Patrolling a no-fly zone over foreign lands is nothing new for the Royal Air Force. Nor is intercepting Russian aircraft.
But policing the skies over Ukraine – a role that British Typhoon pilots could reportedly be tasked with, in the event of an armistice between Kyiv and Moscow – would be unlike any operations the RAF has flown for decades.
Such peacekeeping flights would be “way more dangerous and complex” than controlling previous no-fly zones over Iraq, Bosnia or Libya, according to former Tornado pilot Mandy Hickson.
She knows the potential threats very well, having survived a missile attack and flown through flak explosions during her 45 combat missions over Iraq between 1999 and 2002.
The consequences of such action in Eastern Europe would be of a “completely and utterly” greater magnitude, says Hickson. Not only would it pose “a massive personal risk,” for pilots, but the “really volatile geopolitical scenario is way more serious.”
“One wrong move and it could go wrong very, very quickly,” she says. “If it came to blows, it would be seen as an act of war, and Russia would probably respond, and then you’ve got this massive escalating tension between Nato and Moscow.”
British and French defence chiefs are said to be contemplating dispatching an airborne “reassurance force” to Ukraine if Vladimir Putin agrees to end his invasion of Ukraine through controversial US-brokered talks.
The idea would be to deter Russia from ordering more strikes on its neighbour while reducing the number of ground troops needed from the UK and France.
“The area we have a significant advantage over Russia is in the air,” a Western official told the Financial Times last week. The threat of these jets being able to “punish Russia” would help to prevent “flagrant abuses of a ceasefire”.
The likelihood of this happening remains far from clear ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington this week, given Donald Trump’s growing opposition to more support for Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said the use of armed forces from Nato members would be “unacceptable”.
But if it does go ahead, Hickson warns it would be the world’s most dangerous game of chess.
During her 16-year career as a Flight Lieutenant, the pioneering Hickson became the first woman to fly a Tornado GR4 ground-attack jet in combat, while patrolling the southernmost of two no-fly zones over Iraq. These were established after the Gulf War of 1990-91 when the US, the UK and an international coalition repelled Saddam Hussein’s invasion of their ally Kuwait.
“The aim was to prevent hostile aircraft taking off and threatening coalition forces,” says Hickson. Iraq’s air defences were “outdated,” she explains, with many of its jets destroyed during the Gulf War. “We had complete air superiority. We also had pretty advanced intelligence.”
Compared to her experiences, warding off the Russian military would be “a completely different ballpark.”
“They’ve got really advanced fighter jets like the MiG-31 and the Su-35 flown by highly trained pilots,” she explains. “They’ve got superior electronic warfare capabilities. They’ve got long-range S400 missile batteries.”
These surface-to-air weapons are particularly challenging because they can “engage you from hundreds of miles away,” without the need for Putin’s jets to come anywhere near the Ukrainian border. Striking back at them would mean firing into Russian territory.
And despite US and UK claims about Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, which were disproven after they invaded Iraq in 2003, “our opposition forces back then didn’t have nuclear capabilities,” says Hickson.
Russia very much does.
During one of her flights over Iraq, Mandy Hickson had to evade a surface-to-air missile that was launched against her Tornado jet.
“It was a heat-seeking missile that had locked on to us,” she recalls. “We managed to evade it by putting out all of our counter-measures in the form of flares.” These are decoys which release flames and smoke to trick infra-red sensors, leading missiles to chase them rather than the aircraft they were intended to shoot down. “It exploded a few miles away from us.”
The incident was reported to an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft that was monitoring the situation. After Hickson and her formation of Tornados had flown into Saudi Arabia for air-to-air refuelling, they were instructed to go back. “We located the target and my formation destroyed it,” she says.
In Ukraine, RAF pilots might also need to wait for their superiors to decide how to respond to any individual attack, but responding with force could be far more difficult and with much bigger consequences.
Hickson continues: “Other times, I’d be flying along and you suddenly think, ‘Oh gosh,’ because there’d be these all these little black puffs of smoke around us, where they were firing anti-aircraft artillery at us.
“On one occasion, we could see where these were coming from, so we changed our height and direction, but I managed to look at where they were firing.” She could see that the men who had targeted her plane were now running away.
She explains that the Iraqi regime had told gunners they would be rewarded with millions of dollars if they managed to shoot down enemy “ravens of evil,” but these men were clearly “terrified” of being bombed in retaliation. “It was really quite sad,” she says.
This would not be the case with Russian forces, she says, given their far greater level of discipline and organisation.
Hickson, who now provides motivational speaking services to businesses and is the author of the book An Officer, Not a Gentleman, has no doubt that RAF pilots and their jets would be up to the task.
The Typhoon is a “really capable” multi-role aircraft that can either fight off enemy jets or attack opposition ground forces,” she says.
As for the men and women flying them, they are used to encountering Russian planes – such as the Tu-142 Bear-F anti-submarine aircraft that two Typhoons scrambled to shadow over the North Sea in November.
British air crews are also familiar with the demands of flying alongside counterparts from other nations, which they would probably need to do in Ukraine.
As well as combining forces with the US to target terrorists in Syria in recent years, they often train with allies at Exercise Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. Eight RAF Typhoons have been taking part this month together with American, Australian and Canadian crews.
What worries Hickson is whether the RAF has enough jets, crews, supplies and support staff to operate in Ukraine while still defending UK and Nato territory.
“It would be a massive logistical effort, thinking not just about the Typhoons, but the refuelling, the maintenance, the intelligence,” she says.
“We’ve seen huge defence cuts year on year and we have reduced our resources, so it would put a huge strain on our capabilities. We’d have to divert assets from home defence, Nato commitments and other global responsibilities.”
Greg Bagwell, a former RAF Air Marshal who also flew in Iraq and commanded missions in the no-fly zone over Libya in 2011, told The i Paper last week that the size of any peacekeeping operation would depend on whether a deal seemed “fragile” or “stable”.
If both sides genuinely backed off, it might require “between one and two squadrons” of aircraft, he said. But if the situation is dicey, “a substantially bigger force” involving multiple nations would be needed for a stronger deterrent – effectively “providing Ukraine with an air force”.
An RAF source told The Times last week that an air-policing mission is more likely than enforcing a no-fly zone. This would involve pilots waiting near armed aircraft, ready to take off within minutes to respond to any threat, like they do on a constant basis at the RAF’s two Quick Reaction Alert air bases at Lossiemouth in Scotland and Conningsby in Lincolnshire.
Typhoons and F-35 Lightnings have also carried out Nato air-policing operations in the Baltic States, Iceland and Romania in recent months. In 2023, they intercepted 50 Russian aircraft in the space of four months while based in Estonia.
Hickson wishes the Prime Minister luck at his talks in Washington, which could prove decisive in whether the US provides more backing to Kyiv and supports the idea of RAF peacekeeping missions.
“It was really refreshing to see Keir Starmer saying to Ukraine, ‘We stand by you,’ in the last week,” she says. “President Trump is a loose cannon.”
@robhastings.bsky.social
Comments
Leave a Comment