NATO NO-FLY ZONE DOES NOT HAVE WINGS

摘要

It has been very hard for Western leaders to resist the Ukrainians' continued pleas for a No Fly Zone (NFZ) but in reality it would mean combat with Russia. As US President Joe Biden pointed out - and a NFZ could not be implemented without the USA's peerless capabilities - it would mean WW3. Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials had bluntly suggested that their nation's current deterrent doctrine would even permit a nuclear weapons response to a NFZ. See the April edition of this magazine for more on Russia's nuclear doctrine. Setting that chilling threat to one side, in pure military and technical terms the West is surely capable of running a NFZ. Russian airpower is outclassed by Western fifth generation combat aircraft like the F/A-22 and the F-35. But, the time and place fa or western air forces to try NFZ against Russia was, perhaps, over Aleppo in 2016, to prevent destruction of that city. It could be argued that a failure not to cost many thousands of civilian lives.