Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I don't think many in the West want a NFZ.  Some do.  I agree with your analysis of course, I think a partial NFZ could be established using ground based interceptors only, Patriots et al.  Or as someone mentioned the S-400s Turkey acquired.  Coupled with MANPADS, that could be a NFZ with some teeth, and without NATO personnel or pilots.

This would not require suppression of AA.  It also would be short of a full deck.  And of course missiles don't respect any NFZ in general.

I mused about the general idea of a limited NFZ over a small piece of western Ukraine "for humanitarian reasons".  That's another part option.  Declare a portion near Poland a sanctuary, not subject to attack, and set up refugee camps there.  

Another sketchy notion is for Ukraine to cede this portion to Poland.  That would get, well, noticed.

What's old is new again.

One minor point about the no-fly zone that people seem inclined to impose. Based on my understanding of how we (and NATO) conduct an air war, we won't send our planes into a contested space without free license to destroy enemy air defense systems, e.g., your active radar paints my plane, I'm shoving an anti-radiation missile down your throat. The NATO/US approach to an air war is to start with SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense). The way that typically works is before hostilities begin, you fly to your border with the opponent, and you look for where you pick up radar and other attention to try to identify as much as possible about the air defense network in advance. When hostilities start, your first missions are sending decoys, whose purpose is to get air defense systems to engage them, followed by attack planes, focused on destroying those systems that identify themselves. With Ukraine, there's probably already a decent knowledge of where the long-range air defense systems are (they tend to be more fixed because longer range missiles require larger motors--i.e., they are bigger and hence less mobile). Some of them are likely in Belarus and Russia. But many (most) of these systems are mobile--including systems with a range of 40km or more--and are operating within Ukraine.

So, a huge tactical problem with the proposed no-fly zone is that it will instantly result in attacks on Russian forces on the ground. As a result, the proposed no-fly zone over Ukraine poses serious problems. To start with, there is no way we would tell our pilots not to shoot back at air defense systems that engage them from within Ukraine. We couldn't even avoid that in the Iraq war, when we had total air supremacy, and had already conducted effective suppression of Iraqi air defense assets. Even so, US pilots destroyed US air defense assets that made the mistake of feinting an active radar engagement. So, in Ukraine, the first time a SAM launches (or feints a launch) at a NATO plane, that plane goes from "enforcing the no-fly zone" to attacking Russian ground forces. Not a great recipe for avoiding escalation of this war. We know the Russians have many, many air defense systems in their invasion force.

Making matters worse, Russian air defense systems in Belarus and Russia are capable of (and almost certainly are) defending skies over Ukraine, so in addition to the question of a NATO jet shooting down a Russian in Ukrainian air space or attacking Russian ground troops in Ukraine, we have the problem of NATO jets attacking the air defense systems in Belarus and Russia. Again, there are no practical ways to avoid that, unless we tell our pilots not to worry about the surface to air missile system that is targeting them. Not going to happen (nor should it--imagine explaining to a pilot's family that he or she died because we told them to fly in an area rich with surface to air missiles, but that they couldn't defend themselves from those missiles).

This also raises a technical/tactical problem with the supply of additional Russian-made fighters to Ukraine (the infamous Polish Mig 29s). In the first instance--as probably everyone here knows--Ukraine already isn't using its air force to capacity. There are good reasons for that. First, they are big ticket items, so you don't want to send planes up to lose them unless you have a really good payoff for doing so. And the Russians have plenty of both air and air defense assets in Ukraine ready and willing to shoot down Ukrainian air assets. Second, in addition to the plentiful radar controlled air defense systems, which have a few safeguards to try to avoid friendly fire (which, honestly, aren't nearly as good as you'd like them to be--again, see the Iraq war for good examples), you have a lot of infrared guided missiles (all of the Stingers as well as similar Russian systems (SA-7 through SA-16). Those are visual targeting only: so look up and determine whether this is a bad guy plane. If you think it is, fire away. That's pretty straight forward if you fly F-15s, 16s, 18s, 22s, and 35s, and the bad guys fly Migs and SUs. It's a lot harder when everyone is flying the same thing. What is the air defense team with a Stinger looking for? The flag painted on the thing from 2+ kilometers away? Not a great plan. Sure, you would hope that Stinger team wouldn't shoot at the plane until it determines the plane is doing bad things, but good luck with that.

I'm amused when people talk about an A-10 attacking that 30 mile Russian convoy. Sure, such a convoy is a target rich environment for an attack pilot. But there is a very high likelihood that there is a lot of air defense guarding that convoy. So even for the A-10, which is more survivable than the Russian Su-25 (which is also pretty hearty), the chances of getting in any good attack runs before being blasted with SAMs is low. And PS, that's the reason that the Air Force doesn't love the A-10, and hasn't for a long time. In this kind of a war, it's very susceptible to modern air defense weapons. We're not in the era of crappy IR-guided rockets with small warheads, 20mm quad cannons, and radar countermeasures capable of defeating most SAMs. Modern radar guided missiles are tough to beat, particularly so with slow moving, high radar cross section planes like the A-10. Flying an attack plane at that convoy is very likely a suicide mission.

best post in this entire thread. thanks for dropping the knowledge.

I'm amazed at the idea of rules in war.  This is a sanctuary, don't bomb the hospital, etc.

Why would an invading country give a damn about any of that?  It's a war!  I'm going to be as brutal as I'm willing to deal with in the aftermath.  It's not good, but neither is war.

we like to pretend there are rules in war, but there are not. US bombs hospitals, residential areas, kills civilians too. Every country bombing or invading another country does.

I don't know a lot about the S-400, other than it is a very long range interceptor.

I know a lot about PATRIOT, at least up through the year 2000, and I doubt it has changed all that much since then. PATRIOT's unclassified range when I was operating it was 40 km. More recently public documents claim its range against air breathing targets (i.e., manned aircraft) is about 100 miles (that's the thing about actually operating a system; it's harder to keep its secrets). That's a pretty small part of Ukrainian airspace to defend from Poland.

Also, the longer a SAM is in the air, the easier it is to defeat. If my math is even close to accurate (it may not be), a fast-moving SAM traveling 100 miles is in the air for about a minute and a half, which is a long time for countermeasures. One of the cool things about PATRIOT, at least 25 years ago, was that its guidance system made it difficult for the aircraft to detect it until it was very close to impact (a few seconds away, at most). Thinking back to all the war movies you've watched (or flight simulator video games you've played) and think about that missile warning light that starts flashing at the pilot. Traditionally, that came from an "active" radar lock, e.g., a radar system that is focusing a beam on ("painting") your aircraft that the inbound SAM is tracking. PATRIOT didn't (and doesn't) work that way, which gave it a big advantage in air breathing engagements.

But with the improvements in radar technology across the globe (PATRIOT's radar was at the leading edge of this), I bet a lot of modern countermeasures are vastly improved. So rather than the plane relying on picking up the active radar signal that is targeting that plane, I would bet that radar networks now pass information to the aircraft informing it of an incoming missile. In the old days, missiles had small enough radar cross sections that most radars couldn't find them. Modern radars are way more precise and pick up much smaller objects. A SAM that has a large enough motor to travel 50+ miles is going to have a large enough cross section that modern radars will probably pick it up well in advance of its end-stage engagement--and pass that information to the pilots to take defensive measures. Again, at 100 miles away, with more than a minute for the pilot to react.

Aircraft also have shorter range missile detection that looks for the fast moving object and/or heat/UV signature, but those systems primarily rely on automatic countermeasures, e.g., flares or chaff that the pilot doesn't have to actively engage (largely because by the time those detectors trip, impact is potentially a second or less away). If you watch some of the combat footage of ground to air engagements coming out of Ukraine, in many instances where the helicopters and jets are deploying flares, it's probably because--at least in the first instance--those detectors picked something up and the aircraft's computers automatically spit the flares out. Especially against older short range, shoulder fired SAMS, like the SA-7 that Ukraine probably has a lot of, those flares can be pretty effective. The higher up the ladder of modern shoulder fired SAMS, to the most advanced Stingers, and probably the SA-16 (Russia's equivalent), the less effective those flares are.

With that in mind, it's very possible that the kill ratios will climb as Ukraine receives more Stingers from NATO. Most of the short range SAM engagements so far have probably been with the Russian systems, including the dated SA-7. Although, like with everything else, it will depend a little on the version of the Stinger that NATO sends. Just like Russia, we have a lot of old stock. (Way back when, when we did live fire training, we would burn off missiles that were approaching their expiration date, and often were older models).

One thing about the short range, shoulder fired missiles, the engagement time is very quick. It's not like the movies where the pilot has time to bank his plane away from it (PS that's also true of a lot of radar guided missile engagements--imagine that, Hollywood has taught you some misguided lessons). The Stinger missile travels at about 2,400 km/hr, and the overwhelming majority of engagements take place at about 2 km (or less), so launch to impact is less than a second (again, assuming my faulty math is close to right).

PS all of this has a lot to do with what you hear about the current generation of US fighter aircraft, particularly the F-35, and its performance against other fighter planes. A big thing to understand about the F-22 and F-35 is that they are reactions to radar technology as much as other aircraft. They aren't designed to outmaneuver an F-16 in a short-range dog fight (already the most maneuverable--and lowest tech--fighter in our arsenal). They are designed to engage from distance, while defeating enemy radar. One of the more amusing things about Top Gun (the movie) is that it focused on short range dog fighting in the F-14. Yes, the Navy trained on that, but the F-14's main purpose, from its infancy, was very long-range missile engagements using the Aim-54--the only long range air-to-air missile in our arsenal--not short range dog fighting. The F-14 was an interceptor (for bombers, really), not a classic "fighter;" and it was essentially designed for the Aim-54. The F-18 is more of a fighter aircraft, and a better dog fighter than the F-14, but--again--dog fighting isn't really its highest, best purpose.

So the Air Force is ready to move on from the F-16 (has been for a long time, actually) not because it isn't a great dog fighter--it is, probably still the best in our arsenal in short range situations--but because its survivability in the modern air war is low. Same for the A-10 example I provided above.

When talking with fighter pilots about how they train for air to air combat a great deal of it has to do with the physics and angles of missile launch. Although missiles travel very fast, they don't have a lot of lift in their ailerons, so can't turn very fast. Because missiles launched from nearby don't really give the pilot any time to react, the aim in a dog fight is to avoid a situation in which your enemy has a straight shot (again, because missiles can't turn very fast). Jets can win an advantage there, if the angles are right--so setting up the right angles against the attacking threat are important. Longer range engagements, including against longer range SAMS, have more to do with countermeasures--that's where planes like the F-22 and F-35 excel.

Now, this is all at the ground pounder level of understanding. The other thing I learned from pilots is that their understanding of missile combat is way deeper than those of us who might launch SAMs in their direction from down in the dirt.

Everyone sure wastes a lot of time pretending that there are rules.  And meetings and condemnations and all of it, all for nothing. 

So the thing about the history of warfare is that it teaches that this war, like all others before it, will probably end. And at the end of that war, there will be a civilian population left behind. And generally, warfare has a lot to do with capturing land so that you can use that land to your advantage, whether the advantage is natural resources, or manpower. To take advantage of those resources, you generally need the people who live there to be able to continue living there. You also need them to not engage you in a permanent guerilla war. A lot of the law of war comes from that pretty basic concept: humanity will remain, so better not to be inhumane. This is even true in Ukraine, where even if Russia wins, it will then have to deal with a shattered infrastructure, which will be a huge drain on Russia's resources.

Another piece of that is that soldiers--including almost all of the most hardened combatants--are still people. If you want them to do what you ask, you ought not ask them to use their gruesome craft against the innocent. It's one of the reasons "othering," or systemic desensitization for a different culture, has been such a large part of warfare over the years (and such a big part of atrocities). If you want humans to do horrible things to each other, it's best to convince them that the other isn't as human as they are.

With some notable exceptions, soldiers rarely want to hurt non-combatants just for the hell of it. Same even for POWs. While the adrenaline of combat can make people do horrible things, it's a lot harder to do those things when someone isn't actively shooting at you. The first laws of war stemmed from that--the treatment of captured soldiers, who were the enemy, but once rendered safe, they return to being human.

The advent of new technology, including WMD and killing at a distance (e.g., bombing), has changed things, but the same basic principals apply (and hastening the outlawing of WMD was the nasty habit of not being able to meaningfully control/limit the damage).

There is also a difference between intentionally targeting hospitals, schools, etc., and screwing up. Unquestionably the U.S. has screwed up on that, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a recent situation in which it was intentional.

The Russian method of war is less reliant on technology, and as a result, probably has a higher likelihood of missed targets. And the Russian leadership appears to care less about such things (it has a higher tolerance for mistakes in targeting, and probably also a lower threshold for deciding something is a legitimate target, e.g., we think there was a muzzle flash from that building, so go ahead and target it). That's something that we hear complaints about regarding our method of warfare, that we are too careful, so our soldiers are handcuffed. It's a tough balance.