A United Kingdom Royal Air Force RC-135 surveillance aircraft flew a mission over the Black Sea last Friday afternoon, Ukraine time. While the flight to intercept Russian military communications occurred in international airspace, it infuriated Russia. Russian forces based in occupied Crimea sent up a Su-27 fighter jet to intercept the British plane.
What happened next is instructive as to how the West should deal with escalating Russian brinkmanship regarding the war in Ukraine .
Russia wants to encourage the West to believe the benefits of supporting Ukraine are outweighed by the risks of upsetting Russian President Vladimir Putin. As best reflected by his nuclear intimidation tactics , Putin wants to scare the West into reducing its support for Ukraine. His statements of confidence aside, Putin is increasingly keen to conclude a war that has already cost approaching 100,000 Russian lives and heavily damaged Russia's longer-term prosperity. (Russia has insulated its economy against the short-term effect of sanctions, but its loss of export markets/stable civilian industries/high tech and specialized goods imports poses a deep structural economic challenge.)
That brings us back to the RC-135 flight.
Since a September 2022 incident, when a Russian fighter pilot misconstrued orders and fired on a British RC-135 (the Russian missiles missed or malfunctioned), all RC-135 flights over the Black Sea have been escorted by British Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets. That bears relevance in light of Russia's claim that it scared away the RC-135 flight Friday. Moscow says it did so by deploying a Su-27 fighter jet.
"As the Russian fighter jet approached, the foreign military aircraft turned away from the state border of the Russian Federation," according to the Russian defense ministry. Russia says a very similar intercept involving another British RC-135 flight occurred Wednesday.
Moscow's claims are fanciful, to say the least.
While the Su-27 is a sturdy jet with good maneuverability and has been updated since its Soviet-era birth, it is no match for one Typhoon, let alone two. The Typhoons could detect and destroy the Su-27 long before it could detect and destroy them. But British pilots are also significantly better trained at dogfighting than their Russian counterparts, and Typhoons are highly maneuverable. This would put the British at a significant advantage even in a close-in fight and even if Russia deployed more than one Su-27. The notion that Russia scared off this RC-135 flight is thus about as credible as Russia's claim that its nerve-agent-wielding assassins who wreaked havoc in March 2018 were actually tourists visiting Salisbury Cathedral.
Still, Russia's sending up a single Su-27 against these RAF flights indicates its sense of limited deterrence against them. Russia knows the Su-27 is overmatched by the Typhoons. In turn, these intercepts are pro forma antics designed for domestic press releases rather than actions designed to alter U.K. behavior. That only single Su-27s are being deployed at a time also suggests Russian aviation forces may be overstretched by the war in Ukraine.
The ensuing lesson for the West?
The West, the United States, in particular , should be less f eeble in the face of Russian threats. The better response to these threats is to employ calculated confidence matched to superior capability. No one wants escalation but neither can the West tolerate Putin's destruction of Ukraine's sovereignty. For cultural reasons, as much as political ones, Russia's aggressive appetite becomes voracious when timidity is on the table. The Biden administration would do well to learn from this British example.
After all, the White House restricts the U.S. military from flying as close to Crimea as the U.K. flights do. U.S. P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance flights keep close to Romania while flying over the Black Sea (as one did again on Friday, for example). The problem is that this overt hesitation limits means of effective intelligence collection while doing nothing to encourage Russia to act more kindly. On the contrary, it only encourages Russia's appetite to take more aggressive action to test U.S. resolve.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Top line: The West should remain firm in Ukraine's support. And Western leaders would do well to note that when you're dealing with Russia, it's always important to push back when the Russians push forward.
Or, as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis taught the Russian GRU intelligence service in 2018, to meet mortal threat with decisive riposte .
Most Popular
Comments / 0