US, Russia should establish deconfliction line for air operations over the Black Sea – now

With President Joe Biden warning that war between Russia and Ukraine is potentially “days” away, the situation in Europe appears to be growing only more dangerous. Into that mix the US and other NATO allies are pushing air power to the front lines. In a new op-ed, Aaron Stein of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Becca Wasser of the Center for a New American Security argue that the US and Russia would both benefit from a deconfliction line based on their communications in Syria.

The Russian threat to invade Ukraine is upending the correlation of forces in Europe, with US and NATO members deploying forces and hardware to bolster the Eastern flank in response to Russia’s military build up. While all eyes are on Ukraine, there are secondary challenges that could emerge in other parts of Europe and may increase the risk of accidental escalation.

The airspace over the Black Sea is one area where dangerous interactions could further heighten tensions, as American and Russian air forces may come into close contact in the skies as the crisis unfolds. The good news is that both Washington and Moscow have an interest in managing these interactions and installing guard rails for air operations in congested environments. There’s even a model to follow: the two nations should harness lessons learned from air operations in Syria and establish deconfliction mechanisms to ensure that actions over the Black Sea don’t spiral out of control.

The similarities are clear: like Syria, the Black Sea would represent a crowded air space prone to air-to-air interactions with Russian fighters, along with an intact surface-to-air missile threat. Unprecedented numbers of Russian, US, and NATO naval vessels with organic air assets are currently operating in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Further afield, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Russia has demonstrated it is willing to act aggressively in the skies against US assets, even during this period of heightened tension.

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Russia has not yet invaded Ukraine, so a policy of engagement costs the West little, and the potential for a breakthrough incentivizes continued engagement with Moscow. Given the scope of expected American and European sanctions, and the political costs of being seen as appeasing Moscow, once an invasion begins it would be almost impossible to work on such a concept. Given this negative trajectory, it is imperative to find mechanisms for communications now to manage risk and increase transparency.

A narrow, military-to-military mechanism to deconflict air operations is one such option. Deconfliction requires sharing information and establishing geographic boundaries for operations. As is the case now in Syria, the United States and Russia could agree to inform the other about air operations and where they will take place.

A deconfliction mechanism will not limit American or Russian air operations, but instead provide either side information about intentions and planned flights, lessening potential risk to all aircraft and limiting dangerous interactions between Russian and NATO air forces. This approach could serve as a template to manage NATO air operations in the Black Sea moving forward and, as an ancillary benefit, could actually increase the frequency of US overflight of this area.

How? Absent this transparency, it is reasonable to assume that active Russian air defenses can and will make a point of tracking US movements — an implied threat that would have to be taken seriously during a time of war, with no deconfliction line in place. Such tracking could see the United States adopt a risk averse strategy that actually decreases the frequency of flights over the Black Sea. Defending NATO airspace would then require the deployment of additional US ground-based air defense systems, which are already overstretched and in high demand around the globe.

Without professionalism and careful deconfliction, accidents in the Syrian skies could have spiraled into a larger conflict. The tensions over Ukraine are likely to exceed those in Syria, and accidents do happen. The Russian-linked forces, operating in Eastern Ukraine, shot down a commercial airliner in July 2017, the Syrian military accidentally shot down a Russian aircraft in 2018, and even US forces operating Patriot missile defenses during the 2003 invasion of Iraq accidentally downed allied aircraft.

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It has to be acknowledged that it takes two sides to make this work, and so far Russia has shown little interest in talking. In response to Russian demands of the United States and NATO, the administration outlined its commitment [PDF] to using existing military-to-military channels to promote predictability and transparency between the two sides and to manage the interaction between expected American deployments in Eastern Europe and with Russian forces now garrisoned on the Ukrainian border and in occupied Crimea and Donbas.

The Russian side has not responded favorably to these demands, continuing its build up and using ambiguity to its advantage in negotiations with a parade of western leaders visiting Moscow seeking to find an off-ramp to the crisis. Yet it is still worth it for the Biden administration to work mil-to-mil channels and see if some form of deconfliction line can be set up. After all, the last thing Russia’s leadership wants is an accident that costs American lives — and risks bringing American forces into a Ukraine conflict.

The current stand-off over Ukraine poses a serious challenge to American interests in Europe and to the formulation of US global national security interests. This new reality should shift American Western thinking about the role of airpower in managing Western-Russian relations and how future air operations could take place in congested environments, prone to frequent challenges from the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the presence of larger number of surface-to-air missiles in areas the US patrols.

The United States has an incentive in managing future force-on-force interactions, particularly in the Black Sea, and should consider formalizing a deconfliction mechanism with Moscow to increase transparency over air operations over the Black Sea. This approach would decrease the risk to US forces forward deployed in Eastern Europe and create a template for NATO allies to follow if and when they take over Black Sea air patrols.

Aaron Stein is the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is the author of The US War Against ISIS: How America and its Allies Defeated the Caliphate. Becca Wasser is a fellow in the defense program and co-lead of the Gaming Lab at the Center for a New American Security, and the lead author of The Air War Against the Islamic State.