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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up: the battle for the skies over Ukraine.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The Biden administration recently nixed a Polish proposal to provide dozens of MiG fighter jets to Ukraine. But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said intelligence officials feared that Russia may view the move as escalatory.

The West has also refused Ukraine’s calls to enforce a no-fly zone over the country.

The United States and its allies are continuing to send defensive weapons like anti-aircraft batteries and anti-tank missiles. But will that be enough?

REICHARD: Joining us now is retired U.S. Air Force Col. JV Venable. He is a 25-year military veteran who served in three combat operations. Colonel, good morning!

JV VENABLE, GUEST: Good morning, Mary. It’s great to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, let’s start with the MiG fighter jets we’ve been hearing so much about. If NATO reversed course here and sent those MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, how much difference would that make and why?

VENABLE: Well, it's a really good question. First, this deal would have gone through if it had been kept dark, meaning nothing was revealed in the press. No large announcements were made, and the likes. And that goes into several different foreign ministries and our own State Department is letting that cat out of the bag. But assuming that it did go through or eventually goes through, this airplane is a potent offensive weapon in the sense that it can actually take the fight to the enemy. Now, let me tell you that we've done some really good work in providing them arms—with the javelin and the stinger. The Javelin is the anti-tank missile you've heard so much about. And the stinger missile has shot down more than 150 aircraft. That's fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft. While the MiG 29 will not be as effective as those two weapons, it's really an important morale boost to actually see your own aircraft—as a Ukrainian ground soldier—going up and engaging either airplanes, fighters, or rotary aircraft, or actually making ground attack assaults in support of your efforts is a huge morale boost. And so it's a very important tool in their arsenal is what I'll leave you with.

REICHARD: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly pleaded with the West to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Explain what that means and why the West is resistant to that idea.

VENABLE: Well, America—and the West—is very used to the idea of dominating skies. So we did it collectively over Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya. We've done that over the last 30 years because we are so dominant, one. And the second side is we were fighting Third World threats. When we actually tried to establish the no fly zone over Libya, because of the logistics, how far we had to move aircraft, and what the the suppression of enemy air defenses—meaning knocking down their surface to air threat to our aircraft—that all caused quite a bit of turmoil and it took a little bit of time. The fight over Ukraine would be markedly different. Our aircraft flying over Ukraine would be seen as an act of war by Putin. At the very least, he would start trying to shoot down our aircraft as we were trying to shoot down his. And they have the most potent, arguably the best surface to air missile system in the world with the S400. And no matter how many airplanes we put over the top of the theater, and no matter how well we thought we were suppressing those defensive systems, they're mobile. They can shut them off, move them, and then they pop up right in time to take out one of our aircraft. So the opportunity for us to lose platforms, lose airmen, and lose very valuable fighters in this process is no small risk. It is a large risk.

The second thing I would add to that Mary is the number of aircraft that would be required for us to do that. Ukraine is 700 miles wide and over 200 miles north to south. The number of squadrons it would take in order for us to put air to air fighters over the top of that airspace would be inordinately high. On the order of seven stealth squadrons, which would tap us out with all of our resources. It's a very big challenge. It's high risk, and it would likely be the domino that tumbled over, that got us into a force on force global type of war with two peer competitors.

REICHARD: Colonel, what do you think has to happen for Ukraine’s military to ultimately succeed in beating back the Russians? Talk about Ukraine’s strategy and Western involvement.

VENABLE: Well, Ukraine has put up some really great defensive lines around their major cities and up around their border where the Russians have come across. And what they're doing is inflicting an inordinately high number of casualties on this invading force. Several numbers have been thrown out there, but you have to understand, when Putin is going to our enemies out there—Syria, Iran and other countries—to try to bring in volunteers, you know the situation is significant. Their job is to do exactly what they're doing right now. It’s to make the attempt to take on Ukraine so painful that it stalls and their forces lose morale and then Putin is forced to go into a negotiation position. Putin understands only one thing and that's strength. The United States has lost sight of that with this administration. And we've given away as much of our weight and might as we can and most of the negotiation tools that we had in our portfolio. But Zelenskyy understands completely that they have to bring Russia to the table on a position of strength. And when they do, they may actually get the concessions they need to hold their borders, at least to some measure.

REICHARD: Retired Air Force Col. JV Venable is a senior research fellow for defense policy at The Heritage Foundation. Colonel, thanks so much!

VENABLE: It’s been my pleasure, Mary. Thank you.

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