The Long Range Missile Fallacy

James De Burghe November 2024

The recent decision by the United States, France and the UK to allow Ukraine to make long range missile attacks on the Russian federation has been hyped into a level of importance that it does not deserve in military tactical terms and understated dramatically in terms of its importance in relations to world peace.

In tactical terms these missiles have already been used to bombard Russia and Russian troops and large numbers of them have been destroyed by Russian air defence systems. Whether they are used as short range or long  range weapons makes little difference to their inability to effectively penetrate the Russian air defences. Of equal importance is the straightforward fact that neither the US or Europe has large stocks of these weapons, the numbers available for shipment to Ukraine is limited to a maximum of 2000 warheads which at their current rate of reaching a target equates to less than 100 actual on target hits, this is not a significant loss to the Russian Federation.

Their actual danger is far more related to the fact that their use as long range weapons by Ukraine cannot be achieved without the direct and physical assistance of their donors and the use of US military satellite targetting systems. These systems are regarded as top secret by the US and European militaries and the Ukraine military has no access to them. As a result of the above then the US, UK, and France would become direct participants in acts of war directed at the Russian Federation who would be fully entitled under international law to respond to those attacks by attacks on the nations involved in supplying and targetting these missiles. This would widen the war into a direct conflict between the Russian Federation and France, the UK, and the US. Almost certainly the rest of NATO would become involved. 

A war between NATO and the Russian Federation would be intense and at the current levels of military preparedness very much in Russia’s favour. The Russian Army strength would grow from its current 1.3 million men to around 2.5 million men very rapidly thus Russia would outman the NATO capability of around 500,000 men from the outset. Russian munitions and weapons production is ten times greater than that of all the NATO states combined and is built in line of compatibility, whereas NATO weapons do not always have compatible munitions creating a larger logistics burden for NATO. Qualitative comparisons between the Russian and NATO weapon systems comes down decisively  in favour of Russia as has been proved over the past two years of the Ukraine conflict. In terms of airpower again Russia holds the edge both in terms of air defence and air offence, it latest fighters holding a very superior edge over the F22 and F35 American front  line aircraft. Russia’s frontline missile systems using the very latest hypersonic capability can penetrate NATO air defence systems with ease. They have the range to easily reach NATO facilities across the Baltic States and western Europe destroying military infrastructure, communications facilities, air bases, troop training and concentration areas, logistic centres and industrial weapon production facilities. The Russian’s have the ability and the forces required to destroy NATO’s spy satellites very quickly leaving NATO blind in terms of missile targetting and military intelligence.

The most frightening aspect of this situation is the ease by which it can escalate into a full blown world war. Russia too has military mutual defence pacts, the most important being with Belarus and North Korea in the case of a full blown war between Russia and NATO then almost certainly they would join with Russia. Bringing two million more troops into the equations along with armour, artillery and logistic support. The war would inevitably spread to the North Pacific region where Russia would attack US bases that threaten her eastern flank including US bases in Japan and Okinawa.  North Korea would inevitably attack the US bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Taiwan, South Korea would then attack North Korea this combined with fleet engagements between the Russian navy and US and possibly Australian warships would inevitably drag China into the conflict. At that point the entire US Island Chain in the Pacific would come under attack  as would the Chinese eastern seaboard.

Russia would attack the US bases in the middle east  and almost certainly Israel would attack the Russian bases in Syria. Iraq, assisted by Iran would attack the US and British bases on its territory.

After that the waverers and those who have shifted from one side to the other and back again would have to decide on which side they considered likely to win, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Türkiye et al would all be dragged into supporting one side or the other.

The first country to us nuclear weapons, whether strategic or tactical, would unleash the insanity that would perhaps destroy humanity.