I'm definitely not an expert. Still, the Brazilian program could be a model fro the longer term Ukraine solution, assuming Ukraine can somehow survive the present hostilities. The versatility and support simplicity of the Gripen make it an almost obvious choice. In the meantime there are plenty of obvious choices now, mostly with US source and supply. All of those do require much more robust support than could be deployed quickly. For quick deployment there seem to be no alternative than more MIG those are not rare.
I do suspect the immediate important issues are command and control help, plus high-altitude surface to air missiles and drones (loitering can help. If they are to survive do they not need to be able to destroy logistical support of the Russian forces in Crimea, Belarus and Russia? Somehow the fight needs to be offensive if this si to end favorably.
Is that not true? It seems NATO and US military people have that sort of conclusion, but politically such a thing is fraught. The world needs to face reality.
Anyway, Sweden has long been really efficient in military tactical and strategic solutions. Were those resources somehow to be deployed many equations would change.
When Putin's stated opinions and goals have been clear ever since he was in Saint Petersburg I really cannot understand how the world keeps dithering. He'll never stop until the world stops him. Ukraine cannot do it alone. No single country can.
I have been in too many war zones even though I have never been a military person. Ones like this one never end until the aggressors are stopped or the defenders are obliterated.
Even those have festering resentments that can arise decades or even centuries later. In this one the NATO members and non-member allies have thus far kept Imperial Russia contained. That is only stoppable with overwhelming strength and unshakable resolve. Northern Europeans all understand history. The North and South Americans almost always fail to understand. They maintain their ignorance of China and nearly all of Asia. Now all that ignorance has combined with greed fro cheap fossil fuels.
Sorry for my rant. it is probably unhelpful.
The bulk of dictators are run of the mill type. They make life a mess for their citizens, but rarely pose much of a threat to other countries. The world has many dictators or democratically elected leaders who are taking their countries in that direction including most of Africa and Asia. It would be convenient for the country's people if their dictator left and was replaced by a more benevolent leader, but most of these people pose little threat to the rest of the world.
Then occasionally someone comes along who is truly dangerous. People who understand Psychology very well might spot the unicorn dictator who is dangerous, but the bulk of the world's population misses them until it's too late. The rest of Europe thought Hitler was a run of the mill dictator until it was too late.
My partner is something of an expert on personality disorders. She can spot one just about anywhere. Her mother had a borderline PD and her ex-BIL had
an anti-social PD, plus she has a masters in Psych. I recognize them when she points them out to me because I was cyberstalked by a borderline a little over 20 years ago. I wouldn't have believed they existed until I had my run in. People with PDs have alien thought processes to the rest of the world. The successful ones learn how to mask it and act "normal" for at least short periods of time so people think they are dealing with a normal human when really it's an alien in disguise.
Some combinations of PDs especially combined with some successful camouflage techniques can be very dangerous. My partner thinks Putin is probably primarily anti-social with some narcissistic mixed in. But he's learned how to come off as a regular dictator rather than a dangerous one. So he's been working to entangle Europe so much economically they couldn't afford to break away. He thought he had them before this war. He's still making money from oil and gas because of the entanglements.
Most people who don't have first hand experience of getting hurt with one or more of the more dangerous PDs (borderline, narcissistic, or anti-social) have a hard time believing these people actually exist and are more likely to accept the mask these people put up at face value.
Putin has finally shown his true colors in a way they world can't deny any longer. He destroyed his mask. The world is going to deal with him differently from now on. He may not survive this war. Russians can be very apathetic about dictators, but they tend to get revolutionary when they lose a war.
Should have left the houses standing and spiked all their liquor bottles with arsenic.
Some women in the occupied towns in the north did something similar. They made pavlova for the entire unit occupying their town and spiked it with rat poison.
Article suggests China will continue to support Russia, including the re-supply of their military weapons. I’ve been wondering about that - if Russia did agree to a treaty, then they would likely try to restock and rebuild their military, but how. It occurred to me that, at that point, China might help them out quite a bit. But then the US should provide American planes, like the F-15s as well as Patriot Air Defense. Curious about others’ thoughts on this.
China 'preparing for war' with US, expert warns
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/04/china-preparing-for-war-with-us-expert-warns/
China is always looking for what's best for China. When Russia is down they will offer all sorts of aid, but with strings attached.
China has been preparing for war with the US and the rest of Asia for a couple of decades, but they have some problems of their own. They have even less military experience than Russia. Other than some minor skirmishes on the border with India, China has not been to war since the early 1950s.
Good militaries study every conflict and try to learn as many lessons as possible. The US and the major members of NATO are obsessive about this. China has learned to do it too. However, nothing beats first hand experience. The US thought it knew what to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they still learned a lot of lessons first hand.
China has no hands on military experience. Their only war vets are very old men at the end of their lives at this point. If China does start a war, it's inevitable they will make some major mistakes. Who knows if they will be severe enough to doom their operation or not?
Regarding the retirement of the F-22s in my earlier posts, the link below was what I was getting at. Rather than retiring them, we should really reconsider giving them to our Allies, if they want them. They are very expensive to maintain, and NATO allies already have their F-35s. But now would be the time to act to save these planes before they are scrapped.
The service hopes to retire the oldest F-22s at Tyndall, ending what was once a unique identity for the Panama City community.
www.yahoo.com
Giving another country a hanger queen in a war or even under a serious threat is a bad idea. Ukraine needs planes that can be kept in the air as much as possible in a future conflict. The fact the F-22 has some highly classified tech is another reason not to give them away to anyone, but the high maintenance problem is a deal killer in itself.
The F-22s probably won't be scrapped, they will be put into mothballs in Arizona. The US does that with most of its military hardware that still has life left in it.
What the Ukrainians are most likely to get are F-16s. The US has a lot in storage, it's so widely used that getting spares from allies in an emergency would be easy, and it's one of the easiest to maintain US jets. It's old, but still quite capable. They may get some F-18s and F-15s too as countries replace them with F-35s. Until the Ukrainian economy recovers from this war they will be getting hand-me-down planes, but eventually they may upgrade to F-35s.
