and the material situation is worse for the ukrainians but you also take a risk in that your own strength isn’t isn’t there um and that so far it seems that that gamble has not paid off for the Russians there’s a massive bottleneck right now in terms of uh available airframes but more importantly pilots and training Pilots um you know the US is not able to rapidly train Ukrainian Pilots for a variety of reasons and So the faster that we can get more airframes in Ukraine up and running the better um standard ization would be ideal however at the end of the day the Ukraine the approach to supportting Ukraine has been sort of scrape the barrel get what we can get fielded it and if we can get generate some good effects with it then proceed with it given the organic constraints on training F and qualifying F-16 Pilots um I think if there’s a robust pipeline that we can try to get Ukrainian Pilots trained on other air frames that’ll be important as well I also read some reports that the uh that the Mirage jets are apparently going to be capable of firing uh Scout missiles which is which is interesting um so we might potentially see uh some aircraft being used as part of a uh cruise missile campaign in order to strike uh sensitive Russian military uh assets uh within Russia which is an important capability I’d note that you know within attack’s range and some Storm Shadow range there’s a number of Russian military air bases and airfields and um of course I think what is necessary for the ukrainians defend themselves is uh to Crater The Runaways and destroy a lot of those aircraft before they even get off the ground and again you you mentioned f-16s there you know what stage are we at in terms of progress on those donated f-16s yeah so a bunch of Ukrainian let me rephrase a small number of Ukrainian Pilots finished uh their training in Arizona um on the F-16 and they’re doing some more training in Europe now all the timelines indicate that the first small batch of Ukrainian Pilots the F-16 should in principle be able to start operating sometime this summer um but I iterate that the number of pilots and the number of available airframes is very small at the at this point that it’s pretty symbolic and it’s not yet what’s needed uh to create you know a capable combat unit like uh like for example a regiment or a squadron of uh a regiment of uh of f-16s I hope that over the course of several years months and years we can build to a larger capability where again the ukrainians can operate pretty conventionally in the air War but that’s predicated on taking away the sanctuary and whole taking out the air defense assets to make it a safer environment um training more pilots getting them in there and you know this is you know really the sanctuary is a game changer because now now we actually can use air power and there is a com I think there is a concept of operations where where air power can re-enter and potentially be a a really disrup a factor for how the Russians assume they would win this war thank you for watching Frontline from times radio the interview series bringing you expert analysis on the world’s conflicts particularly the war in Ukraine for more you can listen to times radio you can also go to the times website take out a digital subscription and have access to all the reporting done by our foreign correspondents in Ukraine and indeed elsewhere around the world and also listen to the times’s world in 10 podcast every day we take you through the the latest developments all in 10 minutes that’s the times is World in 10 podcast thank you very much indeed again for watching Frontline from times radio

“Russian command might need to make difficult decisions about to what extent they reconfigure their rear and support areas, in order to maximise protection”

Attacks on command and control posts and logistics in Russia could force Russia to make costly changes if they want to maintain their invasion, George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War tells #timesradio

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