The Saga of Ukraine and F-16s: Procedures (a.k.a. ‘Part 2’)

Permit me to introduce: these are the six Walton hatchlings, in a nest behind my home.

….and yes, I’m naming them after ‘famous TV-families from the USA’ - depending on position of their nest, because there are numerous swallow-nests around my home. Therefore, there are also Millers, and Simpsons, etc.

Arguably, it’s a photo from the last week: meanwhile, they’re all flying. And, as ‘everybody knows’, swallows are master fliers: people that get to see and follow them for at least a minute, are often stunned by their acrobatics…

The mass of us, humans, ‘simply knows that swallows fly’.

….but, hands up those who know: how do swallows learn to fly…..?

The point is: swallows do not simply jump out of their nests and start flying. They do so in the course of a well-organised process – in which it’s not only their parents who are guiding them, but also neighbours (especially grown-up swallows that do not have their own nests, for whatever reason).

Essentially, the ‘procedure’ is something like this: as first, they are making ‘hops’; gliding jumps of 1-2 metres, from – for example - one roof beam to the other. Their parents are prompting them into ‘more’ only once they’ve mastered that part. As next, and if there is such a human-made ‘cover’, they’ll be flying circles underneath the roof of the old barn. I call that ‘flying circus’, because it often happens there are 3-4-5-6 hatchlings plus one or another adult, fluttering around. Again, and again, and again, until kids master the arts of controlling their wings and body.

Although heavily dependent on humans for survival (because where there are humans, there are also insects swallows eat; plus, we’re constructing buildings they are using to build their nests), if a human, or a cat approaches, one can hear one of parents ‘screaming’ alert. And continuing to do so until there’s no threat any more. If any of hatchlings happens to… actually: ‘jump the wrong way’, especially down to the ground - all hell breaks loose! All the grown-up swallows from the neighbourhood (and that can be 20 or even more) are flying around them: making mock dives towards the threat, while trying to prompt the – obviously: still very dumb (since inexperienced) – hatchlings into another ‘hop’, preferably in direction of safety.

And all the while, in between of every single hop, there are longer breaks, when they all – parents, hatchlings and other ‘aides and instructors’, are ‘just sitting there’: taking rest; kids are feed by parents, looking at the world around them… something like this:

From right to left: six Walton-hatchlings, two parents and an ‘aide’…

Once hatchlings have mastered their first two phases of flight training, their parents are prompting them out of the barn and to. For example, the power line or any other ‘good observation post’, outside. There, they can see the world around them, learn to orientate. Then they’re taking them out for their first flights, teach them to master flying when it’s windy or raining, all the time around the building where they were born. I.e. ‘around the base’… something like ‘final exams’ are flights over nearby laws and fields, to hunt crickets and other insects…

Sadly: flight accidents are a regular occurrence. The biggest threat is for hatchlings to fall out of nests before they can fly. Or to land on the ground while not yet really flying. If they can’t hop away, or if they’re too dumb to do so on time, they’re near certain to get eaten by cats. Or they fly against windows, or doors painted in dark colours. Some recover from the collision, others are dead on the spot….

Point is: swallows have very specific, strict procedures for teaching their kids to fly. It’s a step-by-step method taking about two weeks, during which the kids learn to control their wings and body, and to navigate. Based upon experiences from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, these procedures are meant to accelerate the flight training of the kids, while keeping it as safe as possible.

***

Why am I explaining this?

Because, based on reactions to the publishing of the Overture/Part 1 of this feature, all too many people do not understand the very basics of the way armed forces are functioning. Because, apparently, the mass of people in question do not understand the importance of ‘procedures’.

….and, because it’s not much different in regards of humans and military flying.

Sure, our flight training is taking much longer, because we do not have wings, the sky is not our natural element, and we need extremely complex machinery to be able to fly. Should there be any doubts in this regards just check how long it took any of us to learn to walk, and mind: walking on the ground is our natural element.

Unsurprisingly, learning to fly aircraft requires a set of strict procedures.

Indeed: operating an armed force requires a set of strict procedures. If there are no procedures, one is not commanding an armed force, but leading an armed mob in which people making that mob are the least safe, first and foremost.

Ideally, an armed service is going to have procedures (and resulting ‘plan’) for all eventualities. Oversimplified, they say something like, ‘in the case of A, do B’, or, ‘in the case of C, do D or E’…

Correspondingly, procedures are the essence of every military service. They are the fundamental rules. And the term ‘discipline’ is actually defining the practice of adhering to the procedures.

Good example? How about procedures for planning, decision-making process and troop-leading of the US Air Force (PDF)?

You don’t want to do that file to yourself? It doesn’t matter?

Well, I would say, it does. Let me offer you a good example why.

***

When chatting with officers from the European NATO-members, I often hear a lots of belittling of practices exercised in the US armed forces. Particularly the US-American ‘checklist-mindset’. Kind of, ‘Americans can’t think on their own, need a checklist for everything’…

Actual purpose of the US military procedures (and resulting checklists) is to teach people to think in organised and structured fashion. As humans, we’re highly intelligent. However, being intelligent is making us lazy and forgettable, too. Therefore, we need structured thinking if we’re to run a military service.

….for example - and with which we’re back to one of photos form the Overture/Part 1: to avoid ordering your Su-27s to land on a stretch of highway without first checking that stretch of the highway for possible road signs…

…because, well, word is that there are road signs next to roads, so also highways… as ‘everybody knows’, right?

Just, who exactly is actually responsible for thinking about that fact when the time comes to do so? …and when should he or she do so?

That’s regulated by procedures.

***

To make sure: it’s not like procedures and resulting regulations (so also safety precautions) are always working, ‘1000% sure’.

Indeed, even all of the drill and procedures are often anything else than enough to keep the US armed forces (or any other armed forces of NATO-members) entirely free of ‘testosterone-motivated’ behaviour. Perhaps the most dramatic example was so nicely provided back in 1994 by that… ‘famous’… B-52-pilot, who ended his career (plus that of everybody else on board, plus that of the irreplaceable bomber he flew, and few of responsible superiors), in the following fashion:

….which in turn is making it clear: there is never an end of demand for organised and structured thinking, and, therefore, never an end for updated procedures.

Indeed: there is a constant need for updating procedures.

***

The reason for requirement for organised and structured thinking, for procedures – including such issues like ‘safety precautions’ (so often, and so happily ridiculed by all too many people) – is not to force everybody to think the same way, but: to make sure everybody is reliable. Reliable through considering all the options, including not only the ‘nice’ and/or ‘pleasant’, but also the most ‘negative ones’: indeed, making sure people are capable of objective analysis, critical thinking, and thus learning from own mistakes (first and foremost, and then from mistakes of their colleagues, too).

Unsurprisingly, people consistently proving themselves as unable of objective analysis, critical thinking, unable of learning from own mistakes, constantly providing all sorts of unrelated excuses, and superimposing ‘ah, it’s going to be OK’-way of thinking, are perceived as ‘unreliable’.

….indeed: because there are entire nations with what is called the ‘penchant for ignoring uncomfortable facts’ – logically, there are also entire nations considered precisely that: unreliable.

(And mind: it’s not like really ‘every single member of the nation’ is ‘unreliable’, but: that’s how prejudices come into being….but, when an entire nation earns itself the reputation of being ‘unreliable’…. sigh.. it’s hard to earn oneself a different reputation…)

What a surprise then, thanks to such thinking – or, at least: that way of presenting themselves in the public – Ukrainian political- and military leadership appear anything else than ‘reliable’ to the Western military commanders. With the result that the ZSU (and thus the PSU, plus all of Ukraine) is meanwhile more distant from NATO-membership nowadays, than it was few years ago. Because, their own behaviour is all the while prompting the generals ‘there’, in the West, to ask themselves: ‘if they (Ukrainians) are behaving this way now, while still trying to become a member, how are they going to behave once they do become a member?’

Correspondingly, the actual definition of becoming a NATO-member is not, ‘ah, we’ve got Western equipment and that’s making us look so cool, exactly like a Western armed force’; even less so does this automatically translate into, ‘we’re fighting as good or even better than NATO’, or anything even distantly like, ‘we’ve beaten the Russians, and Acadians, and Babylonians…’.

Instead, the definition of becoming a NATO-member is something like:

‘the armed force in question has proven itself as applying the practice of thinking in organised and structured fashion, and thus as capable of critical and objective self-assessment – and that in every aspect of its every-day work’.

I.e. armed forces of NATO-members (well, at least most of them), have proven themselves of being capable of adhering to specific set of military procedures, resulting in (between others) becoming capable of constructive cooperation.  

‘Disclaimer’: all of this does not mean that all NATO armed forces are all the time sticking to these ‘basic rules’, ‘following the book to the last dot and comma’, permanently sticking to every single of their own procedures. It also does not mean that they would do better than the ZSU when fighting the Russians. It does not mean the NATO procedures are better or worse, or that there are no other armed forces on this planet that are ‘right’ (or wrong) while ‘having their own procedures’.

It only means that this is how NATO expects armed forces of member states to think and to operate.

….and how NATO expects armed forces of any state that wants to join to think and to operate.

Whether then one or another membership-candidate does so, or not, is on the candidate in question. But: whoever is refusing to think and operate this way, don’t complain if you’re not accepted. And don’t claim you’re ‘already in NATO’ – because you’re, certainly, not.

***

Why is the entire ‘wall of text’ I’ve used to explain all of this ‘important’?

In Ukraine, the job of defining and thus ‘writing’ military procedures is that of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I’m abbreviating it with ‘GenStab-U’.

Simply expressed: the GenStab-U is not doing that. Instead, it’s busying itself with commanding the force. Which, even by its own procedures, is none of GenStab-U’s business. With the result that, the ZSU (and thus the PSU) is still using the old procedures left over from the Soviet times, as its basic rules. Unsurprisingly, for (‘meanwhile’ and ‘at least’), 10 years, all the possible NATO-advisors are begging and pleading the GenStab-U to write a new set of procedures: one that would adapt the force to NATO-rules.

But, the GenStab-U remains preoccupied with commanding instead. See: ‘they’ve got better and more urgent things to do’ – than to reform the entire force.

….and that despite all the combat experiences of the last 10 years.

The unsurprising result is that through all of this time, cadets for officer commissions are all trained along old, Soviet-style procedures… and this although at least commanders that have proven their mettle in combat, know that this is ‘wrong’, and the procedures are obsolete.

Example for ‘results’?

One of core procedures, and thus the core characteristics of well-structured military thinking is for superiors to care about their troops. To care about avoiding their troops being killed or wounded. To care about their safety and well-being.

What a surprise, thanks to the applicaiton of old Soviet-style procedures, this way of thinking is still unknown to the majority of Ukrainian generals, and several of them are known as ‘butchers’. For example: what a surprise just a week or two after General Sodol was dismissed from his position, it became known that troops for whom he used to be responsible – Ukrainian Marines and Territorial Defence units deployed in the Krynky bridgehead – have, since summer the last year, suffered a loss of 262 killed in action and 788 missing in action (see: body was never found again).

….and, for what? For, essentially, ‘trying to disturb the Russian defences in the Orikhiv area, by activity in their flank’… I.e. for a ‘diversionary/supporting’ operation. Anything else but ‘main effort’.

***

How is this relevant to the topic ‘F-16s for Ukraine’, you might ask…

Well, put yourself into their boots: think about what happens when officers, pilots and ground crews of the PSU are ‘sent West’ to train on F-16s?

In the PSU, thanks to the GenStab-U not re-writing the old Soviet procedures, not adapting these to necessities of new times, the pilot training is consisting of slow, repetitive exercises – ‘thanks’ to which it takes 8-12 years to produce a ‘fully qualified pilot.’ Eight to twelve years for a pilot to completely master the aircraft type he/she flies, enabling him/her to fly all sorts of combat operations that type is meant to fly.

In NATO, the procedure is to train the pilot to master a combat aircraft – completely – in a matter of some 6-12 months. And then to run the pilot through gradual qualifications in tactics (see: pair leader, flight leader, weapons/tactics specialist etc.). I.e. it’s something like diametrically opposite to the way the PSU’s procedures.

And that’s just about pilots. It’s the same in regards of maintenance of aircraft, maintenance of bases, administration, supply, handling of weaponry etc., etc., etc.

And now think of the following: what is going to happen with Ukrainian pilots taught to fly F-16s – when they return to the PSU?

Sure, many of procedures are ‘similar’, even ‘familiar’. However, in grand total, an unavoidable result is a sort of ‘culture shock’.

The air force is probably going to need an entirely new unit just to operate the type, because the Western/NATO procedures in regards of maintenance, administration etc., etc., etc., are so fundamentally different from what the PSU is usually doing, that the F-16 is not going to ‘fit’ into the force. Because, in reality, there is no way to operate an F-16 the way one operates a MiG-29. There are similarities, no doubt, but: it’s simply not the same.

Of course, many Ukrainians are going to explain that it is. Indeed, that procedures ‘do not matter; they’re going to adapt F-16s to the PSU’. Because the thinking there is something like ‘it’s like with AR-15 instead of AK-47’: because – at least for the majority of officers – it’s not about ‘entirely different set of procedures for training, administration, planning, and combat deployment’…

Well, thinking of it: then the West could supply not only EF-2000s, but also F-35s and B-2s to Ukraine, too, and right away.

Just…. well: don’t be surprised if the results of their combat deployment wouldn’t be different to those of combat deployment of types currently operated by the PSU, like MiG-29, Su-24, Su-25, Su-27…i.e. if we then get to see this, again - but with the intake of an F-16: