[HN Gopher] U.S. stunned by Poland's fighter jet offer
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U.S. stunned by Poland's fighter jet offer
Author : colinprince
Score : 22 points
Date : 2022-03-09 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| steve_gh wrote:
| By refusing the US is sending a message - they can change their
| minds if the Russians don't negotiate
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Considering the speed and scale of sanctions against Russia, I
| am thinking that the US might actually be after 'regime change'
| in Russia. If so, is ending the war now the best option to
| reach that goal?
|
| In any case, it seems that everyone want to avoid escalation
| and being dragged into the military conflict.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| The US wants Russia to stop trying to attack and annex its
| neighbors, including Ukraine.
|
| My understanding is that Putin can't stop the invasion of
| Ukraine without looking so weak that he is liable to be
| immediately pushed out of power (with a decent chance of the
| subsequent regime coming up with some reason to execute him,
| as he would remain a threat to the new regime).
|
| The result is that while the US does not necessarily want a
| Russian regime change per se (after all, who is to say that
| the next regime won't be worse), one is pretty much a
| practical requirement to archive what they do want.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think the two main interests of the US in all that are to
| weaken Russia as much as possible and to break the close
| relationship with China, with domino effects in Belarus and
| Kazakhstan (which would hit China's interests as well).
|
| So ideally they want a weak, Western-friendly regime. But
| that may be wishful thinking because that's not Russia's
| historical stance and interests. Whatever we think of
| Putin, his general aims are an independent, strong and
| powerful Russia that gains some of the ground lost, which
| are quite aligned with Russia's historical behaviour.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think the US would prefer a strong but US-friendly
| Russia to counter other actors in the area. Strong does
| not mean expansionist.
|
| Trying to set-up regimes is mostly miss --we have quite a
| bit of experience in that area including Ukraine with the
| Orange revolution, KSA... and obviously many other places
| as well. Russia/the SU have an equal amount of experience
| but have had better results --served better (Cuba,
| Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc.)
| smackeyacky wrote:
| That is an interesting technical challenge for Poland - having to
| remove any NATO specific telecommunication gear before handing
| the jets over. Given they probably don't want to reveal what is
| "sensitive" (guessing encrypted radios and battle network stuff)
| the idea of trying to pull that gear and leave the Migs flyable
| by Ukraine might take months. Let alone the political and legal
| issues of transferring those planes.
|
| It's not like sending Spitfires overseas in a pine box any more.
| rosndo wrote:
| I've not worked with fancy modern(ized). fighter jets, but if
| they're anything like normal planes this stuff is probably not
| very hard to pull out.
|
| But the closest I've gotten to messing around with this stuff
| is my L39 (terrible idea, should've bought a boat instead. wife
| hates me now), which did indeed come with some soviet era kit
| screwed on. Came off easily enough after removing a couple of
| screws.
|
| I'd be surprised if the interesting parts of the radio
| equipment they've screwed onto the old MiGs would take much
| more than that to remove.
|
| Aviation authority approvals might take months, but I can't
| imagine that being an issue for military planes like this.
| gumby wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the NATO package was not just
| circuit modules but certain kinds of antennas, perhaps
| countermeasures that required modification of the chassis
| etc. And the original equipment might not be around.
|
| Just my uninformed speculation though.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" It's not like sending Spitfires overseas in a pine box any
| more. "_
|
| I found a photo of what this looks like (different airplane,
| but same era):
|
| https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/012129
| zeruch wrote:
| It is a very unorthodox move by Poland, but possibly born of its
| own conservative, tough-guy leadership that wants to send its own
| message to its neighborhood that if Russia is feeling
| expansionist, Poland isn't going to sit idle. Since it is next to
| Belarus (an accomplice to Russia right now) this may be as much
| directed at them as it is Putin.
| 0xy wrote:
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