Ukraine: Armageddon on hold

By Richard North - September 14, 2024

If the focus on Ukraine’s permission to use allied-supplied long-range weapons on targets inside Russia, is a “distraction”, as I asserted yesterday, then the legacy media have bought into it, hook line and sinker.

With coverage of the ground war already thin, this has been almost completely abandoned by the legacy media in favour of their preferred “bigger picture”, which may or may not be relevant to the conflict.

Certainly, in some quarters there has been an elevated level of hype, with the Telegraph’s village idiot, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, sounding off about the merits of using the UK’s Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile against “Russian forces”, which, he says, “could change the course of the war.

In actuality, the Ukrainians – if allowed to use the weapons on targets inside Russia – are as likely to use them against civilian infrastructure, or large military installations, rather than against mobile forces as such, which means that they will have almost no impact on the ground battle.

With the Storm Shadow, there is a reason for this. Although an air-launched weapon, they use the Russian-built Su-24 bombers as the launch platform. And, to get it working with an aircraft for which it was never intended, there has been no attempt to integrate the missile’s targeting software with the aircraft’s avionics.

This means that the missile must be pre-programmed on the ground and once the targeting instructions are uploaded, they cannot be changed while the aircraft is in flight. Thus, there is no targeting flexibility and it would be unwise to use the missile against mobile targets – despite claims to the contrary – as the missile cannot be redirected should the coordinates change during the flight.

Against fixed targets, though the effect is bound to be limited. Although a highly sophisticated weapons, the business end of the Storm Shadow is nothing more than a 1,000lb bomb. Given that the unit cost is in the order of £2 million, the number available is bound to be limited.

Yet, if the weapon is to be used in what amounts to an exercise in strategic bombing, where non-nuclear ordnance is used quantity is everything, as experience in previous conflicts has demonstrated.

Even though the Luftwaffe’s 1940 Blitz on London had a devastating effect, the 12,000 tons, or so, of high explosive and incendiaries had no material effect on the British war effort.

Even the much heavier strategic bombing in Europe by the Allies did not have a war-winning effect, the experience showing that belligerent countries are extraordinarily resilient, and can take enormous punishment from conventional bombing. Given a country as large as Russia, and the distances involved, it is hard to accept that attacks would have anything more than a nuisance effect.

The most famous example of the failure of airpower comes from the US during the Vietnam conflict, when double the amount of bombs was dropped between 1965 and 1975 – amounting to 7.5 million tons – than on Europe and Asia during World War II.

Considering that a single B-52 strategic bomber of the Vietnam era could deliver 108 500lb bombs – equivalent in explosive effect to over 50 Storm Shadows – this puts any Ukrainian campaign in perspective. For sure, the Storm Shadow is a precision weapon but, as Stalin once observed, quantity has a quality all its own.

As for the contribution of the United States to Ukraine’s long-range arsenal, this is the ATACMS tactical, ground-launched ballistic missile, with a warhead of 472lb and a more modest range (compared to Storm Shadow’s range of 300 miles) of 190 miles. They are scarcely less expensive and are also in limited supply.

Nevertheless, as we know, Putin is taking very seriously the prospect of long-range weapons targeted at his country – or, at least, is making a very public show of so doing.

Last Thursday, he raised the temperature of the debate by declaring that if there was an agreement at the then projected summit between Starmer and Biden yesterday, he would take it as meaning that “NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia”.

However slight, on this Putin may have a point, as the successful use of these weapons is not just a matter of supply. The Ukrainians, without a capability of their own, relay on Nato assets (largely US and British satellites and reconnaissance aircraft and drones) to provide timely targeting intelligence.

Furthermore, because of the complexity of the weapons, it is almost certainly the case that Nato technicians are involved in their maintenance, preparing them for missions and uploading targeting data. As such, Zelensky’s Nato allies could be regarded as co-belligerents.

This, for the moment at least, does not seem to trouble Zelensky, who is voluble in his complaints about the restrictions imposed on the use of the weapons and the limited numbers supplied.

That extended use could escalate the conflict is certainly a factor though, leading to as yet unspecified retaliation from the Russians – although the use of tactical nuclear weapons has not been ruled out.

Lord Kim Darroch, Britain’s former national security adviser, is concerned about the dangers of escalation, warning that just because Putin had previously not carried through on threats of reprisals when the west supplied battle tanks and missiles to Ukraine, it did not mean the same would apply to cruise missile strikes on his territory.

“If they are confident that he’s bluffing, then fine”, Darroch says. “But he’s bluffing until he isn’t”. And, unlike the Telegraph’s village idiot, Darroch is not convinced that using Storm Shadow missiles to hit targets in Russia would be a decisive factor in the war.

By this measure, exposing the West to the risk of WWIII and the possibility of nuclear Armageddon might not actually confer any advantage to Ukraine, seems hardly worth the risk.

And just to ram the message home, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, yesterday told the UN security council that if the west allowed Kiev to conduct strikes deep into his country then Nato countries would be “conducting direct war with Russia”.

“The facts are”, he said, “that Nato will be a direct party to hostilities against a nuclear power”, adding: “I think you shouldn’t forget about this and think about the consequences”.

As it turns out, the Friday summit (pictured) – despite running for two hours in the White House – proved to be unproductive, with Biden putting off any decision on the use of the weapons.

Predictably, Zelensky is a tad unhappy, accusing the West of emboldening Putin. He questions (and not for the first time) Britain and America’s commitment to supporting Ukraine’s defence against Russia, expressing frustration at the time it was taking for them to make the decision to authorise strikes across the border.

For those who are ambivalent on the issue, it is germane that the Oaf Johnson met Zelensky yesterday, declaring of the Ukrainians: “It is obvious that they should be able to use Storm Shadow, Scalp and ATACMS as fast as possible against targets in Russia itself. Every day that goes by means more pointless and tragic loss of Ukrainian lives”.

Clearly, that man supporting such use provides some guidance as which line to take, especially when he is joined by former defence secretary, Grant Shapps, who opined that the summit was “a defining moment for supporting democracy”, stating: “no more words, it’s time for the West to take real action”.

For the moment though, Armageddon has been put on hold and, in the absence of any swift development, the media might have to face the prospect of writing something coherent about the ground war.

Failing that, there is always this vital issue to deal with, where the media can stay in its comfort zone.