Podcast: Leaked Intel Reveals Depth Of Ukraine’s Air Defense Shortage

The recent circulation of U.S. military and intelligence documents amplifies warnings about Ukraine’s need for fighters and counter-air missiles. Listen in as Aviation Week editors discuss the situation.

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Rush Transcript

Jen:​ Hello, and welcome to the Check 6 podcast. I'm Jen DiMascio, the executive editor for Defense and Space, and I'm here today with Aviation Week's outstanding team of defense editors. Defense Editor Steve Trimble, European Bureau Chief Anthony Osborne, and Pentagon Editor Brian Everstine. And we're here to discuss the leak that has been unfolding to the horror of many in the Western Defense establishment, the US in particular. Plenty of experts have been warning about Ukraine's air defenses wearing thin, and those warnings have really been amplified by recent intelligence leaks. Steve, can you give us a summary of what's been unfolding here?

Steve:​ Sure. And greetings from Rio de Janeiro. I'm here to cover the Latin American Aerospace and Defense Show, but chiming in on this podcast on this very important topic.

​Yeah, I'd say it's to the horror of the defense establishment in the US and NATO and beyond really. These, a set of joint staff briefing materials that, somewhere between 50 to 100 slides in total, started appearing over the past few months, apparently without anybody noticing on Discord chat rooms for a Minecraft game and a Filipino YouTube celebrity, apparently, bizarrely, as these things tend to be these days. And once they finally trickled out into Twitter and other social media platforms, we started seeing them in places like New York Times and Bellingcat.

​Now this information comes at a very important time in this horrific, almost 14-month-long war. The Russian winter offensive in the Donbas appears to have culminated or at least reached a plateau of effort, and we are waiting for the Ukrainian army to launch their own counter-offensive across a very broad front in Eastern Ukraine.

​Now, to do that, they are going to need air defense. Right now, really since March or late March or early April of 2022, the Russian Air Force has been kept out of Ukrainian airspace by and large through a layered air defense architecture on the ground, backed up to some extent with counter air systems from the Ukrainian Air Force, a very dwindling supply of Ukrainian Air Force platforms. That layered air defense on the ground starts with MANPADS at the front lines, with Buk mobile launchers, what we call SA-11s slightly behind those, and then S-300s, either SA-10s or SA-11s much further back protecting the population centers. And that has been very effective at keeping the Russian aviation, their bombers, their strike fighters, their fighter bombers, and their air-to-air fighters at a distance that has not proven too problematic for Ukrainian forces on the ground.

​That could all change if Ukrainian air defense goes away. And really one of the big revelations, well, I guess I have to be careful when I say revelation because this is something that has been talked about quite a bit.

​If you go back to what Justin Bronk, and, sorry, I'm forgetting the other RUSI analyst, Jack Watling, published in their assessment of the Ukrainian Air War, which was excellent, back in late October or early November last year, they've been shouting this from the rooftops ever since, that Ukrainian air defense is on a ticking clock. They're going to run out of ammunition. They still have plenty of launchers of all those types, but the missiles, the interceptors are running out. And then these documents paint that picture in very lurid detail where if, and the document in particular that we're referring to is dated February 28th, it's an assessment by the US intelligence community, not necessarily a conclusion, but it is assessing that they run out of Buk launchers, the SA-11s tomorrow, April 13th. That was the expectation. They run out of SA-11s, I'm sorry, SA-12s, well ... sorry, SA-10s, the S-300s, next month. The promised supply of Western Air Defense Systems is not coming fast enough or in the quantities that can take over that gap in capacity that is starting to become seemingly acute if these assessments are correct.

​So far, none of the Hawk batteries, which is the biggest surprise to me, that have been committed, especially inthat October-November timeframe of last year, none of them have actually arrived in Ukraine according to this assessment. The NASAMS and the IRST NASAMS that have been very effective on the ground in Ukraine by all reports are also running out, just due to a lack of supply of interceptors. The Patriot battery and the other battery don't arrive for a few months, then you can expect at least something of a learning curve. Ukrainian troops are being trained to use that, but they'll need to learn how to use them in combat and that will take a certain amount of time as well for them to become fully effective.

​So again, this is just a very difficult picture for Ukraine. I'm not sure that anything in this document comes as a surprise to the Russian military. They have their own intelligence assessments, they're right on the front lines. They're getting very detailed reporting of Ukrainian capacity and their activity on the air defense side. So I doubt that they're going to be very surprised by any of this information. But for us, even though we knew these issues in broad strokes, the lurid detail here now that is available in the public domain is quite striking.

Jen:​ There's been some more problems as well. Brian, haven't you seen some documents about the use of JDAM-ER in Ukraine as well?

Brian:​ Yeah, this is one of the slides that leaked out that I thought was interesting. It hasn't really gotten much coverage in the broader media so far, but it goes through some problems that the Ukrainian Air Force has been experiencing using the American made JDAM-ERs, and focuses on some strikes in February where the JDAMs didn't have the impact that they expected. And it shows that the Ukrainian Air Force has faced two key issues with using these bombs. First, that the bomb fuses have not been arming at release. And this is an issue that lead to problems On a February 15th strike that required a higher use of more of the bombs on the mission. And there's been a material fix implemented by the Ukrainian Air Force.

​But a broader issue has been GPS jamming. The Russians have been able to keep their jammers going, and this has impacted some of the Ukrainian Air Force missions using these bombs. And it's interesting that the slide goes through the really broad US military effort to address this problem, using the newly stood up action group, SAG-U, the task force Grey Wolf within USAFE, and the Pentagon's Joint Navigation Warfare Center to get after this issue. And pretty much the suggestion is to hit these jammers with artillery ahead of these missions to try to ensure that the bombs can get to their target. And this is just one side that goes into one key issue on one munition that has not necessarily got any coverage other than the munition was being sent to Ukraine.

Jen: ​So Tony, I wanted to bring you into the discussion a bit. What options are there really for countering this problem?

Tony: ​Obviously the Ukraine's have got limited options for countering these issues in both senses. As they run out of missiles, they become more heavily dependent on Western systems, which of course have slowed in their deliveries, or at least from our perspective, certainly have not arrived. So things like Patriot. We know that Ukrainians are training on that, that's still not in country. SAMP-T which has been promised by the Italians and the French, again, is still yet to arrive, and we're still waiting for deliveries of some things like [inaudible 00:08:44] and so on. We know that nations are providing this stuffor a promise to provide this stuff, but it's slow to arrive. It's not entirely clear why. It's probably just a lot of that focus has been on tanks. There's been a lot of focus on getting more artillery into the country, and maybe that's slowed the front end of deliveries and maybe the steps to our missile systems are in that backlog somewhere.

​In terms of, I think just coming back on what Steve was saying, the risk here is obviously that if you start running out of missiles to defend against ... The potential is that the Russians could regain some kind of air superiority over the battlefield, which of course they never really got, because the Ukrainian missiles were capable of defending against them. But the point is, is they run out or the Russians find ways of getting around it or burn through the stocks, as it's been now becoming a war of attrition, essentially, they could gain that superiority and start essentially using dumb bombs over the battlefield and turning it into a much rougher place to be. And I think that's really, it is a historic message. It really is. And it's, as I say, and as Steve said, that message has been shouted from the rooftops by various academics, particularly Justin and Jack from RUSI.

​How they go about it, the Western nations have never really invested heavily in air defense. Many of these nations relied on their air forces. So ground-based air defense was never a big investment. Look at the UK for example, and I think we've talked about this before on this podcast. The British Army was entirely reliant on the Royal Air Force for its air defense. And if you look at several other European nations, they did the same thing. Now when it comes to delivering these ground-based air defenses, stocks of missiles are now tiny if not running out. And so you've got very few ready-to-fire missiles. One of the very interesting things about the courses of action is a program called Franken-SAM. We are not entirely a hundred percent sure what this is. This, I think Steve has mentioned possibly that this could be an idea to put a Western SAM on top of a Russian launcher, I think, which is something that the Polish have experimented with.

​This also could be rebuilding existing stocks of Russian SAMs. So missiles have a finite life, their propellants run out or they become quite dangerous as they get older. So the idea could be that they replace propellants or perhaps modularize the weapons, so that you stick a fresh motor on an old missile and maybe that could be one way of solving it. The problem is that here in Western Europe, we don't have active production programs of SA-11s and SA-10s and SA-12s to really replenish those stocks. So hopefully that Franken-SAM project is one of those that occurs, let's say.

Jen:​ Steve, did you want to add to that?

Steve:​ Yeah. I think what Tony is talking about here is just the split in philosophical opinion. I mean, in the West, Air defense is a good offense, right? You don't invest in air defense so much if your offense can take out those aircraft and missile launch sites to begin with. And that's what the US and other Western NATO powers have relied upon. Although they understand now that they're, especially with loitering munition, Shahid 136s, and all these other threats that are coming, they've got to get more mobile short range air defense. But, so if anybody's wondering why Ukraine keeps harping on this issue of F-16s and that they've got to have F-16s, it's because of this. That if they can't ... The supply of SA-10 and SA-11 interceptors and even Western SAMs and launchers is exhaustible and it's apparently exhaustible very, very soon.

​So if you don't have enough defense, the way to deal with that is to go on offense. Now the problem with that, actually there's several problems with that. These can be overcome, but the issues that you face is that any aircraft that goes into that airspace has to deal with the fact that there's S-400s. The S-400 has a radar system, the 48Ya6-K1 Podlet radar system. It's an S-Band. It looks for low altitude targets. And so these aircraft are flying along at very low altitudes because S-400 coverage and S-300 coverage on the Russian side has forced them, has the Ukrainians to operate within a hundred meters of the ground on most missions. And you also have to deal with these low altitude radars as well, that the S-400 has, and that makes it a very deadly situation.

​On top of that, we've seen, especially through Justin Bronk and Jack Watley's reporting this phenomenon of MiG-31s using R-37M missiles. Now these are called AWACS killers, right? The idea is that the MiG-31 was going to go after NATO AWACS by launching these missiles 300 kilometers away to go after these very radiating non =maneuvering targets with this very high speed, not a very agile missile, but very high speed missile. Well, instead of going after AWACS, those MiG-31s are 60 kilometers behind the forward line of troops. They're launching that missile down range, at targets, Su-25s, Ukrainian MiG-29s at a hundred meters. And at that distance, those R-37s are going very, very fast. They're not, they've got active seekers, they're being cued by an AESA radar in the MiG-31 or the Su-35 launch platform.

​So they're doing track-while-scan. They're not locking onto the target until the last few seconds. So the Ukrainian pilot has only a few seconds to dodge this mach 4, maybe even Mach 5 weapon coming right at it. There's not a lot of stuff they can do to be evasive or defensive in that scenario. So what you need are fighters that can be effective at low altitude, launch very long range missiles to push those Su-35s and MiG-31s back a hundred kilometers or more behind the front lines so that their R-37Ms and R-77s are much less effective supporting operations on the front lines. And their ... F-16 doesn't have that. They have AMRAAMs, which are great weapons if you're launching at supersonic speed and 40,000-50,000 feet, but if you're load to the ground, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

​That's why Justin Bronk and Jack Watling have suggested that Gripen armed with Meteor at low altitudes might be a more effective solution. They can operate from much more dispersed, primitive runways and surfaces. And so that makes them easier to use by Ukraine compared to F-16s in the first place. And the problem there is, just like F-16, there aren't any extra Gripens out there. Sweden's not going to give up their Gripens. There's other air forces. I don't know where that goes.

​Now for F-16s, you could look around. Top Aces has some ex-Israeli F-16 MLUs that are just sitting around at this point. They could be used for aggressor training by the US Air Force, but they're not very well engaged at this point. I'd like to see somebody suggest that maybe we could take those F-16s and MLUs in various European air forces that do have places that they're supposed to be going. Chile, actually here in Latin America would be a little heartbroken to see their Danish F-16 MLUs being sent over to Ukraine. But these are all ... It's a very complex situation with no easy solutions and certainly no short-term solutions.

Jen:​ There are certainly a lot of options. Tony, I think you wanted to weigh in.

Tony:​ Yeah, I'm just going to really add to what Steve said. Obviously, the biggest enemy here is time because these air defenses must be in place in order to give the Ukrainians time to potentially train on a Western aircraft that they would need to go up against systems like the S-400M, to be able to fly these aircraft at a hundred meters or 200 meters. It takes years of training. Western Air Force has honed their skills over many years to become as good as they are.

​Ukrainians might only have a short amount of time to actually train up on a type like the F-16. So we have to have these air defenders in place to give them the time to do this even if an F-16 decision is taken or a Gripen decision is taken. So the biggest enemy of Ukraine at the moment is time to, in order to get these systems in place, to get the aircraft that it wants to be able to train and go up against the systems that they might have to do in order to protect their land forces from the air power that Russia can bring on.

​Ultimately all these things have to follow a course now, and presumably the sooner the better, for at least a fighter decision if that's going to be taken. But also to get these SAM batteries completely filled with ready-to-fire missiles as well. The situation really looks quite urgent from these papers, and I think that's what that's so telling about these documents.

Jen:​ Well, that was going to bring me to my final question here because I think we have to wrap up here soon, unfortunately. But really, do these documents have the effect of building some support and some will to change the conversation and get some action taken?

Steve :​I can try to address that. Hopefully that would be the outcome of this, that people see this and that the public support, that it creates the public understanding of the issue, which I think is severely lacking, to help the policymakers do what they want to do. I do think the policymakers clearly have known that about these issues for quite a while, yet have not been able to do anything. And that's concerning. And I don't know ... Even if they decide to act, as we've discussed, there's not a lot that they can do. There's no easy buttons to press to make these issues go away.

​Even a solution like the ground-launched small diameter bomb, that got announced back in December as a system that had been approved to go to Ukraine. And this to me is a great way of addressing part of this issue, because now you can launch the small diameter bomb from existing ground-based launchers that from HIMARS, that Ukraine already has, and they can, as long as you know where the target is, they can penetrate into that airspace. They can come at it from a different angle, evading air defenses if possible, and hit that target and have that same effect as you would have if an F-16 did the same thing.

​And as great as that sounds, the problem is, that system isn't operational. It's been demonstrated in experiments six or seven years ago, but then nobody bought it or actually qualified it as a weapon system. And they're still in the process of negotiating the contract with Boeing and Saab to do that qualification for Ukraine. And once they get the contract, then they can actually start doing the demonstration, and doing the qualification testing. That's going to take several months. And then you've got to bring Ukraine in and train them on how to use it. You've got to deliver it, they've got to get to the front lines and they've got to integrate it into their operations.

​It's going to be several months, maybe even a year before all that happens. So like I said, you think, oh, ground-launched small diameter bomb, there's the answer. At least in the short-term, there's something that we could do to address this issue. And it turns out, no, there's not.

​JDAM-ER is a bit like that as well. That was an Australian system, right? Australia developed that, not the United States. The company FARA that makes the wing kit is in Australia. So they're the ones who actually supply JDAM-ER that was never picked up by the US Air Force or the US Navy. They use the JSOW, the joint standoff weapon for the same role. And we haven't given JSOWs to the UK. Sorry, to Ukraine, not the UK. Sorry, Tony.

​So, these are all things ... Justin Bronk and Jack Watling also suggested trying to integrate CB-105s in their MiG-29s or Su-24s, I think what they suggested for the Ukrainians, if they have any left, as another way of getting at the same issue, but it's again, not easy.

Jen:​ Brian, did you have a few thoughts to share there?

Brian:​ I think the only thing I really wanted to add real quickly is in every DOD briefing, Ukraine contact group briefing, even hearings on the Hill, we hear that the US and allies need to send Ukraine what they need, now. They're running through their stocks. But actually seeing it on paper in black and white, the actual numbers is really staggering. Just focusing on artillery, for example, just 155s Ukraine has ran through 951,000. At this one point in time, it's ... the sheet says they had 11,000 on hand, and they're going to run out of that in four days. The depletion rate of some of these is just absolutely staggering.

Jen:​ I think that's a really good and sobering point to end on. Unfortunately, that's all we have time for today. Join us again next week for another episode and don't miss it by subscribing to Check 6 in your podcast app. One last request, if you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts and want to support it, please leave us a five star rating or a kind review.

​Thank you very much for listening. Good day.