Yaakov C Lui-Hyden
1 min readAug 3, 2022

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Sounds cool but you just can’t hand the keys over to a F-16 and say go for it. Furthermore, the notion of closing the skies is a sad myth and totally unrealistic. Firstly, Russia is only using a tiny fraction of its Air Force, less than 100 when it has more than 1500 sitting around. We can ask all kinds of questions why that is, but it is not currently an air war. Secondly, to fly effectively everywhere would require taking out the surface to air batteries and radar installations in Russia and Belarus- which escalates things dramatically. You can’t fly and bomb targets in Ukraine near the border regions without Russian anti-aircraft batteries within Russia painting you a target. Which is why NATO can’t close the skies or it would be war with Russia, and Ukraine having such aircraft isn’t the best use of resources either. What they need is SAM batteries for themselves, short range manpads and longer range stuff like the S-300- which is an excellent platform equal to anything in the west and they use already. The rest comes down to artillery shells, HIMARS and man portable anti tank weapons- in sufficient numbers. Yet the west is starting to run low on these too, it’s just hoped and believed the Russians are running out faster.

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Yaakov C Lui-Hyden
Yaakov C Lui-Hyden

Written by Yaakov C Lui-Hyden

Yaakov is a world traveller and is accused of being an Australian. Published several novels. He writes about travel, writing, geopolitics and trading.

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