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[text/stephen biddle, translation/guo han of observer.com]

since russia launched a full-scale offensive against ukraine in february 2022, the united states has provided kiev with a large amount of military aid. but this aid has long been subject to restrictions, some of which are related to the type of equipment provided, such as the united states' refusal to provide long-range missiles and fighter jets. another part involves how american weapons are used. washington has designed many measures to limit ukraine's ability to strike russia's rear, fearing that such a deep attack would lead to excessive escalation.

this position has always been controversial. ukrainian officials and external critics believe that the biden administration has exaggerated the risk of russian escalation and unnecessarily deprived kiev of key military capabilities. before making an assessment, it is important to consider the military value of launching a deep strike to ukraine - if the united states lifts restrictions and allows ukraine to obtain the necessary long-range strike capabilities, how it will change the judgment of the war situation. only in this way can we judge whether its military gains are worth the risk of escalating the conflict.

from a strictly military perspective, such restrictions are never positive. giving ukraine the ability and permission to strike deep into russian territory would certainly increase ukrainian forces’ combat effectiveness. but the difference is unlikely to be decisive. to achieve game-changing effects, ukraine would need to combine long-range strikes with tightly coordinated ground-mobile offensives, a level of organizational coordination that has eluded the ukrainian military to date. otherwise, the additional advantage ukraine gains from its ability to strike deep may not be enough to turn the tide of the war.

shaping the battlefield?

over the past year or so, the conflict in ukraine has become a war of attrition. both sides have built deep, hardened defenses that have historically proven difficult to penetrate. it is still possible for the attacker to seize ground, especially for the numerically superior russian forces, but the advance is slow and at a high cost in men and equipment. to break through the russian defenses, ukraine needs far more than a modest increase in military capabilities to transform its current positional warfare into a mobile warfare model, because only in mobile warfare can the army quickly and affordably capture large areas of land.

the recent ukrainian offensive in russia's kursk oblast illustrates how difficult it is to turn the tide of the war. the ukrainian army attacked a thinly defended section of the russian front, which allowed it to quickly seize land. but as russian reinforcements arrived, the ukrainian army's advance has slowed and it looks unlikely to achieve any major breakthroughs. a modest occupation of russian territory might strengthen ukraine's negotiating position, reduce russian military pressure on the donbas region, or weaken the russian government's political prestige, but it is unlikely to substantially change the military situation.

in principle, ukraine's enhanced ability to strike deep could change the course of the war in several ways. kyiv would be able to strike distant logistics and command targets, russian naval and air bases, army concentrations, military factories or supporting infrastructure, civilian energy industries, and political centers such as the kremlin. attacking or threatening to attack these targets would reduce the russian military's offensive effectiveness, weaken its defensive capabilities, affect the long-term sustainability of military operations, and increase the cost of war for the russian political leadership.

however, there are reasons to question how large these effects are. first, weapon systems that enable deep strikes are expensive. cheap drones cannot fly hundreds of kilometers to reach distant targets; instead, this capability requires larger, more advanced, and more expensive weapons. u.s. military aid to ukraine is subject to strict spending caps, and providing such weapon systems will inevitably cut funding for other types of weapons. for example, just 36 u.s.-made f-16 fighter jets would consume 5% of the recent $60 billion in military aid to ukraine ($3 billion).

expensive weapon systems may be worth their cost if they produce disproportionate results. but attacking long-range targets requires precision guidance capabilities—a technology that is highly susceptible to jamming. when one side introduces new capabilities into a war, the other side responds quickly, such as by taking technical countermeasures and adjusting combat deployments. for example, when the ukrainian army initially used expensive precision-guided weapons such as himars missiles and excalibur guided artillery shells, they were very effective. but as the russian army gradually adapted, these weapons lost most of their effectiveness in just a few weeks.

only by seizing a short window of opportunity can deep strikes really play a role. the ukrainian army will need to use this new capability on a large scale and at one time, and combine it with the ground force's mobile offensive to break through the russian defense line. according to us military theory, deep strikes are to "shape the battlefield" by temporarily cutting off the support available to the enemy's main front, thereby creating an opportunity to concentrate ground and air forces to strike this front before the enemy recovers and counterattacks.

doing all this is by no means easy. in the summer offensive of 2023, the ukrainian army did not demonstrate any ability to launch a large-scale coordinated attack required to achieve a decisive breakthrough. long-range strike weapons will only increase the complexity of such coordination.

in 2023, ukrainian leaders believe that large-scale coordinated operations are impossible against an army equipped with modern drones and artillery. many american officers believe that the problem lies in the inadequate training of ukrainian troops. in any case, there is no reason to think that the large-scale, deep strikes and close-range engagements that ukraine is now conducting are more likely to be successful than the simpler version of the offensive a year ago. however, if such an offensive is not launched, the small-scale use of expensive long-range strike weapon systems will consume a large part of the us military aid budget, resulting in only a slight improvement in ukraine's ability to inflict casualties on russian troops in positional warfare.

strategic bombing?

in conjunction with ground forces, offensive operations are not the only way deep strikes can reshape the war. rather than attacking russian forces directly, ukraine could use these capabilities to strike at russian industries that support the war, such as tank and ammunition factories, oil refineries, power plants and other energy infrastructure, or political centers. the goal would be to weaken russia’s ability or willingness to sustain the war.

however, the historical record of such strikes is not optimistic. during world war ii, the allies destroyed the cities and industrial centers of germany and japan through large-scale bombing. the us military repeatedly attacked cities and infrastructure in the two countries during the korean war and the vietnam war. these air strikes never shook the other side's resolve. the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki may have been the decisive factor in japan's surrender in 1945, but today no one would propose launching a nuclear strike on russian cities.

more recent, smaller-scale precision bombing campaigns have been no more effective. the united states and its allies conducted similar operations in iraq in 1991 and 2003, in serbia in 1999, in afghanistan in 2001, and in libya in 2011. iran and iraq attacked each other’s cities during the iran-iraq war. in the winter of 2022 and 2023, russia conducted strategic bombing raids on ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. none of these operations had much effect. if anything, the russian attacks on ukrainian energy facilities hardened the ukrainians’ will to fight. strategic bombing also failed to force concessions in afghanistan, iraq, and libya.

only when air operations are combined with ground combat can the west achieve its war aims. iraq’s threats to attack iranian cities with chemical weapons prompted iran to accept a un-brokered ceasefire in 1988. but launching chemical warfare against russia is not an option today. the situation in serbia in 1999 was more complicated. after months of nato airstrikes, serbian leader slobodan milosevic agreed to most of nato’s demands, but it was difficult to separate the bombing from the impact of years of sanctions, which had done more damage to serbia’s economy than the airstrikes. combined with the history of the past few decades, there is little reason to believe that ukraine can break russia’s will to fight with a modest air campaign.

some analysts believe that strategic bombing is most effective when it forces an enemy to shift its attention from land warfare to air defense, or when it destroys its military industrial capacity, thereby weakening the forces that can be deployed to the battlefield. but the scale of air strikes required to achieve any one goal is a huge challenge. in world war ii, the allies flew more than 710,000 sorties over three and a half years, dropping more than 2 million tons of bombs on germany—but german military industrial capacity continued to grow between january 1942 and july 1944. only in the final months of the war, when the german air force was largely destroyed, did this massive air campaign render german ground forces ineffective.

even with the addition of modern technology, there is no feasible western military aid program today that can help ukraine launch an air campaign comparable to that of the past. even if such an air strike could be achieved, russia can still obtain weapons and equipment from outside, and ukraine is powerless to control those weapons aid channels.

risk assessment

a broad, deep strike would certainly help ukraine. damaging factories or infrastructure inside russia, for example, could boost ukrainian military morale, just as the smaller tokyo raid in 1942 boosted american morale in world war ii. but today, as then, such a capability is unlikely to change the actual military dynamic.

with this in mind, kyiv’s partners should now ask themselves whether providing ukraine with a limited range of long-range strike capabilities is worth the risk of escalating the conflict. the answer will depend on an assessment of the likelihood of an expanded conflict and the tolerance of western governments and the public for such a risk. the latter is ultimately a value judgment: military analysis alone cannot determine where to draw the line. what military analysis can do is predict the consequences of a policy on the battlefield. if the west were to remove restrictions on its ability to launch deep strikes against ukraine, the results would unlikely decisively change the course of the war.

(originally published on the u.s. "foreign affairs" website, original title: the false promise of ukraine's deep strike into russia.)

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