Transfer of NATO Aircraft to Ukraine Falls Through as Zelensky Resumes His Campaign for a No Fly Zone

"It seemed as though history was about to be made on Monday night. NATO members who

had formerly been members of the Warsaw Pact had agreed to transfer about 70 Soviet-built warplanes to Ukraine. The aircraft, 56 MiG-29s from Poland (28 aircraft), Slovakia (12), and Bulgaria (16), and 14 Su-25s from Bulgaria, were supposed to be moved to an airbase in Poland. There they would meet up with Ukrainian pilots. A week or so of transition training was scheduled as the NATO versions of the Soviet aircraft have vastly superior avionics and flight controls. The pilots would then ferry the new aircraft to airbases in Ukraine.

 The deal came unraveled today as the question of logistics raised its head. The Ukrainian ground crews don’t know how to maintain the NATO aircraft. The spare parts for avionics and engines are different. The only viable alternative open was to imitate Soviet pilots flying MiG-15s from airbases north of the Yalu River to attack UN forces operating in and over Korea. No one thought that was a top-10 idea.

This brings me to my second point. It is nearly axiomatic that bad ideas never die; they just get recycled for all eternity. One of those truly bad ideas is the idea of a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, presumably enforced by NATO aircraft. The idea is that such a no-fly zone would prevent Russian attack and logistics aircraft from operating under the threat of being shot down. The most famous example of a no-fly zone is the one no fly zones are those we established over Northern Iraq that lasted from 1991 until 2003 (Operation PROVIDE COMFORT, which morphed into Operation NORTHERN WATCH) and Southern Iraq from 1992 to 2003 (Operation SOUTHERN WATCH).

However, the mission there was markedly different in it targeted a ragtag and wildly incompetent Iraqi Air Force and operated in a relatively low-threat environment. A no-fly zone over Ukraine would bring NATO aircraft into contact with a well-equipped (though marginally trained) air force in an environment dominated by state-of-the-art surface-to-air missile systems. Once announced, there would inevitably be combat between the two sides, SAMs would be fired at NATO aircraft, and NATO aircraft would engage SAMs. Some of the SAMs harassing NATO aircraft would be located in Russian territory, so an additional politico-military problem of dealing with them would have to be addressed.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was pleading with NATO to do exactly that." RedState