Since the beginning of the Russian bombing campaign, I have been collecting data, browsing analyses, re-reading historical case studies. Meanwhile, I can't get rid of the feeling that we were playing like the one-time chess master. We move the pawns feverishly, while looking at the opponent's leader.
As far as data collection is concerned, there is not much to thank for it. During the 1999 war in Kosovo, NATO's huge military intelligence apparatus published optimistic reports about the losses caused to the Serbian armed forces. With the end of the fighting, what military analysts dread more than anything else happened.
Yesterday's battlefields have become today's tourist attractions. In a short time, the list of shot down Serbian combat vehicles that anyone can count has shrunk from hundreds to a few dozen.
Since then, we have all become uglier, but wiser, we no longer wait for the arrival of the battlefield tourist season. From the start, we gave very little credit to the data of the warring parties and the propagandists considered to be secret services. Those who have seen the workings of military bureaucracies from the inside know that they cannot even make their own inventory auditable, let alone assess their enemy. Unfortunately, this is far from empty banter. A few days ago, the news broke that the world's leading pentagonal Ministry of Defense (Pentagon - editor's note) failed to pass the mandatory audit even after many attempts. And if it doesn't work for them, what can we expect from the Russians or the Ukrainians?
In summary,
when it comes to figures, it's best to manfully admit that we really don't know anything.
The situation is not much better with the analyses.
Everything starts with a solid Archimedean point. This point is the inevitable victory of either the Ukrainians or the Russians, and by holding on to this point, it is child's play to turn the earth from its corners. The dominoes of the causal chain that we cherish line up behind each other like disciplined soldiers and precisely overlap each other to draw the only possible outcome.
But fortunately, not everything is negative in this area. Sometimes I stumble upon brilliant young analysts who point out connections that I haven't even dreamed of. This age group makes up for the lack of knowledge they have not yet acquired with creativity and flexibility of thought. Even with gritted teeth, I have to admit that it is very effective.
What is most disheartening about the flood of letters pouring in the wake of the Russian bombing campaign is the complete indifference to history. What is needed to support our arguments can be obtained from YouTube and the History Channel. We endlessly recycle historical cases that are well known even by laymen, the complex and contradictory events of the real past become one-sided, ideological Moebius strips. And the verkli wails the same melody endlessly:
"The Blitz didn't work: it didn't work in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, but it didn't work in Korea or Vietnam either. Strategic bombing is bullshit because it doesn't work. Putin was wrong again".
Is this really the case, and what are the lessons of the most relevant case studies that are closest to the current one in terms of time and technology? Unfortunately, no one asks these questions. What are the lessons for Kosovo, Iraq and Lebanon? What are the lessons of bombing campaigns specifically against electrical infrastructure in Korea, Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm, Serbia, etc.? No one talks about this, because it is a question of contradictory and complex lessons that do not fit into the narrative of any of them.
The whole thing is mostly reminiscent of a scarecrow Olympics, according to the strongest, most beaten Schopenhauerian tradition. Instead of taking the issue seriously and dealing with it, we present its caricature and fight it.
"You cannot win a war with strategic bombing alone"
repeated until the nose bleeds. But did anyone, the bombing prophets between the two world wars - Dohet, Trenchard, Mitchell, etc. – after how is it possible? There are no miracle weapons and no miracle doctrines. Strategic bombing is just one tool in the arsenal of warfare.
Victory is the result of the combined use of different tools.
Another such scarecrow is economic and operations research reductionism. Those who calculated at the beginning of March that, due to the lower price of the Javelin, the last Russian tank would run out at the end of May, are now making similar calculations. In the narrative of one side, the amusement park of Russian cruise missiles is emptied every Sunday and other holidays, while the other side buries the Ukrainian energy economy on a weekly basis.
It may simply be that our computers have created us in their own image, making us binary beings. Only that which is either one or zero reaches our consciousness.
We banished the analog clockwork of nuanced thinking to the junkyard a long time ago.
However, if we delve a little deeper into the case studies of strategic bombing, we will come across some very interesting insights and lessons beyond the well-known clichés. All we have to do is ask the most obvious questions.
Take, for example, the tirelessly mentioned Blitz of 1940-1941. What was the aim of the Germans with this strategic bombing campaign?
Breaking the morale of the British population and the British political leadership? Crushing the British war economy? If they had such long-term strategic goals, the operational logic of the air campaign was much more important and urgent than these. By attacking the hinterland, forcing a materiel battle on the British air force, the end result of which would have been the disintegration of the British fighter squadrons and the acquisition of air superiority. Without the acquisition of air superiority, the 20th century version of the Norman conquest was doomed to failure.
Starting from the analogy of the German Blitz, it is not at all excluded that the target of the Russian Blitz in Ukraine is actually not the energy infrastructure, but something completely different. The energy infrastructure only plays the role of bait.
The real target of the Russian Blitz is the integrated Ukrainian air defense system,
which severely clipped the wings of the Russian Air Force at the beginning of last year. It was this air defense system that prevented the Russians from using the Syrian scenario in Ukraine. The logistical ordeal of the Russian army became a timeless film when the Russian air force could not support the fighting troops as flying artillery, and the war turned into a conventional artillery war.
The energy infrastructure represents a major strategic value that Ukraine must protect at all costs. The burden of protecting the energy network fell on an air defense system that was quite exhausted in protecting the Ukrainian airspace and, within that, the Ukrainian troops fighting on the front. The mass, timing, intensity and multidirectionality of the Russian bombing campaign are optimized to place the greatest possible burden on Ukrainian air defenses. The standard often mentioned in the press, the ratio of successful shootings, is completely misleading. In this competition
the point is not how many Russian missiles hit their targets, but how many anti-aircraft missiles Ukraine has left.
A dollar-for-dollar comparison is also misleading. For the Russians, it is worth losing an expensive cruise drone if they can use it to tick off half a dozen "cheap" Ukrainian S-300s. It is a perfectly "good deal" for the Russians to end this campaign without any modern strike equipment remaining in their inventory if they succeed in eliminating Ukrainian air defenses.
The Russian Air Force will do the rest.
But what about the air defense systems coming from the West, someone might ask. The much more modern NASAMS, Patriot, etc. tools? The answer to this perfectly valid argument is divided into two parts.
For one thing, the West probably doesn't have enough weapons to build an entirely new air defense system in a country the size of Ukraine. On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind that the emphasis in the air defense system is on the "system". A lone Patriot battery can cover a fairly effective dome a few tens of kilometers in diameter over its immediate surroundings. Missiles inherited from fighter jets on NASAMS can provide similarly effective local defense. Even Hawk systems called for corpses from museums can serve a useful purpose. However, what this Western air defense "motley crew" cannot do is work as a system. Undeniably, at the level of the individual device, Ukraine's own air defense system was much more backward than the new Western devices. This was amply offset by the fact that these often decades-old devices were integrated into a single system, which covered Ukraine with a multi-layered iron dome.
What is happening behind the rickshaw of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure is the slow disintegration of the old, proven effective Ukrainian air defense system. If Ukraine is able to build an integrated air defense system based on the remnants of the old system and new Western guest players, then air supremacy will remain contested. If, on the other hand, the Russian strategic bombing campaign succeeds in achieving its real goal, and Ukraine is left without effective air defense, then we will soon see the scenes familiar from the Syrian scenario in Eastern Europe as well.
Featured image: Israel Democracy Institute
