A Strategic Air Campaign For Ukraine

What Should They Concentrate On? What Not?

Hi All,

Ok, I started writing this and (in my usual habit) it started becoming too long. So it will end up as a two-parter. This first part will introduce the ideas behind a strategic air campaign and in part 2 (released in the coming days) I will go into what Ukrainians might/should see as their targeting priorities. I thought best to not chop the detail as this might be new to lots of people. I hope you enjoy it.

After all the discussion of the last week about the appearance (hopefully in mass) of the new Ukrainian cruise missile, the FP-5 (Flamingo) and the fact that the Trump administration has been preventing the Ukrainians from using US-made weapons in ranged strikes into Russia, I thought it might be interesting for subscribers if I broke down what Ukraine should consider when it gets to the point that it can launch a fully layered strategic air campaign.

A model of a FP-5 Ukrainian cruise missile. Could these be part of Ukraine launching a true strategic air campaign?

To this point the Ukrainians have struggled to do that. It is not because of lack of trying, it has been more an issue of lack of capability and mass. The Ukrainians have lacked the heavy punch ranged weapons that could obliterate vital targets (hopefully something that can happen with the Flamingos) and they have also seemed to lack mass in the systems that they have developed for themselves. This could have been corrected at least partially had Ukraine’s partners been more supportive with ranged weapons (Taurus, JASSM) but that was regrettably not the case. Because of this, the Ukrainians have been able to undertake a number of effective operations, but then had to slow down attacks at different times—not achieving the strategic effect that they might otherwise have done.

That might be about to change. As such, the Ukrainians are now planning for a much greater strategic air campaign against the Russians. If they can carry this campaign off, it could end up being the most important Ukrainian campaign of the last few years (even in its less developed form, it has taken a toll on Russian fuel production). As a way of making this intelligible to readers, I have put together this discussion of Ukrainian strategic airpower targeting priorities—as the Ukrainians might be seeing them.

What Is A Strategic Air Campaign?

For those less interested with the details of air power history, a strategic air campaign can be described as a ranged campaign against an enemy’s systems behind the battlelines. It is not a campaign to attack an army directly (that is often referred to as “tactical” air power), but to attack the systems that support and regenerate that army.