By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven
Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven
Hello and welcome to Warrior Maven, the Center for Military Modernization.
Obviously a very serious situation unfolding in the world getting more and more dire. We have some very important perspective today from a distinguished American, retired general Ben Hodges. He is the former commander of US Army Europe. So obviously knows a lot about these kinds of dynamics.
Thank you for joining us, sir. A, quick look at Global firepower.com will show you that the Russians have as many as 544 attack helicopters.
You’ve talked about the significance of rotary wing attack as it pertains to combat. What’s your sense of how effective the well known Stinger missiles might be, the heat seeking power against approaching helicopters to give the Ukrainians an opportunity to shut down derail or stop some kind of massive attack.
General Ben Hodges
Of course, the Russians like us are continuing to develop protection systems for aircraft against all the different threats that are out there. I have to say they may have 520 something attack helicopters.
I would be astounded if even half of them were actually operable.
It requires a lot of work a lot of money a lot of time to properly maintain rotary wing aircraft, our US Army best in the world at doing that, and it is very hard.
So it’d be a standard of even half of what Russians have actually serviceable.
Of course, we’re getting a chance to watch them in action now in Ukraine. I’ve watched one get shot down the other day, I saw the video of that. I’m not terribly impressed with how they fly. They look really big. And so now we’ll see. The battlefield is going to be the test.
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Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest and President of Warrior Maven – the Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
