The Russo-Ukraine War may be headed to a pause, if Western peace talks aimed at resolving the conflict move forward toward agreement. This means Western policymakers should be increasingly focused on how the post-ceasefire reality might look — and how to make it sustainable.
The hard truth is that any future ceasefire deal will not halt the momentum of Russia’s coercive strategy. It will merely shift how Moscow probes, tests, and pressures Ukraine and its allies. If the past three years of conflict have demonstrated anything, it is that Russian leadership treats every pause not as a down payment on peace but as an opportunity to rearm, reorient, and resume pressure through other means.
Hence, the central question for 2026 and beyond is not simply how to help Ukraine defend itself today, but how to construct a robust airpower architecture capable of deterring Russia. Such a protective “air dome” for Ukraine will need to function with or without a ground force of peacekeepers and/or within the context of a possible demilitarized zone in Ukraine. America and its allies must learn from its experiences with “air policing” and the “no-fly zone” aspects of the Peace Agreement on Bosnia-Herzegovina. Security guarantees from the air for Ukraine cannot be slow to decide, ambiguous, or toothless.
Recently one of us wrote about the need for airpower-anchored security guarantees, and there has been commentary over the years on using a no-fly zone as a possible option. The key to an effective airpower plan to protect Ukraine is having a credible operational design now so that it is not muddied by Russian desires or risk-averse attitudes in Western capitals. The optimal way to make peace durable is to build an Allied Air Command for Ukraine (AAC-U) with dedicated aircraft, resources, staffs and planners. Such a plan must be integrated, persistent, rapid in response, and tailored to allow flexible rules of engagement to properly respond to the host of coercive and ambiguous tools Russia will continue to employ.
For the proposed AAC-U to be successful, there are three required elements: (1) shifting the logic of airpower guarantees to the actual architecture required to implement them; (2) defining what the AAC-U should look like; and (3) explaining why these measures are the most viable deterrent framework given the post-2025 balance of forces.
The Rationale For An Effective Allied Air Command
The starting point is recognizing the character of the post-ceasefire battlespace. By 2026, Russia will likely lean even more heavily on stand-off strikes, long-range cruise missiles, drones, electronic warfare saturation, and the irregular probing of airspace over Ukraine and NATO member states. These tactics will likely accelerate, not diminish, after a settlement. Russia will test response times, allied resolve, and rules of engagement; if Moscow assumes that crossing a border with strike aircraft and drones will generate debate rather than a strong response, they will exploit this strategic gap.
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Accordingly, an effective AAC-U will require strong allied command and control. At this point, security assistance efforts are impressive but remain fragmented. Ukraine receives F-16s from several European countries, Patriot batteries from the United States and Germany, NASAMS and IRIS-T systems from others, and training from a variety of Western air forces. However, there is no single structure unifying how these assets communicate, cue, prioritize, or respond.
Deterrence demands coherence, not a collection of stand-alone contributions. Hence the AAC-U: a mission-tailored multinational headquarters integrating Ukrainian air forces, allied aircraft operating in or near Ukrainian airspace, ground-based air defense systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, and a shared — but rapid — decision authority for identifying hostile acts and executing rapid responses.
For political reasons, the AAC-U would not be NATO affiliated. It would need to be funded, organized, and structured under the European Union (EU), just like how the EU has an operational military headquarters, known as the Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) in Brussels. Since 2022, the MPCC has been overseeing the EU military assistance mission to train and equip Ukraine’s armed forces. Making sure the AAC-U is an EU construct, and not another NATO design, will ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot wage further information warfare to spread propaganda about Ukraine joining NATO.
Ultimately the AAC-U would need to be a bespoke, coalition-based Combined Air Operations Center, similar to organizations currently in place to do Baltic Air Policing or UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force air missions. Without a fused C2 architecture, neither Ukraine’s new fighter force nor advanced Western air defense systems can punish future Russian activities inside Ukraine. The effectiveness of airpower has always rested on the multidomain integration of sensors, shooters, and decision-makers. Ukraine’s long-term security requires that sort of coalition integration to be multinational, interoperable, and continuously engaged.
Deterrence also hinges on time. Russia does not challenge the West through overwhelming or competent force; the Kremlin specializes in speed, ambiguity, probing of procedural gaps, and fomenting dissent and division in Western civil society. That is why any credible airpower guarantee to Ukraine must prioritize automaticity. The West must design an “Automatic Response Capacity” built around three core principles.
First, Ukraine must maintain persistent, day and night, fighter capabilities over its territory with an 8-minute response time. Air policing rotations every few weeks, or small detachments of allied aircraft on standby, will not deter Russia’s strikes. What deters is constant airborne presence, visible to Russian planners and immediately responsive to violations. Once it has grown to the proper size, Ukraine’s mixed fleet of fighter aircraft can provide that presence, supported by rotational allied aircraft. However, in the short term, greater allied presence will likely be needed.
Second, ground-based air defenses must be fully integrated with Ukraine’s current fleet of old and new fighter aircraft. Patriots, NASAMS, SAMP/T, and IRIS-T systems, linked directly to F-16s, Rafales, and Gripens, must generate ready firing solutions within seconds of detecting hostile launches. AWACS of every type would be incorporated into the command. This will require shared data links, common operating pictures, and ISR reach that transcends national stovepipes. Without these, Western airpower will spend its time reacting to Russian strikes rather than pre-empting or deterring them.
Third, the West must establish flexible and timely rules of engagement that allow immediate intercept or kinetic engagement once well-defined thresholds are crossed. Russia responds only to clarity and consequence. If crossing Ukrainian airspace triggers an intercept within minutes, not after hours of political deliberation, then deterrence holds. Such political willpower requires coordinated strategic communication and political courage in Western capitals, but it is essential: Moscow will exploit hesitation and risk-averse publics.
Now Is The Time To Build Ukraine’s Air Structures
While building this deterrent structure, Ukraine must simultaneously build its future air force. The country needs a dual-track approach. On one track, it must field and employ enough fighter jets as rapidly as possible to protect its air domain and support integrated air defense operations. On the second track, Ukraine must grow and optimize its mixed-fleet model, combining F-16s, Rafales, Gripens, and other Soviet era aircraft, to create a future air force much more capable to strengthen deterrence against future Russian aggression.
Western partners should invest not only in aircraft but in maintenance depth, logistics, weapons integration, training pipelines, and dispersed basing. Multinational airpower exercises like Red Flag will be crucial, but so too will new multinational training centers in Europe designed specifically for the Ukrainian Air Force’s long-term modernization.
A Russo-Ukraine ceasefire without a credible and capable Allied Air Command for Ukraine (AAC-U) is nothing more than an opportunity for Moscow to rebuild, reconstitute, and rearm. Russia has shown repeatedly — from Georgia to Crimea to Syria — that it exploits any diplomatic pauses as a license to pursue its next move.
The only durable peace for Ukraine is one backed by an integrated airpower system capable of detecting, intercepting, and punishing peace agreement violations within minutes, not days. That system must fuse Ukrainian and allied aircraft, radars, sensors, and air defenses into a unified deterrent architecture that outpaces Russia’s decision cycle, ambiguity, and complexity.
Airpower is not the only requirement for a just peace for Ukraine, but without it, no peace agreement will survive the inevitable Russian violations.
David A. Deptula is a retired Air Force lieutenant general and currently the Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and senior scholar at the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Institute for Future Conflict.
Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek (PhD) is an Air Force pilot that is a Research Fellow at the U.S. Naval War College and a Fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy.
DoD Disclaimer: The views are their own and not those of the Department of Defense or U.S. Government.