Like I said, kids, the US Gov doesn't have a great track record reporting how it's military "stuff" is working. That is unless confidential "stuff" is leaked.
Ever heard of the Pentagon Papers? During the Vietnam War, the Rand Corp did an extensive study on how the war was going and whether we were "winning" and whether the North Vietnamese were being "worn down". A consultant on the study Daniel Ellsberg leaked the conclusions to the NY Times.
The study showed we were losing the war and our adversaries were prepared to fight for years to prevail. The leak also demonstrated that Gov was aware of this and telling the American public the opposite.
Ukraine May Run Out of Air Defenses by May, Leaked Pentagon Documents Warn
Kyiv is depleting its last reserves of S-300 missiles, making it possible for Russia to achieve air superiority, according to purported Pentagon presentations
By Yaroslav Trofimov, WSJ
Updated April 9, 2023 9:01 pm ET
Russia could achieve its long-sought goal of air superiority in Ukrainian skies as early as May because Ukraine is running out of antiaircraft missiles, according to purported Pentagon presentations that have leaked on social media.
The Pentagon and the Justice Department began an investigation last week into document leaks when some purported U.S. Department of Defense presentations were posted by Russian propagandists on Telegram on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal, which viewed these documents and a larger trove that emerged on Friday, hasn’t been able to independently verify their authenticity.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Sunday that the U.S. continued to assess the validity of the documents “that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.” She said the U.S. had discussed the matter with allies over the weekend and was weighing the potential national security impact of the breach.
Col. Yuri Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said that he couldn’t comment on the veracity of the information in the leaked slides as such data is classified in Ukraine. He confirmed, however, that Ukraine’s air defenses face a serious challenge and said that Ukraine urgently needs its Western partners to speed up assistance.
“If we lose the battle for the skies, the consequences for Ukraine will be very serious,” he said. “This is not the time to procrastinate.” After more than a year of war, he said, Ukraine faced a serious challenge finding the Soviet-designed ammunition for the backbone of its air-defense system, the S-300 and the Buk batteries.
Russian bombers and helicopter gunships haven’t ventured beyond the immediate vicinity of Ukraine’s front lines for nearly a year, after Ukraine’s air defenses shot down several aircraft in the initial weeks of the war. As a result, Russia has only been able to strike deep inside Ukraine with expensive cruise missiles and long-range Iranian drones, rather than the much more abundant and more powerful unguided bombs.
Ukraine’s air defense has also made it impossible for Russian aircraft to target moving Ukrainian convoys, troop concentrations and other military targets in the rear, offsetting Moscow’s vast superiority in the number and quality of combat aircraft.
If true, the alarming assessments in the leaked presentations shed new light on the urgency with which Kyiv has been lobbying the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to speed up deliveries of Western-made air-defense systems and to provide Ukraine with Western-made jet fighters, such as F-16s, so that it would be able to prevent incursions by Russian bombers.
According to one of the documents, a likely consequence of the looming air defense crisis is that Ukraine will lose its ability to mass ground forces near the front lines, and to conduct a counteroffensive. Kyiv said it is planning to launch a massive offensive to recapture Russian-occupied territories in coming weeks, using several new reserve brigades trained and equipped by the U.S. and NATO partners.
So far, Ukraine has been successful in denying Russia the ability to use its manned aircraft deep inside Ukraine largely because of its network of Soviet-vintage long-range air-defense systems, primarily S-300 and Buk, which can intercept targets at altitudes above 20,000 feet.
However, according to a secret purported Pentagon slide dated Feb. 28, Ukraine will have completely depleted its stock of Buk missiles by April 13, and of S-300 missiles by May 3, at current consumption rates.
By then, according to a map in another purported Pentagon presentation, also from Feb. 28, most of Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure outside the Kyiv region and two other areas in southwestern Ukraine will no longer have air-defense cover. The number of unprotected critical sites will soar from six to more than 40, it said.
Russia has fired several hundred cruise missiles and launched hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed drones since October in an effort to destroy Ukraine’s electricity system and to force a humanitarian crisis during the winter. While that effort has failed, with rolling blackouts no longer occurring and Ukraine even resuming electricity exports to the European Union, the barrages have severely depleted Ukraine’s air-defense ammunition stocks.
While the U.S., Norway, Canada and Germany have provided Ukraine with two Nasams and one Iris-T air-defense batteries in recent months, these systems, too, were on track to run out of ammunition by May, according to the document.
Ukraine’s S-300 batteries were expending roughly 200 missiles a month, while Buk batteries fired about 69 missiles a month, the document said. Nasams and Iris-T expended a combined 64 missiles a month.
After months of Ukrainian requests for help, President Biden in late December authorized the deployment of one Patriot missile battery to Ukraine. Ukraine is scheduled to receive an additional Patriot battery from Germany while France and Italy are providing one comparable SAMP-T system. While Ukrainian crews have already been trained, none of these systems are currently deployed, Col. Ihnat said.
Ukraine also operates portable air defense systems such as Stinger missiles. Valuable in the battlefield, they can’t reach high-flying aircraft or offer much protection to critical infrastructure.
While the Patriots and SAMP-T are more sophisticated than S-300, the three batteries due to arrive in Ukraine won’t be able to replace the breadth of coverage afforded by the 25 currently operating Ukrainian S-300 batteries, the leaked Pentagon presentation said.
The U.S. military’s European command estimates that Ukraine needs 12 Patriot or SAMP-T batteries, and 16 batteries of Nasams or Iris-T class to provide adequate coverage, according to the document. “Multiple mitigating options must be simultaneously pursued to increase decisions for more sustainable solutions,” it said.
Short term, the document recommended trying to find additional S-300 and Buk munitions abroad, a difficult endeavor as most of Ukraine’s allies that possessed such systems have already transferred them. The only major exception is Greece, which operates two S-300 batteries. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov visited Athens for talks on military supplies last month, but no details have been provided.
Over the medium term, the Pentagon analysis recommended expediting the procurement of Nasams, Patriot, Iris-T and other Western systems, as well as the so-called FrankenSAM project to repurpose air-defense tasks for more widely available missiles and systems that had been designed for other purposes.
Long term, the only proposed solution was to deliver enough Western air-defense systems to cover the whole country, and to digitally integrate them.
Ukraine’s outdated jet fighters are no match for the vastly larger and more modern Russian air force, and have little to no capacity for air-to-air defense against Russian air sorties, which is why Kyiv is clamoring for F-16s. “This kind of aircraft would solve many of our issues in protecting the airspace, and it is available in sufficient numbers to make a difference,” said Col. Ihnat. The MiG-29 jets that Ukraine is on track to receive from Slovakia and Poland, while useful for other missions, wouldn’t be able to withstand air-to-air combat against more modern Russian jet fighters, he said.
While several NATO governments have said that they support giving F-16 jets to Ukraine, especially as they are being replaced with more modern aircraft, the Biden administration so far has stopped short of approving such a transfer. Ukraine “doesn’t need F-16s now,” Mr. Biden said in an ABC News interview in late February, rejecting calls by some Democratic and Republican members of Congress to consider such a transfer.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
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