Regarding the issue of long range missiles, The Telegraph columnist Lewis Page adds a couple of previously unreported wrinkles. The Storm Shadow/SCALP missile is basically incapable of striking well defended targets unless those defenses are suppressed, Only the U.S. can provide the capabilities to suppress those defenses, and this, the U.S. has refused to do, for strikes on Russia.
Those capabilities include the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), used to destroy ground-based radars, and the Miniature Air Launched Decoy (MALD), a small jet-powered missile which simulates a larger attacking missile or full-size jet. “HARMs either blow up Russian defense radars or force them to switch off in order to survive: MALDs ensure that any radars still up and running will have their screens filled with blips and the Russians will not know which ones are the Storm Shadows,” writes Page. “Both HARM and MALD are U.S. made, and this is why all eyes are on Washington. Britain and France can give permission for Storm Shadow strikes inside Russia as much as they like, but if the U.S. won’t permit the use of HARM and MALD, the Ukrainians will probably just be wasting valuable weapons.”
“Zelenskyy is probably hoping for more than just HARM and MALD. He’s probably also hoping that Storm Shadow can normalize long-range strikes inside Russia, and so lead to permission to use the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) freely against Russia too,” Page speculates. “ATACMS is a ballistic rocket which travels at better than Mach 3: it’s much harder to shoot down than SCALP/Storm Shadow and it can simply be fired from a Himars vehicle. It doesn’t need to be employed as part of a complicated multi-aircraft strike risking scarce fighter jets.”
