Many Ukrainians are celebrating President Trump’s decision to sell air defense systems and other arms for their use. They are right to do this, despite all its limitations and the continued delay of Senator Lindsay Graham’s secondary sanctions bill. Ukrainians are celebrating because Trump’s action not only will help blunt the Kremlin’s ongoing bombing campaign against Ukraine’s cities, but represents the rejection of the effectively pro-Moscow isolationist policy faction within his administration.
That said, Trump’s move remains insufficient to meet the needs of the crisis at hand, either for Ukraine or the United States. It will not defeat Russia and therefore it will not deter China. As Gen. Douglas MacArthur famously said, in war there is no substitute for victory. If the credibility of the policy of deterrence through collective security that has prevented a general war for the past 80 years is to be reasserted, the Russian invasion must be repelled.
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The means to do this are at hand. Through the courage and endurance of its million-person army, Ukraine has managed to stop the advance of Russia’s ground forces. As a result, the air war has become decisive. It will not be numbers of troops, but technology and innovation that will determine the outcome. In this struggle, Ukraine and the US both have a great deal to gain by working together.
Ukraine’s Drone Forces Strike Russian Training Ground in Zaporizhzhia
America would gain enormously by helping Ukraine secure a victory.
In the course of the current conflict, Ukraine has revolutionized warfare by introducing the small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as a decisive military arm. While large military aircraft can take years or decades to develop, new types of UAVs can be introduced into combat within months or even weeks of their conception. This has placed a premium on innovation, and it is here that the ingenious and individualist Ukrainians have been able to outperform the much more numerous but less creative Russians.
Still, with American help they can do much better still. Much of the technology that the Ukrainians have been working hard to invent under conditions of bombardment is stuff that we already have. The US government needs to lift its ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulation) rules currently throttling the transfer of drone warfare technologies from American companies to the Ukrainians. This will enable Ukraine to produce advanced drones that cannot be stopped by Russian jamming or other counter measures. It costs about $1,000 to produce a good small UAV in Ukraine, so with the right technology transfer and a couple of billion dollars in aid Ukraine could produce millions such advanced UAVs.
In fact, the United States could do a lot to help Ukraine win at virtually no cost to itself, simply by providing Ukraine broad access to American satellite communications, including both Starlink and other systems. Ukraine has drones with the physical capability to fly deep into Russia. What it lacks is the communication capability to control them there. If provided with American satcom, Ukraine would be able to use its drones to interdict Russian internal transport, making its front line forces impossible to supply, and paralyzing its entire economy.
In addition to helping Ukraine win the drone war, the US should deliver adequate amounts of air defense systems, like Patriots, and offensive systems including ATACM long range missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft armed with both air-to-air and long-range air-to-ground missiles, such as our JASSMs, which can deliver 1,000 lb. warheads over a range of 230 miles.
To achieve security, the Ukrainians need not just to block Russia’s arrows, it must kill her archers. The United States has thousands of F-16s which we do not use for anything but target practice for more advanced fighters. We can easily afford to send Ukraine 200 of them. Over 4,600 F-16s have been produced since they first went into service in 1974, and they are used by 25 countries. As a result there are tens of thousands of F-16 veteran pilots worldwide. Hundreds of international volunteer pilots and ground crewmen could immediately become available were Trump to lift Biden’s order blocking Ukraine from recruiting them.
We also have some 340 A-10 ground attack aircraft that the US Air Force has been trying to divest itself of for years. Armed with powerful gatling guns designed to destroy Russian tanks, these could be initially deployed in rear areas to intercept and eliminate the slow moving Shahed drones and cruise missiles that Russia has been bombarding Ukraine with.
Large supplies of other munitions, such as Hellfire missiles now being retired, could also readily be sent to Ukraine at no cost to US taxpayers.
Those who say we should desert Ukraine so we can defend Taiwan have it exactly backwards.
This is not 1916. Ukraine’s armed forces don’t need to storm Russia’s trenches to defeat the invasion. All they need to do is gain the capacity to make it clear to Russia that it can have a few chunks of Ukrainian territory, or it can have an economy, but it can’t have both. Under those circumstances Russia would have no choice but to withdraw.
America would gain enormously by helping to secure such a victory.
First and foremost we would restore deterrence, which has been dangerously undermined by the aggression-tolerant policies of the Obama, Trump-1, and Biden administrations. When Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, it did not just promise Kyiv to respect Ukraine’s borders, they promised that to the United States and the United Kingdom as well. The Kremlin’s overt violation of that agreement has cost us and our allies hundreds of billions of dollars. If we wish others to keep their promises to the United States of America, we must hold the Russians to their word. So out they must go.
Furthermore, it is only by setting such an example that we can deter China. Those who say we should desert Ukraine so we can defend Taiwan have it exactly backwards. China does not need to invade Taiwan to take Taiwan. The entire island and all approaches to it are within easy range of land-based Chinese missiles. If China was to declare, for example, that unless it gets to appoint Taiwan’s government it would blockade the island, a Taiwan unsure of America’s firmness and resolve would have no alternative but to capitulate. But if we show our mettle by helping Ukraine knock Russia back, China would be very unlikely to put matters to the test.
The US military would also gain tremendously by working closely with Ukraine. Benefits would include not only transmission of invaluable combat experience against an enemy the likes of which we have not faced since World War II, but vitally necessary reforms to our procurement systems and strategic thinking as well. This year, Ukraine will produce several million combat quadcopter drones at a cost of about $1,000 each, and introduce innovations into them with a technical cycle measured in weeks.
In contrast, Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth recently hailed as a grand achievement the advent of an American military quadcopter costing $39,000 per copy, to be procured in lots of thousands, with innovations subject to a certification cycle so lengthy as to virtually assure obsolescence before any ever reach a battlefield.
Does anyone in Washington understand what the defeat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet by Ukrainian drones means for the future of naval warfare?
It goes further. Using drones alone, Ukraine has defeated the Russian Black Sea fleet. Does anyone in Washington understand what this means for the future of naval warfare? Currently the US Navy’s capital ships are nuclear submarines, costing billions of dollars each and crewed by scores of submariners. What would an unmanned underwater drone vehicle comparable in size and punch to a half-scale torpedo do to a nuclear submarine? In the face of drone revolution in warfare, do such submarines still make sense? What about our aircraft carriers and other surface combatants? How would they fare in the new combat environment? We urgently need to come to grips with these issues. Working with Ukraine could take our thinking a long way on these matters.
Finally, we must realize what the alternative is. If we allow Ukraine to be defeated, as the isolationists advocate, what would happen then?
It is a fallacy to say that Russia can be no threat to us, because it can barely handle Ukraine. Ukraine has stopped the Russian advance by deploying hundreds of thousands of men into combat and taking tens of thousands of casualties, paying a price in blood that is far higher than the United States or any of our Western European allies are likely to be willing to bear. It is only because of the existence, courage, and endurance of the Ukrainian army that the front lines have been made static, and the war reduced to a contest of technological virtuosity that the West can readily win. Take that army out of the equation and everything changes.
With the Ukrainian army gone, NATO would have no countermove if Russia should decide to invade the Baltic States. But the situation is much worse than that. Take a look at the map. There are two countries barring Russia’s path into Europe; Poland and Ukraine. Poland has a small but fierce army, and would undoubtedly defend itself if attacked by Russia. But take away Ukraine, and there are no serious armed forces blocking the Russian army moving southward of Poland, to Budapest, Vienna, and Belgrade, and taking Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria as well. Would we be willing to send half a million American soldiers to Europe to stop such an advance? Certainly not.
So it boils down to this. NATO needs an army. Ukraine has one. With it, Europe can be defended at minimal cost. Without it, Europe, deterrence, Taiwan, and anything resembling world peace, will all be lost.
It would be much wiser to choose to win.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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