Ukraine needs advanced U.S. drones
“In war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
On the afternoon of June 18, 1815, near the Belgian village of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington said: “Hard pounding, this, gentlemen: let’s see who will pound the longest.” If Ukraine is given material aid equivalent to one-fourth of that nation’s moral resources, Ukraine can prevail against the Russian invaders, which means, at a minimum, restoration of the status quo ante Feb. 24. So, the immediate imperative is to supply Ukraine with the most sophisticated and dangerous U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), a.k.a. drones, which can be force-multipliers for Ukraine’s hard pounding of the Russians.
So far, the most consequential weapon transferred to Ukraine has been the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), whose munitions have the long reach and accuracy necessary to immediately imperil Russian artillery pieces. UAVS can locate Russian artillery when they unleash their often-indiscriminate attacks on urban population centers before the artillery can be moved to avoid a counterstrike.
Russia’s invasion was, by the standards of the 19451946 Nuremberg tribunal, a war crime. The conduct of the war is another. Russia’s military doctrine, which ratifies that nation’s traditional practices, stresses mass fire systems to crush the enemy’s military in battles, and to intimidate and demoralize the enemy’s population. By the end of August, the invaders’ artillery had fired more than 10 million rounds — about 60,000 rounds per day. The invasion’s death toll of Ukrainian noncombatants is estimated in the tens of thousands.
Advanced U.S. drones combine intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting and strike capabilities. Such drones can be sent into, and transform, a battle immediately, saving civilian lives by making Russia’s terror tactics terrifying for those who are firing the artillery or launching low-level airstrikes.
A bipartisan group of 17 members of Congress has urged Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to immediately magnify Ukraine’s technological advantage by expediting delivery to Ukraine of Gray Eagle and/or Reaper drones, thereby making distant Russian ammunition dumps and command centers — including generals and other senior officers — vulnerable. The key is knowing the target’s location in all weather, day or night. Advanced drones can defeat Russia’s defenses by seeing them from long range.
The military historian Max Hastings writes for Bloomberg, perhaps too sanguinely: “Today’s major powers have developed a better understanding of how to fight each other through proxies, without blowing up the world, since their first major experience with the phenomenon following the North Korean invasion of the South in June 1950.” The proxy nature of NATO’S fight against Russia would not be altered by the delivery of the most sophisticated drones, any more than it was by the tremendous impact of giving Ukraine HIMARS.
Henry Kissinger, a realist who reasons from facts and knows that events put facts in flux, tells the Wall Street Journal: After Russia’s criminal savagery in Ukraine, “now I consider, one way or the other, formally or not, Ukraine has to be treated in the aftermath of this as a member of NATO.” This fact, which it is, strengthens the case for giving Ukraine weapons that will help it produce battlefield results commensurate with its future status as a member of the European Union and, “formally or not,” NATO.
Furthermore, if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threats are seen to deter the Biden administration from taking the next step that military logic entails — sophisticated drones for Ukraine — there will be two terrible consequences: Putin will repeatedly make such threats, and the nuclear nonproliferation regime will unravel as other nations’ ruthless and reckless leaders see the practicality of nuclear weapons and build them.
Additional drones should be a defining issue for Biden. He has floundered regarding many things but has resoundingly succeeded regarding the most important thing. He has ignited inflation, has made the swollen national debt into a potentially self-exploding crisis as the cost of servicing it rises, and has dispensed scalding rhetoric to a nation weary of such. No president has more needed talented speechwriters or had worse ones: In nine months, they have produced two of the worst (delivered in Atlanta and Philadelphia) speeches in presidential history. Regarding Ukraine, however, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been superb.
Blinken’s formulation is pitch-perfect: If Russia stops fighting, the war ends; if Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. If Biden stays strong, with U.S. drones as a judicious increment in punishing Putin’s brutality by reversing his aggression, Biden’s presidency will be deemed by wise historians as, on balance, a success.