"I know what's on the table if Russia uses nuclear weapons"

[Skybird]

Die Welt has this interview with Fred Kaplan. It touches upon but goes beyond the Ukraine war, so I post it separately.
----------------------------------------

American documents on nuclear war planning remain secret to this day. That's why U.S. journalist Fred Kaplan spoke to 160 insiders. He reveals what the Pentagon is playing out. And which worst-case scenarios could become real in the Ukraine war.

Fred Kaplan, born in 1954, is a journalist and political scientist. He has authored seven books and has written the widely acclaimed "War Stories" column for the online magazine Slate.com since 2002. In the early eighties, his book "Wizards of Armageddon," which looked over the shoulders of nuclear war planners, caused a sensation. Nearly forty years later, Fred Kaplan has revisited the subject - and uncovered hair-raising facts. A conversation about overkill, Russia's tactical nuclear weapons and the thorny question of how far American presidents would really go to defend Europe.

WORLD: Mr. Kaplan, with "The Bomb" you have written an immensely exciting and very frightening book about the "secret history of nuclear war." How rationally can you plan the end of the world?

Fred Kaplan: There's a strange kind of rationality and logic in it. The thing is: The more you follow that logic, the crazier it seems to anyone looking at it all from the outside, and the more inevitable.

WORLD: Can you give us an example?

Kaplan: For much of the Cold War, the assumption was that at some point there would be another war in Europe, that, say, the Soviet Union would invade West Germany. Since NATO did not have enough conventional weapons to repel such an attack, it had to rely on its nuclear weapons to keep the Russians from attacking. Then, when the Soviet Union also got nuclear weapons, doubts arose in some European countries, especially France: would the American president really risk New York to save Paris? The United States then created so-called limited nuclear options. They developed plans and weapons to hit only Soviet nuclear forces or military, so to speak. The remaining nuclear weapons would be withheld for the time being.

WELT: The thinking here was that the enemy would eventually give in and stop the escalation before the cities were destroyed?

Kaplan: Yes. The strategists then devised scenarios in which there were five, six, seven back-and-forth nuclear attacks. Pure fantasy. No one has ever fought a war like that before.
WORLD: What is the difference between a nuclear war and a conventional war, apart from the bigger explosions?

Kaplan: Nuclear weapons have many effects, including some that destroy lines of communication and blind satellites. If you read the nuclear strategy of the time, you might get the impression that there are two chess grandmasters sitting over their board calculating their advantages, but that's not what's really happening. In reality, it's two blind men walking into a warehouse full of dynamite and trip wires and they don't know what's going on.

WORLD: By now, this seems to be generally accepted. President Biden said in October 2022, referring to Ukraine, that he saw no way that anyone could use a tactical nuclear weapon without the worst happening. Vladimir Putin, in turn, stated that no one could win a nuclear war. So why continue to do so?

Kaplan: One can certainly accept the notion that we need a deterrent, and that deterrent must be credible. But that, in turn, leads us down a rabbit hole of crazy, or at least completely unfounded, theories about the extent to which you could actually fight a nuclear war.

WELT: For "The Bomb," you researched for years and even made use of tapes of White House consultations. Would U.S. presidents actually be able to push the button?

Kaplan: I think if you had asked experts in 1960 what they thought the probability was that no one would use a nuclear weapon in the next sixty years, I think they would have answered that it was very low. It was considered almost certain at the time that a major war would occur at some point and that nuclear weapons would be used in it. That this did not happen shows that nuclear deterrence was taken seriously. Whether credible or not, the consequences are so incalculably catastrophic that people did not want to take the chance. But the very basis of the principle of nuclear deterrence is the idea that no one knows what will happen next once the first atomic bomb has been detonated. So it's better to stay away from anything that triggers that first event.

WELT: The current Russian military doctrine suggests otherwise. It includes the concept of "escalating to de-escalate." What exactly does that mean?

Kaplan: Let's say there is a war with NATO countries, and NATO is about to win it. Russia then detonates a few nukes - tactical, small, low-yield. It almost doesn't matter where or why. The assumption is that the shock of this will bring everything to a halt and that the Western powers will choose to back out. That's the scenario for a use of nuclear weapons in Europe, and it was laid out a decade ago, long before the current war in Ukraine.

WELT: Is that a plausible scenario?

Kaplan: Maybe. I didn't believe - and most people didn't believe - that Putin would actually invade Ukraine. It seemed crazy. So you can also say he would never launch nuclear weapons toward the West because that's crazy, but maybe he does.
I think the probability of something like that actually happening is very, very low. But it is higher than at any time since 1983 or perhaps since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And the reason the probability is higher, at least to my mind, is that there is a scenario for such a deployment that I think is plausible, whereas I had never seen a plausible scenario before. I can understand the dynamics that could lead to that.

WORLD: Is this strategy why the Russians retained their tactical nuclear weapons in such large numbers after 1990?

Kaplan: In the 1960s and '70s, the United States had up to 7,000 tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe. That's an insane number. But the reason was that the Russians were thought to be conventionally superior. Now it's the other way around, and that's why Russia is holding on to tactical nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

WORLD: And that's working?

Kaplan: The only reason NATO and the United States are not directly involved in this war is because Russia has nuclear weapons. Some complain that we are deterring ourselves with them, but no, that is exactly part of the principle of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear weapons deter not only nuclear war, but also certain kinds of conventional war.

WELT: Maybe this is all just Putin's bluff. In "The Bomb," you also write about how President Richard Nixon tried to appear to the Eastern Bloc as a maximally irrational, very angry man who could not control himself. The Madman Theory.

Kaplan: During the Vietnam peace talks in Paris, he said to his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, "Henry, I want you to go to Paris and tell them that this Nixon is mad. And he's also a terrible anti-communist. And if you don't stop fighting, he's going to use nuclear weapons against you." That didn't work.

WORLD: Why didn't it?

Kaplan: Maybe because they knew who Nixon was and just didn't believe it. Maybe the North Vietnamese were too determined to take over all of Vietnam. Or maybe they didn't care. Nixon didn't just try the Madman theory with respect to Vietnam. He also used it once in the Middle East and in a confrontation with the Soviet ambassador. He was not believed, for whatever reason. He wasn't really crazy enough to pull it off.

WORLD: Fortunately, he wasn't.

Kaplan: That's an interesting finding I made in researching this book: Far more American presidents than are known have found themselves in crises where the question of using nuclear weapons came up. There were serious discussions about it, but they all backed down in the end.

WELT: How would it work out in concrete terms, should one decide to do so after all?

Kaplan: There is an officer who carries a big briefcase with him wherever the president goes. They call it the "nuclear football," and it basically contains codes for the release of weapons and various plans that the president can put into effect. The nuclear briefcase also contains the ability to authenticate so that the person receiving the message knows for sure that it is coming from the president. With this, he sends a message to the National Military Command Center in the basement of the Pentagon, which is run by an obedient one-star general. The latter relays the signal to the bomber bases, the missile silos and the submarines. And that's it.

WORLD: It's surprising to read that the only U.S. president ever to participate in a nuclear war exercise was Jimmy Carter - a Democrat who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Kaplan: Carter thought nuclear weapons were evil. He wanted to get rid of as many as possible. And yet he recognized that it would be the most fundamental decision a president could make. Although every president is briefed on the subject, he was the only one who actually participated in an exercise, held annually, that simulated a Soviet nuclear attack. Normally, deputies played their superiors in these exercises. Carter, however, played himself in two of these War Games. And he was horrified to learn that he was the first president to do so. He couldn't believe it. He was also, by the way, the first president to include the vice president in the proceedings and hold exercises without warning.

WORLD: What was the result?

Kaplan: It didn't go so well in the beginning. What was supposed to go quickly took hours. So the whole alert procedure was changed a lot. Despite Carter's attitude toward nuclear weapons, he was the first to whip those procedures into shape.

WORLD: So he improved machinery that he personally detested.

Kaplan: But he also made sure that it continued to respond to presidential decisions. Thus, once the mechanism is in place, the president remains in charge, and it doesn't fall to some general to make the next move.

WORLD: One of the most dangerous moments in history, we learn in "The Bomb," was the Berlin crisis of 1961. According to your research, the Soviets' attempt to annex this small enclave of the West nearly triggered an all-out nuclear war.

Kaplan: In the event that the Soviets had invaded West Germany, or even West Berlin, the current American war plan would have called for all of our nuclear weapons to be used at once against all targets in Russia and China. The explosive force would have been 7000 megatons and would have killed an estimated 200 million people.
When John F. Kennedy and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, wanted to introduce limited nuclear options, many people at Strategic Air Command were opposed. Communications would be cut off, they argued, so we must use all weapons immediately.

WORLD: At times, there were 16,000 targets. There were nearly 700 nuclear warheads aimed at the city of Moscow alone.

Kaplan: We've all heard the term "overkill," but another thing I learned in researching this book is that the overkill was much more extreme than anyone thought.

WORLD: Why?

Kaplan: You have to go back to 1960 to find out. That's when Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha first drew up an integrated nuclear war plan that included Air Force bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles and Navy submarine-launched missiles. Suppose one wanted to destroy the Soviet tank army. One would then target not only the tanks on the battlefield, but also the factories where the tanks are built, the mines where the raw material comes from, and the factories that produce the spare parts for the tanks.

WORLD: And that explains why so many warheads were needed?

Kaplan: Let me give you another example. The Russians had a ballistic missile defense facility, but as we learned after the end of the Cold War, it would have been completely useless. This station had 64 interceptor missiles. The nuclear war planners on our side decided that possibly all of them would work. Ergo, we had to aim 65 weapons at this one site to destroy it safely. No one outside the SAC had ever looked at this plan. It was not until 1989 that a civilian official from the Pentagon was sent to Omaha to review the SIOP. He returned and reported to then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. This was under the George H.W. Bush administration, and they were just appalled.

WORLD: So the review of the war plan led to a reduction in nuclear weapons?

Kaplan: Under George H.W. Bush, the U.S. was able to cut its nuclear arsenal in half, and then with the arms control treaties, it was cut in half again. Many of these weapons had been aimed at the air defenses of Warsaw Pact countries outside Russia, so several thousand targets were eliminated there after the end of the Soviet Union.
Under Obama, another study was done, similar to what was done in 1989, at which time we had only about 1500 nuclear weapons left. The group that reviewed the plan decided that number could be reduced to 1000. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed to that only if the Russians would do the same, and the Russians did not. Soon after, Putin annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, after which relations deteriorated.

WORLD: Are we facing a new arms race?

Kaplan: Both sides are still adhering to the limits of the New START treaty, which Obama and Medvedev signed in 2010. New START contained very strict inspection requirements, more than any other arms control treaty before it. It also established a joint commission that would meet regularly to discuss issues and ambiguities. The Russians have recently stopped showing up for these meetings because of the invasion of Ukraine, and they have stopped allowing inspections.
We have other ways to see what is going on-we have satellites, listening devices, and other things. But it is worrisome. Because the less verifiable an arms control treaty is, the more inclined one side or the other is to assume worst-case scenarios. At present, the conditions for a renewed nuclear arms race are not yet in place, but the guardrails are getting looser. That is something to be very concerned about.

WELT: Germans are most concerned about Putin's hypothetical possibility of using nuclear weapons. Why are our discussions here more driven by fear than in Britain, France or the U.S.?

Kaplan: I think in all these countries there are those who think one way and others who think the other way. When Selenskyj visited Washington, he gave a joint press conference with Biden. A Ukrainian journalist asked, "Why don't you just give Ukraine everything we are asking for now?" And Biden replied, mutatis mutandis, "Basically, we are worried about World War III."


WELT: Are there red lines for Putin?

Kaplan: We have been drawing some of the red lines ourselves with excessive caution for quite some time. For some reason, we didn't send the Patriot missiles earlier because it might cross a red line. Nor did we send tanks because that might cross a red line. The two red lines that I think could force Putin to do something qualitatively different would be the use of U.S. or NATO weapons that could actually hit targets well inside Russia, or the involvement of NATO forces. Then there would be a direct conflict and Putin would have to do something different than he is doing now.

WELT: But what would his options be then? His military is already weakened.

Kaplan: When Ukraine started attacking some targets in Russia with its own weapons or through saboteurs, Putin started bombing Ukrainian cities more. Is that a cause for concern, or would he have done that anyway? I don't know. There are people who say to themselves, what the heck, let Putin threaten all he wants. Let's do things that allow Ukraine to win decisively. But I think anyone who is honest with themselves would admit that it's a risk.

WORLD: What would an American response look like if Putin used a nuclear bomb?

Kaplan: During the Obama administration in the summer of 2016, the National Security Council conducted a simulation to test the extent to which Russia's "escalate to de-escalate" doctrine threatens our power position. The scenario was that Putin invades a Baltic country, loses the conventional war against NATO, and fires tactical nuclear weapons to turn the tide. First, the military officials present talked about what targets we might hit in retaliation.
Then Colin Kahl, then Vice President Biden's national security adviser and now undersecretary of defense for policy, said, "Wait a minute. If Russia uses nuclear weapons for the first time since World War II, it will become a pariah state. We'll win with conventional weapons, too." That was the result in the run-through of the proxies. When the same war game was then repeated at the Cabinet level, the National Security Council members rejected that option. It was agreed that the United States must respond to a nuclear attack with a nuclear attack. Otherwise, they said, its credibility would be destroyed.

WELT: The scenario still seemed somewhat far-fetched in 2016.

Kaplan: I'm pretty sure that scenario is being played out much more seriously in the current administration. And I know that one thing is on the table if Russia uses nuclear weapons. One possible response could be to destroy any Russian position in Ukraine by conventional means-primarily air power. We could probably do that in a matter of days or within a week. And once the Russians have deployed a few nuclear weapons, their deterrent value is gone. So it depends on how far we are willing and risk-averse enough to consider this threat a bluff.

WORLD: Information about nuclear weapons is one of the best-kept secrets of a nation. How did you come by the findings in your book?

Kaplan: My first book on the subject was called "The Wizzards of Armageddon." I wrote it in 1983. I made sure that thousands of documents were declassified, and I interviewed 160 people. At the time, the Freedom of Information Act was a very effective research tool (a U.S. law that encouraged transparency in public agencies, ed.). Pretty much everything I have in "The Bomb" about the Obama and Trump administrations, again, comes from interviews with a lot of people involved - and cross-checking those interviews, because there aren't a lot of declassified documents on that yet.


WELT: Mr. Kaplan, thank you very much.

Fred Kaplan will be a guest at the American Academy Berlin starting in March 2023.
----------------------------------------

[Skybird]

And here comes a fascist paranoid psychopath from Russia and suspends the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, New START.



Okay, thats it, we are through with all that written magic then. Welcome back to the real world.

[mapuc]

So if Putin decide to use tactical nukes in Ukraine it would be to hit two flies with one blow.

1. Get NATO to retreat from the war(stopping sending weapons and ammo)
2. End the war faster(now that Ukraine doesn't ger military aid anymore)

Markus

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by mapuc

So if Putin decide to use tactical nukes in Ukraine it would be to hit two flies with one blow.
1. Get NATO to retreat from the war(stopping sending weapons and ammo)
2. End the war faster(now that Ukraine doesn't ger military aid anymore)

How did you get this idea? Do you really think Ukraine or "the west" will turn around if Russia uses ONE tactical nuke?
1. Russia will be an international pariah – not that this would disturb its czar Putin – but China might want to have a word then.
2. The West will not turn around, it will keep on sending material to Ukraine, ESPECIALLY if Russia escalates again, probably even supplying Ukraine with other far-reaching means to fight. Maybe they will even make an example and hit hard themselves. Maybe even China might interfere.

It was Russia that attacked Ukraine. China's idea to relativate and compare chinese arms deliveries with those of the west and call it "the same" are untruthful. It is about Ethos.

If some criminal breaks into your apartment but is unsuccessful because you are able to defend yourself, and then complains that you do, will you discuss this and retreat?
Then he sits in your kitchen and declares that his territory, do you accept that?

Someone else wrote
"The Ukranians don't need to win militarily.
The Russians will collapse politically if they keep throwing bodies to the western weaponry that the Ukrainians are getting.
And from a cynical western point of view, having the russians consume their weapons and military personnel against Ukranians instead of NATO forces is a cold, but advantageous military strategy. With a weakened Russia, only China is a relatively competent adversary, and that is a huge IF."

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by Catfish

How did you get this idea? Do you really think Ukraine or "the west" will turn around if Russia uses ONE tactical nuke?
1. Russia will be an international pariah – not that this would disturb its czar Putin – but China might want to have a word then.
2. The West will not turn around, it will keep on sending material to Ukraine, ESPECIALLY if Russia escalates again, probably even supplying Ukraine with other far-reaching means to fight. Maybe they will even make an example and hit hard themselves. Maybe even China might interfere.

It was Russia that attacked Ukraine. China's idea to relativate and compare chinese arms deliveries with those of the west and call it "the same" are untruthful. It is about Ethos.

Someone else wrote
"The Ukranians don't need to win militarily.
The Russians will collapse politically if they keep throwing bodies to the western weaponry that the Ukrainians are getting.

And from a cynical western point of view, having the russians consume their weapons and military personnel against Ukranians instead of NATO forces is a cold, but advantageous military strategy. With a weakened Russia, only China is a relatively competent adversary, and that is a huge IF."

Agree only want to at 1 point if it uses nukes the West will in one or other way react Russia already got that warning months ago the use of nukes will not go unanswered.

[mapuc]

Where I got the idea from ?

By reading most of what Skybird had posted.

It was this passage

"Kaplan: Let's say there is a war with NATO countries, and NATO is about to win it. Russia then detonates a few nukes - tactical, small, low-yield. It almost doesn't matter where or why. The assumption is that the shock of this will bring everything to a halt and that the Western powers will choose to back out. That's the scenario for a use of nuclear weapons in Europe, and it was laid out a decade ago, long before the current war in Ukraine.
"
Which made me write as I did-It's Putin who think he will make a double strike by using tactical nukes in Ukraine.

Technically we(NATO) are by proxy at war with Russia.

Markus

[Catfish]

I do not want to discuss what i think about this, imho it is nonsense. Maybe(!) that could have worked for Russia during the cold war, but not now. Especially after all saw what Russia's feared military is really capable of.

Technically we (NATO) are by proxy at war with Russia.
Markus

Those referendums in the Donbass were bullsh!t. If you call it a referendum with 30 percent partaking and making their cross with a loaded Kalashnikow aimed at their general direction? We saw the polling stations were thousands of faked ballot papers were dumped in teh voting boxes by the russian military.
At war with NATO? How so? No boots on the ground, no attack against Russia's homeland. Did anyone attack any russian city, i mean on the russian side of the border?

Instead Russia places lots of military planes on belarussian airports to later attack Kyyiv while this jerk Lukashenko boasts that "any attack against Belarus will mean war". Lmao, who does he think he is fooling?
Even then, let it be a proxy war alright. The second Russia stops and withdraws the war will stop. Not one second earlier. And Russia is not interested in negotiations or peace.

[Platapus]

It does raise an interesting question: What would be the US reaction of Russia used only one small nuke?

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I do not want to discuss what i think about this, imho it is nonsense. Maybe(!) that could have worked for Russia during the cold war, but not now. Especially after all saw what Russia's feared military is really capable of.

How so? No boots on the ground, no attack against Russia's homeland. Did anyone attack any russian city, i mean on the russian side of the border?

Instead Russia places lots of military planes on belarussian airports to later attack Kyyiv while this jerk Lukashenko boasts that "any attack against Belarus will mean war". Lmao, who does he think he is fooling?
The second Russia stops and withdraws the war will stop. Not one second earlier. And Russia is not interested in negotiations or peace.

Some military expert said this in one of our news program.

Lets hope it stay that way-Nonsens not going to happen-He has made so many threats that we don't take him serious anymore.

Russia is interested in negotiation-Only if Ukraine let them keep these 4 areas where Crimea is one of them.

Of course I don't take these referendum seriously I never have.

Markus

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Platapus

It does raise an interesting question: What would be the US reaction of Russia used only one small nuke?

Your comment made me remember a part of the Documentary WWIII.

Soviet has sent a nuke away against the coast of England-Where it goes of some hundred miles from the shore.

NATO retaliate by sending...was it 2 or 3 small nukes to areas in Soviet where there isn't many people living. I seem to recall Ural mountain.

Markus

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Where I got the idea from ?

By reading most of what Skybird had posted.

It was this passage

"Kaplan: Let's say there is a war with NATO countries, and NATO is about to win it. Russia then detonates a few nukes - tactical, small, low-yield. It almost doesn't matter where or why. The assumption is that the shock of this will bring everything to a halt and that the Western powers will choose to back out. That's the scenario for a use of nuclear weapons in Europe, and it was laid out a decade ago, long before the current war in Ukraine.
"
Which made me write as I did-It's Putin who think he will make a double strike by using tactical nukes in Ukraine.

Technically we(NATO) are by proxy at war with Russia.

Markus

Kaplan talks about the Russian "assumption" oh boi how wrong were does assumptions this year Russian society is so corrupt it can not even do conventional warfare I have no doubt the nuclear divisions are equal corrupt.

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by Platapus

It does raise an interesting question: What would be the US reaction of Russia used only one small nuke?

Big or small does not matter, both have same effect.

[Rockstar]

Commendable speech, I liked it. Quite possibly gives the answer to the questions above

[August]

Shouldn't this thread be merged with the Ukraine thread?

[Skybird]

Severla weeks ago I posted an essay from I think the NZZ that gave an insight into what a tactical nuke indeed is, that its damage is intentionally so limited (for a nuclear weapon) and radiation is short termed, that the use of just one or two tactical nukes militarily makes no sense. A study by the Indian military on the expected losses in an armoured brigade or division also came to that conclusion: they said if correctly defended against, it would kill just 12-13 tanks. However, that may be optimistic, I dont know.

So using tactical nukes either comes by the dozens - or is meant indeed to psychologically stun Western civil societies that are quite vulnerable to such perceptions, and sentiments from such events. Whether that Russian assumption, which makes the whole concept a risky gamble, would work out, can be debated, but the past 12 months should tell Russia that it had underestimated Western resilience. Also, there is high political cost - also from "allies" like China, and former Sovjet republics. Many who now still tolerate Russia's monstrosity for economic reasons, would turn away in contempt: Brazil, South Africa, India, Pakistan, China... Nobody can afford to be associated with a villain who throws around nukies like balls at Wimbledon.

As Kaplan explains, the US would not even need to reply nuclear to a Russian nuclear attack, but probably can boil the Russians conventionally in their own, self-made aftermath from this, plus I strongly assume that all conventional Russian forces in Ukraine and Crimea would soon seize to exist, falling victim to massive conventional air and missile strikes. If those stealth aircraft really are worth their costs, they should be able to take out Russian air defence, which is - do not get fooled here - extremely strong and capable to carry out "area denial" to any conventional NATO airforce. Once air superiority and SAM suppression has been achieved, its free hunting season from altitude beyond the reach of manpads. Easier said than done, but the US would not risk to see its reputation as the current superpower (there are never two superpowers at the same time in my understanding, always just one, that is why it is called the superpower, like ther enever are two world champions in any competition, just one) being put in doubt by not rigorously wiping out any Russian ground presence: 1. to show the world that it can do it, and 2. to teach the Kremlin the lesson.

If the US would not do it, it could say good-by to its claim to be the dominant military power on the globe. I doubt any president allowing this without fighting for the top rank in the world first would not survive this with the American public and American self-perception. However, the Us would make sure to not overstep the triggerline to a nuclear retaliation by Russia against the US.



And that is where it is uncertain grounds, because nobody can say how sane the Russian leaderhsip still is and where their triggerlines runs along. Its possible that it is defined as low ranking already as loosing Crimea, although as explained this would trigger an american conventional retaliation across all Ukraine and a wipe-out of any Russian presence on the ground. This would not be acchieved due to air power, the war against Yugoslavia was surprisingly ineffective regarding the attacks on military units, tanks, and artillery, the campaign was more successful where it taregetted what is called critical infrastructure (bridges, powerplants, water supply and the likes) - but the targetted army units on the ground were anything but impressed and later pulle dout in an organised and well-sorted fashion, without the significant losses the heavy bombardement let the West expect, British intel later said that over 90% of air attacks on army vechilkes liek tnaks and artilelry fell for dummyies made of rubber and wood or failed due to clever use of cover provided by urban surrounding. But now - is twenty years later. I assume the air campaing against russian ground forces would be successful due to the incompetence and lacking skill shown by he Russians - this is the argument here. But one must expect that they do not send their untrained conscripts into high tech air defence assets, so - it remains impossible to exactly predict the outcome here.