Let the Tigers Fly Again -- in Ukraine?

 

I was amazed to read, in the Naval Institute Proceedings for April, an argument from Lt Taylor Buck, an Annapolis graduate and USN Hawkeye pilot, that we should "resurrect the American Volunteer Group in Ukraine." It wasn't the first time I've seen the notion in print, but previously it's been limited to op-eds in small-city newspapers, amplifying a proposal by Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Mr Prince has long been fascinated by the AVG, and in 2017 he urged the Trump administration to use the concept to extricate American servicemen from Afghanistan. More recently, he pitched it to the Biden administration as a way to head off a Russian invasion of Ukraine. And when Russia did invade on February 24, he complained on Fox News: "Trust me," he said, "If 140 ex-American combat aircraft showed up by well-flown, aggressive, carnivore pilots, believe me, Putin would not have invaded."

Well, maybe not, though I'm not sure why the pilots' diet would have been a factor. But Mr Prince didn't have to worry about the repercussions if he were wrong, while the US president did, so it came to nothing. Even Poland's offer to supply some MiG-29s came with a significant hitch: the fourth-generation fighters couldn't fly directly to Ukraine, but must detour through Ramstein AFB in Germany, and even that seemed too "provocative" by the Biden administration. 

 I'm inclined to go with the British on this: that Russia wouldn't escalate his war if Ukraine acquired a few jet fighters. Still, laundering them through an American airbase did seem a bit too much. It's irritating that the highly manueverable fighters were stranded in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union imploded in 1990. Even Germany got some, absorbed from the former East German air force and flown by American pilots to familiarize themselves with an air-superiority fighter good enough to counter the F-15s and F-16. Ukraine, Poland, and Moldova also wound up with a score or so of MiG-29s, and according to one website I checked on the subject, in 1996 the US actually bought 21 of Moldova's MiGs, including all of its nuclear-capable MiG-29Cs, for $40 million cash and humanitarian and defense aid. Apparently some or all of those ex-Moldovan aircraft are on offer to Kyiv as spare part, to be cannibalized to keep the Ukrainian MiGs flying. (That's a Ukrainian MiG in the photo above.) But they won't be airworthy in themselves, and they certainly won't have American pilots, whether carnivorous or vegan. Slavi Ukraini! -- Dan Ford