Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Grey Fox]

Yes, that's why you buy planes from a reliable party and not the backstabbing USA.

So... the Chinese?

Have the Chinese started copying the F35 or are they still on the Russian design?

[dist]

So, like everyone else's planes?  All planes need spare parts, the Iranians had this problem after their revolution.  Couldn't get parts for their planes.

Actually, funnily enough, the Iranians still manage to fly their F4s, F5s and F14s to this day. And the F14 is a hangar queen and quite a fragile system. It has always been said that the Iranians were doing wonders with their military and civilian planes without having access to spares.

Rafale or Grippen. I think the Koreans are working on one.

And the Turks who are developing a 5th gen for 2030. But the Korean one is closer, with a planned introduction of 2026.

There also are two European 6th gen fighter development projects currently: FCAS regrouping France, Germany and Spain; and GCAP regrouping the UK, Italy and Japan.

[Zoupa]

Rafale or Grippen. I think the Koreans are working on one.

You think the Iraqi and the Libyans got spare parts for their planes when France was attacking them?

Cool. I'm talking about European operators though.

[mongers]

This bbc item about witkoff is worth reading in full, to see how far US foreign policy as been comprised.

Trump's Russian Asset Parrot's Putin's BS

Trump envoy dismisses Starmer plan for Ukraine

James Landale

Sir Keir Starmer's plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as "a posture and a pose" by Donald Trump's special envoy.

Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a "simplistic" notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking "we have all got to be like Winston Churchill".

In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he "liked" the Russian president.

"I don't regard Putin as a bad guy," he said. "He's super smart."

Witkoff, who met Putin ten days ago, said the Russian president had been "gracious" and "straight up" with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year. He also said Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was "clearly touched by it".

During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was "a false country" and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.

Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.

He said: "The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others."

The five regions - or oblasts - are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:

He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine's government and uncorroborated by any open-source data

He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held "referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule". There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed

He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.

Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia's full-scale invasion. He said it was "correct" that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: "The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?"

He added: "There's a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that's what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that's something nobody wants to talk about."

Putin has repeatedly said that the "root causes" of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.

Witkoff said in the Tucker Carlson interview, external: "Why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose? They don't need to absorb Ukraine... They have reclaimed these five regions. They have Crimea and they have gotten what they want. So why do they need more?"

Asked about Keir Starmer's plans to forge a "coalition of the willing" to provide military security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine, Witkoff said: "I think it's a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two."

He said a ceasefire in the Black Sea would be "implemented over the next week or so" and "we are not far away" from a full 30-day ceasefire.

He also gave details of how Trump wanted to co-operate with Russia after relations had been normalised. "Who doesn't want to have a world where Russia and the US are doing collaboratively good things together, thinking about how to integrate their energy polices in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?"

[The Brain]

The US is a nasty, nasty country.

[Tamas]

Omfg not only they pursue evil policies but they are dumb as fuck as well.

[Josquius]

A generous theory I've read is Trump wants to peel Russia away from China as happened the other way during the cold war.
Even this generous "it isn't just idiocy. There's thinking behind it" view pointed out this was very unlikely to work and Putin was loving it.

[Tamas]

A generous theory I've read is Trump wants to peel Russia away from China as happened the other way during the cold war.
Even this generous "it isn't just idiocy. There's thinking behind it" view pointed out this was very unlikely to work and Putin was loving it.

First of all I don't think so I think he is just a feeble-minded elderly idiot with a huge man-crush on Putin, second of all if they had this leve of thinking they would realise it doesn't make sense because Putin can just take the gift of Ukraine and still ally with China.

[Norgy]

The US is a nasty, nasty country.

Hey, remember when we had to go to a new forum for saying that? 

Or that the Iraq war was good. That Dubya wasn't an utter fool and Cheney hadn't sold his soul to the devil?

I believe Trump. In wanting America first. Which sort of sucks for a lot of us Europeans. But this administration's foreign policy is a lot like Gorbachev's, just giving away all your cards. Unlike Gorbachev, Trump has a new Tesla that he loves, though.

[grumbler]

Aren't Rafael and Gripen of similar capability as the Eurofighter Typhoon? We can make more of those too.

Eurofighter Typhoon is rapidly becoming obsolete.  Rafael and Gripen are somewhat more advanced and capable of growth, but still getting pretty long in the tooth. The twin-engine Raphael is probably the best bet in the short term, because it can absorb more upgrades, but none of the current European options are Gen 5 or better, and Gen 5s seem a long way off. 

[HVC]

Are they more advanced than the Chinese and more importantly the Russian equivalent? Because that's who they have to fight. Well for now anyway.

[Sheilbh]

A generous theory I've read is Trump wants to peel Russia away from China as happened the other way during the cold war.
Even this generous "it isn't just idiocy. There's thinking behind it" view pointed out this was very unlikely to work and Putin was loving it.

Yeah.

So I think there's Trump and there's people around him in US policy. Trump does not have big geopolitical (or political) theories. Trump wants to do deals, he bullies the weak and dependents on him and respects other bullies. He's a mob boss - you pay your fees, you get your dues (although I think he is genuinely not keen on wars with actual boots on the ground and afraid of nukes).

But there are loads of people around Trump with coherent worldviews, goals and they are constantly trying to shape what Trump does to advance their agenda and also to give a "meaning" to Trump. This is challenging because Trump hates being managed, he hates people taking credit or attention from him. But I think it's a bit like a deplorable version of what the establishment/traditional Republicans thought they could do with Trump in his first term (with some successes: judges, taxes etc).

So I think there are definitely people around Trump who have fairly developed view on this. I've mentioned him before but Elbridge Colby is a realist Republican but was basically exiled to Democrat think tanks because his realism meant he opposed the Iraq War/neo-con view of the Bush administration. He strongly argues that the US does not have the capacity to maintain order in the Middle East, provide security to Europe (including pushing Russia back in Ukraine) and build up in the Pacific to confront China - so his argument is the US needs to basically get out of the Middle East and Europe quickly to focus on China. There are others who do basically want to do a reverse Kissinger of trying to separate Russia from China. I think there are some trying to put support for Ukraine in terms they think Trump would like - minerals deal, the Russians are the obstacle to a deal etc (I think this is broadly where Starmer and Macron also fit in).

Those views may be shaping policy and what Trump is looking at as options. But I don't think it's quite right to say it's what Trump wants to do - he wants to do deals, win a Nobel Peace Prize and receive a standing ovation from all the haters at the Kennedy Centre. I would not be surprised if, like everyone else who's tried to manage Trump, those people end up being disappointed and Trump wants to do a deal with Xi too. I also think you can build those strong arguments of what the Trump administration is doing on foreign policy (on Ukraine, on Europe, on the Middle East, even arguably on Greenland) that work to a point - I think the point they fall down is threatening to annex Canada and the "say thank you" stuff.

Having said all that even if the US were to try this I'm very dubious that the US would be able to peel Russia away from a major economic and security partner like China. The US is not about to provide a huge market for Russian gas, for example. I think there complications and it's not a seamless relationship, my understanding is the Chinese were genuinely shocked and taken by surprise by the Ukraine invasion which isn't good for a state that doesn't like surprises. But I think the scope for driving them apart isn't that high - unlike the Sino-Soviet split (and what Kissinger did was something US policy makers had been thinking about for over a decade).

But FWIW I think that's also a weakness in the argument that Europe can pivot to China from the US because I don't see why China would be willing to provide (far less deliver) security guarantees to Europe or shaft their main Eurasian partner. So I think any idea of Europe being able to move from America to China runs through doing a deal with Russia which I don't think Europe is willing to do. Minsky rightly pointed out that Europe has relatively limited interests in the Pacific (I probably think they're higher than he does), but I think that also goes for China in Europe - and they already have a European partner.

[HVC]

Shifting to China doesn't mean militarily, but economically. Europe has to (and really should have been) militarily self sufficient without American support.

Shifting to China economically probably isn't great either, but seem the better option then relying in a fickle and down right bipolar America.

Another (preferable to me ) option is to invest heavily in Canada. We have lots of natural resources we're willing to share

[grumbler]

Are they more advanced than the Chinese and more importantly the Russian equivalent? Because that's who they have to fight. Well for now anyway.

The Russians have an unsuccessful Gen 5 fighter, but the current Euro fighters are probably the equivalent of the Mig-35 just entering Russian service and superior to the Su-35 that is the main modern Russian fighter, both also Gen 4.

[Zanza]

My total layman's impression is that we should skip development of more modern manned fighters and rather invest massively into semi-autonomous drones.