The Russians are backing off, fearing one American weapon. Those fears should become reality
28 August 2024 •
Steel and fire rained on Ukraine early on Monday. Hundreds of Russian missiles and drones, launched from the air, ground and sea, struck cities across Ukraine, badly damaging the power grid and killing four people.
It was the biggest air raid yet seen in Russia’s 29-month wider war on Ukraine – and revenge, it seems, for Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblastbeginning in early August.
For thousands of everyday Ukrainians who lived through a long and terrifying night, the Monday attacks were a tragedy. For Ukraine’s leaders, they were yet another argument for greater authority to strike back.
While Ukraine possesses an array of locally-developed deep-strike capabilities and can strike – indeed, has struck – targets farther than a thousand miles inside Russia, its best long-range weapons are made in America. And America has forbidden Ukraine to use these weapons on targets deep inside Russia.
That must change. And it can change without risking runaway escalation.
The dust was still settling from the Monday raids when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky took to social media to beg for greater leeway to hit Russian air bases. “Each of these strikes repeatedly reminds us of the critical need for long-range capabilities – to give our defense forces sufficient long-range weapons to destroy the terrorists precisely at the locations from which they launch their attacks,” Zelensky said.
“This is the optimal anti-terrorist tactic,” he stressed.
But the administration of US president Joe Biden didn’t budge. And it’s obvious why. From the administration’s perspective, it is balancing two priorities: aiding Ukraine in defeating Russia, but without provoking Russia to the point where the Kremlin might seriously consider the unthinkable – a nuclear strike.
Even a small-scale “tactical” atomic strike could trigger a wider nuclear exchange that could end human civilization as we know it – an outcome Biden is rightly desperate to avoid. “I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons,” Biden said last year. “It’s real.”
The problem is the ambiguity. No one knows for sure whether, and under what circumstances, Russian president Vladimir Putin would nuke Ukraine and risk global annihilation. It doesn’t help that Russian officials frequently threaten to use atomic weapons in Ukraine. It’s hard to distinguish bluster from credible nuclear threats. Biden has tended to err on the side of caution.
Which is not to say the Americans haven’t given the Ukrainians greater leeway to strike inside Russia with US-donated weaponry. In June, the White House tweaked its policy to allow Ukrainian forces to conduct “counterbattery” attacks on Russian artillery firing on Ukraine from positions just inside Russian territory.
The counterbattery concession has freed the Ukrainian army’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems vehicles – the well-known Himars, mostly armed with Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles – to blast Russian forces in and around Kursk, clearing a path for invading Russian troops.
But the Americans still keep another key weapon – the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS – on a short leash. ATACMS is a two-ton, precision-guided ballistic missile that ranges as far as 190 miles with a payload of hundreds of lethal submunitions. A single ATACMS goes in the same Himars-carried box that holds six GMLRS.
ATACMS are highly accurate and travel at speeds in excess of Mach 3, making them very difficult to intercept. The Ukrainian army has used ATACMS to devastating effect against Russian airfields inside Russian-occupied Ukraine. It hasn’t used them against Russian airfields in Russia, from where Russian warplanes stage for attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Which isn’t to say Ukraine is powerless to strike Russian airfields. The Ukrainian intelligence directorate has developed a dizzying array of long-range strike drones and routinely launches them at targets inside Russia. The deepest of these raids may have struck a Russian bomber base in northern Russian a staggering 1,100 miles from Ukraine.
But these drones are slow, relatively easy to intercept and carry fairly small explosive payloads. They travel farther than even the longest-range ATACMS, but they’re much less powerful.
The Russian air force fears ATACMS more than any other weapon. We know this because, this spring and summer, the air force read the tea leaves, wrongly concluded Biden was about to relax restrictions on Ukraine’s ATACMS – and ordered a partial retreat.
In a sort of technological mass migration, dozens of Russian jets and helicopters fled air bases within range of ATACMS and relocated to bases deeper inside Russia – and beyond the rockets’ reach. “Russia is now acting more pre-emptively rather than reactively,” concluded Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group.
Notably, this perceived ATACMS threat didn’t trigger any nuclear escalation. In other words, Russian officials predicted ATACMS raids on Russian territory – and didn’t respond by threatening an atomic apocalypse.
The Biden administration should understand the summer redeployment of Russian jets and helicopters as an indication it can relax its tight leash on Ukraine’s best rockets. Granted, the departure of so many aircraft from vulnerable bases means there are fewer targets for ATACMS to strike.
Fewer, but still plenty. The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies tracked a wave of evacuating Russian warplanes back in May and, afterward, counted around 280 planes remaining at bases near the Russia-Ukraine border – and within range of ATACMS.
Successive retreats may have further reduced the number of targets, but there will still be some. It’s not too late for Ukraine to strike back at some of the warplanes that are making life in Ukraine a waking nightmare for millions of Ukrainians. It’s not too late to let loose the ATACMS.
“I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons,” Biden said last year. “It’s real.”
We can’t know for sure if it’s real or not.
It does though appear from that statement that the claimed warning from the WH : “if you deploy WMD’s in Ukraine, there will be a massive conventional response that will decimate your army of occupation inside Ukraine” did not actually happen.
putler’s immunity from conventional attack by western forces derives entirely from the nuclear threats made by himself and rabid henchmen such as Medvedev.
To save innocent lives, there is no more time to waste; especially with the horrible possibility of a Trumpkov cabinet packed with real and defacto ruZZian agents.
Send the long range fires in big numbers now. And lift the ban on UK Storm shadows being deployed inside the cauldron of devilry.
It’s not real. Biden and Sullivan are pathetic pussies that fear their own shadows. That is real.
Up to 2014 ! Ukraine designed , build and MAINTAINED the russian nukes. Most likely when they push the red button, we’ll see a spike on seismic meters and then hear nothing more from Moscow-Kremlin
To make it short, Margret Thatcher had more balls than the combined male leadership across the pink, fluffy West.