John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, has been talking about the plan to deliver Polish MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. In short, the plan is off.
He said the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin had being talking
to his Polish counterpart, and had “stressed that we do not support the
transfer of additional fighter aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force at
this time, and therefore had no desire to see them in our custody
either.”
Kirby went through the reasons, the US was against the transfer of combat aircraft.
“First, we believe the best way to support Ukrainian defense is
by providing them the weapons and the systems that they need most to
defeat Russian aggression, in particular, anti-armor and air-defense.
We, along with other nations, continue to send them these weapons and we
know that they’re being used with great effect. The slow Russian
advance in the north and the contested airspace over Ukraine is evidence
alone of that.”
“Although Russian air capabilities are significant, their effectiveness has been limited due to Ukrainian strategic operational and tactical ground-based air-defense systems surface to air missiles, and Manpads [shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles].
Secondly, the Ukrainian Air Force currently has several squadrons of fully mission capable aircraft. We assess that adding aircraft to the Ukrainian inventory is not likely to significantly change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force relative to Russian capabilities. Therefore, we believe that the gain from transferring those MIG-29s is low.”
“Finally, the intelligence community has assessed the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in a significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with Nato. Therefore, we also assess the transfer of the MiG 29 to Ukraine to be high risk. We also believe that there are alternative options that are much better suited to support the Ukrainian military in their fight against Russia. We will continue to pursue those options.”
Well done, Prez Biden! Well done Sec. Austin! clapout Blinken, go to your room.
