CAS over Ukraine

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So far the most effective* close air support (CAS) over Ukraine appears to be toss bombing of guided bombs.

It's similar to the graphic below, save for greater range with glide kits and greater accuracy if the guidance does its job.

The aircraft arrives very low (maybe 100 ft), pulls up, releases flares and chaff, releases the bomb, escapes at very low altitude (again maybe 100 ft).

 

U 

The advantage over artillery is mostly that the munitions are much heavier. Huge craters by delay-fuzed heavy bombs can destroy underground field fortifications or sewers, a single bomb can destroy a large building.  

The speed of the vehicle should be high subsonic in order for the munition to have much kinetic energy (and thus range) upon release.

 

This doesn't look like the "Americans bomb brown people" guided bomb attacks from above ManPADS ceiling (at about 15k ft) or dive-bombing from such safe altitude and it doesn't look like the A-10 concept of CAS, either.

 

Post-WW2 versions of toss bombing were initially developed for free-fall nuclear bombs, as the pilot wanted to get away from the blast in time. Later on, the skills were used by Israelis in 1973 and the British in 1982 when they faced effective air defences and didn't dare to fly in range and in line of sight to said air defences for more than a few seconds.

 

We could dismiss the Ukraine CAS experience as irrelevant to NATO because NATO would go after the air defences, but

1. anti-radar missiles aren't terribly plentiful (we had shortages in 1999 already)
2. even radar-based air defences survive anti-air defence campaigns for long if the air defence officers are smart (see 1999 Kosovo Air War and 2022-2025 Ukraine air warfare)
3. not all air defences require radar (examples IRIS-T SLM and VL MICA IR missiles) and radar-independent air defences are very difficult to suppress.** In fact, medium range air defences based on thermal cameras may be more useful than ones based on x-band radars because of RF stealth aircraft. 

So what should we do based on the observations from Ukraine?

 

I stick to my opinion that we need eyes in the sky, but fires can come from the ground. Air/Ground bombing does not seem to promise a good overall package (cost, uncertainty, rapidity of effects) in peer wars in my opinion. That being said, Russia is no peer to NATO. We can deal with Russian air defences well-enough to rip open gaps in the SAM belt or we would find enough gaps between dispersed air defence umbrellas to bomb enough  (even with unguided 'iron' bombs) for decisive effect.

So we should look at Chinese air defences, really. They haven't been exposed to war and are thus of unknown quality, but a couple of their air-to-air missiles proved to be effective over Pakistan.

 

related:

/2008/11/wurfgert.html

/2010/07/first-week-of-peer-vs-peer-air-war.html 

/2018/03/luftwaffe-f-35-or-typhoon-for-airground.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: There were also super-inaccurate unguided missile attacks and unguided bomb attacks with approx. toss bombing profile and at least some guided glide bombs appear to have been released at high altitude where no area air defences made that intolerably dangerous. 

**: Radars are active emitters. These emissions can be detected, direction finding to the emissions' origin can be used to find the emitter. Triangulation by aircraft (or detector on the surface), detection by satellites and anti-radar missile simply flying towards the emitter are frequently used options. To search for a thermal camera (imaging infrared sensor) in a large area is futile by comparison.

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My critique of Israel

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I did a search in the blog archive to see how much I criticised Israel after all.

 

January 2009 Called Israel a source of alienation between NATO members and Arab countries

April 2009 Claimed that Israel alienated Western nations with its behaviour for decades

December 2008 Expressed doubts that Israel's self-defence against Hamas/Gaza was proportionate / implying it was excessive.

July 2009 Called Israel's behaviour unacceptable, singling out the bombing of other countries 

July 2010 'tail wags the dog' graphic symbolising Israel-U.S. relationship 

May 2011 Called Israel a "regional troublemaker" 

September 2011 Claimed that Israel has a "usual" disrespect against Muslim nations 

November 2011 "Expect a revolt if you run the largest prison on earth." [Gaza] 

December 2012 Insisted that Israel is no ally to the U.S., using the concept of an "ally" that's dependent on a signed & ratified two-way alliance, not mere good relations. I repeated this briefly in April 2018.

July 2014 A blog post mentioning the lopsided casualty figures in a Israel-Gaza/Hamas conflict at the time. I also supposed that Israel&Egypt could be pressured into peace with Gaza becoming Egyptian. 

July 2014 Criticism of Israel's grand strategy as stupid, drawing parallel to the Crusader states that were dependent on outside support, too. 

May 2015 Israel as #5 threat future threat to Germany, but rated "utterly unrealistic"  

July 2015 "Israel has earned a reputation for not necessarily letting refugees return" 

April 2017 "Israel's attempt to hold on to occupied territories since 1967 in spite of repeated UN resolutions demanding its withdrawal"

August 2018 Claimed that Israel deviated from Western norms and "Apartheid light, routine disregard of international norms" 

May 2019 Indirectly called Netanyahu corrupt

October 2020 Called Israel an illegal occupier of the West Bank

June 2021 Linked without comment to an article of HRW and another from The Intercept that were criticising Israel

October 2021 Mentioned Israel hacking, assassination and subversive actions without elaborating

January 2022 Mentioned without elaboration habitual Israeli occupation and bombing of foreign lands 

February 2022 Linked to an article about allegations that Israeli police illegally wiretapped Israeli citizens

February 2022 Called Israel an aggressor and occupier since 1967

February 2022 One post that is all about Israel's offences and I called it "unacceptable behaviour"

July 2022 Called Israel 5th most important threat to Germany due to the range of its nuclear-tipped missiles (later quoted this part in July 2024)

October 2023 I wrote that peace in Near East should be pursued by forcing a solution on the regional countries, not by negotiating with them.

November 2023 I wrote "Israel has to leave the occupied territories and go back to its pre-1967 borders. The state of Israel is only legitimate within the pre-1967 borders." and that the naval (longtime) blockade of Gaza by Israel was illegitimate

April 2023 Mentioned that Israel habitually commits wars of aggression

January 2024 Mentioned that Israel demolitions buildings in Gaza outside of combat.Also claimed that Israel "played the victim card too brazenly" (overplayed it).

I did NOT count my comments in the comment sections for economy of effort reason.

Now put these 28 instances in perspective; about 2,500 blog posts were written in total!

 

Looking back, I think not one of those statements is indefensible.

The "habitual", the #5 threat ranking, the opinion that Near East parties should be dictated/forced into peace rather than negotiation partners are unusual opinions, for sure. Definitely outside of mainstream. Still, in hindsight I still think of them as reasonable.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Ethnic cleansing complicity by accepting refugees?

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Here's a difficult thing about ethnic cleansing. Suppose the evil party wants a people gone, ded or alive. Just gone from a specific area. They inflict harm on them. Now there's a third party and it has to decide whether to accept refugees.

To accept refugees means to assist the evil party in its plan. Such acceptance of refugees may even be a necessary part of the evil plan. To not accept them means they will suffer harm.

The right thing to do would be to intervene and force the evil party to stop its evil actions, but suppose that would not be practical for whatever reason: 

Should the refugees be accepted or not?* 

Would help in evacuation / resettling equal complicity in ethnic cleansing?

 

The international law scholars certainly have opinions on this and possibly they even have a consensus. I didn't bother to check this, for this time I'm rather thinking about the ethical dimension than the legal one.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: Pretend it's only about the quesiton of agreeing with another country taking them in, suhc as permitting evacuation flights over territory if an aversion to let certain brown people into your country gets in the way of thinking clealry and within the limits of this case / model.

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The finiteness of self-defence

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I wrote about extremist warfare in 2009. The idea was that maximalist war objectives such as total annexation or unconditional surrender raise the bar to victory because they provoke maximalist hostile efforts. The effect is that wars are unnecessarily long and destructive compared to the case of more moderate objectives.

Now I'd like to point out something similar:

Some countries becomes extremist in response to being under attack. They have the legitimate and legal right to self-defence, but then they just keep going, inflate and exceed this right, up to "forever conflicts" where supposedly all military action for all eternity isjustified by the original offence.

I strongly suppose that the right to self-defence ends when the hostilities have ceased (including blockades and occupations by the aggressor being lifted) and only renews when a new aggression occurs. Any remaining entitlements to compensation of damages is then a legal affair that does not justify violence.

Examples for such 'forever' conflicts:

• American derangement about the Iranian embassy crisis 
• Israeli conflicts with Syrians, Palestinians, Hezbollah
• The Frozen Korean War (some people pretend the lack of a peace treaty means an attack on North Korea would still be legal) 
• The American sustainment of their conflict with Iraq from 1991-2003

I wanted to raise awareness about the problem and shed some light on it, but the latter intent is difficult to realise. I simply don't see any justification for such an open-endedness of a right to commit violence.

Proportionality is for all I know a universally accepted principle in law. An aggression from decades ago that was already punished ten times over cannot possibly be considered to justify further violence. It would simply not be proportional. And I'm not even discussing the "ten times over" part, right now I just take offense at the abuse of the "self defence" or ' UN authorised military action' authorisations of violence by pretending that they are endless.

 

We should go beyond accepting that self-defence is a right and pay A LOT more attention to the limits of self-defence. Civilised countries did this in criminal law, it's about time the public does it in regard to military actions (and subversive, sabotage and assassination activities).

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Guilty or not?

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Suppose a man gets killed in his home. He had a long and violent dispute with his neighbour.

 

Should the police investigate said neighbour as suspect even though his grandma was murdered 80 years ago?

 

Or does this mean the neighbour cannot be guilty?

 

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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