U.S. stunned by Poland's fighter jet offer
politico.com
politico.com
It's not like sending Spitfires overseas in a pine box any more.
But the closest I’ve gotten to messing around with this stuff is my L39 (terrible idea, should’ve bought a boat instead. wife hates me now), which did indeed come with some soviet era kit screwed on. Came off easily enough after removing a couple of screws.
I’d be surprised if the interesting parts of the radio equipment they’ve screwed onto the old MiGs would take much more than that to remove.
Aviation authority approvals might take months, but I can’t imagine that being an issue for military planes like this.
Just my uninformed speculation though.
please, tell me that there are pictures I can look. I love those little planes :D
The dawgs got your back though – I'd do it too, assuming it didn't thrust you into financial disaster. YOLO.
It sounds like you don't think it's a good purchase, so I'm curious what would you have done instead given what you know now?
I found a photo of what this looks like (different airplane, but same era):
In any case, it seems that everyone want to avoid escalation and being dragged into the military conflict.
My understanding is that Putin can't stop the invasion of Ukraine without looking so weak that he is liable to be immediately pushed out of power (with a decent chance of the subsequent regime coming up with some reason to execute him, as he would remain a threat to the new regime).
The result is that while the US does not necessarily want a Russian regime change per se (after all, who is to say that the next regime won't be worse), one is pretty much a practical requirement to archive what they do want.
So ideally they want a weak, Western-friendly regime. But that may be wishful thinking because that's not Russia's historical stance and interests. Whatever we think of Putin, his general aims are an independent, strong and powerful Russia that gains some of the ground lost, which are quite aligned with Russia's historical behaviour.
Trying to set-up regimes is mostly miss --we have quite a bit of experience in that area including Ukraine with the Orange revolution, KSA... and obviously many other places as well. Russia/the SU have an equal amount of experience but have had better results --served better (Cuba, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc.)
No, the US has been fairly consistently negative to neutral on it; the strongest it's gotten for it is a positive signal that it won't oppose it if they choose to do it. (Which seems to be a recent policy change; the initial NATO opposition after the EU official tweeting the idea had to have at least involved consulting the US.)
They would if they independently wanted Poland off of MiG-29s and more completely on a combination of F-35s and F-16s for the role (which, yes, they do.)
> That reads as low key wink wink nudge nudge endorsement.
Which is a lot different from pressure to do it.
>Which is a lot different from pressure to do it.
Poland wouldn't have "stunned" US by offering transfers to US/DE custody otherwise, it's dick move political signal. Poland has been vocal about US pressure on PRC recently as well, wouldn't be surprising if US pressuring against RU as well.
Look at a map: Poland has a long common border with Western Ukraine, but instead it offers to fly the other way, to Ramstein, more than a thousand kilometers from Ukraine.
Once the planes are in Ramstein, what do you do? Fly them back to Poland? That makes no sense, and according to the article, the idea is that "the Polish government would sidestep the logistical challenge of getting the jets over the border".
That leaves the three other NATO countries bordering Ukraine: Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
But Hungary refuses to let lethal weapons transit its territory en route to Ukraine, so strike that. Slovakia shares only a short border with Ukraine - about 80 kilometers - and it's sandwiched between Poland and Hungary; too easy for Russia to watch.
That leaves only Romania. How do you get there from NATO territory? Not through Hungary (see above), so you're left with a ridiculous roundabout route like Germany -> France -> Italy -> Greece -> Bulgaria -> Romania.
Do they all agree to it? Why in particular would Romania be willing to tackle "the logistical challenge of getting the jets over the border" which Poland (and Hungary) won't touch with a bargepole?
No, I'm underscoring it.
> The planes can then go to Ukraine from the US
How?
US has been portrayed (almost certainly accurately) as an obstacle to countries doing it directly since NATO (almost certainly at US direction) shot the original leaked idea down; the recent “green light” for direct transfer was no doubt an attempt to not be seen as the barrier to direct transfer, but hardly constitutes pressure to do it, and if the US wanted it done they could have explained not doing it in a way which wasn't clearly an argument for why transferring planes isn't a good idea, but was instead an argument for why the particular proposal made by Poland wasn't.
Which makes it look like the US just bit the bullet on that and stopped playing the deflection game everyone has been playing.
Of course.
> transfer the migs themselves
Again: how?
That means Ukrainian MiG-29s crossing into Ukraine from Poland.
If Poland had simply handed over the planes to the Ukrainians in Poland, the result would have been... Ukrainian MiG-29s crossing into Ukraine from Poland.
If Poland had instead handed over the planes to US troops in Poland, without moving them, and the US had then handed them over to the Ukrainians, the result would have been... Ukrainian MiG-29s crossing into Ukraine from Poland.
So you get exactly the same result in all three cases. What Poland doesn't want is Ukrainian MiG-29s crossing into Ukraine from Poland.
> or through Romania
Yes, that's what this is really about.
That doesn't solve the real issue, which is, AGAIN, that Poland does not want those planes crossing into Ukraine from its border. Whether they fly in or roll in is utterly irrelevant.
It's obvious, as already explained:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30621764
In the unlikely case that further elucidation really is needed: Poland didn't need to move the MiGs in order to hand them over to the US. Moving them to Ramstein makes a difference only if they then enter Ukraine from another country. So that's what Poland was really after.
"no, you do it, I'd get wrecked if they knew it was me"
"do it you pussy"
"that's misogyn-"
"THROW THE ROCKS"
We’ve already sent a bunch of weapons into Ukraine. These jets are just another entry in that long list.
We need to get this transfer done.