Frontline Special - Former Deputy Commander Operations of the British Royal Air Force, Air Marshall Greg Bagwell
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full.

Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting. Hello and welcome to Frontline for Times Radio with me, Kate Chabot, and we're joined for the first time today by the former Deputy Commander Operations of the Royal Air Force. Air Marshal Greg Bagwell served for 36 years in the RAF, having joined as a combat pilot. He's been a member of the Royal Air Force for over 30 years.

He subsequently oversaw operations, combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. He is president of the UK Air and Space Power Association and continues to mentor senior UK defence commanders. Air Marshal Bagwell, great to see you on Frontline. Thank you for joining us.

Hi, Kate, and it's Greg. Greg, thank you. I don't need the rank. We'll keep it informal then, shall we? Can we start by talking about the news announced by the German chancellor that Ukraine can now use the missiles that have been donated by the West at unlimited ranges? How significant do you think that is? It's very significant. In fact, the noise that Russia is making about it tells you what you need to know about how significant it is from Russia's point of view.

But, boy, has this taken a long time. We've been giving Ukraine weapons that have had the potential to reach targets within Russia for quite a long time, but we haven't really given them permissions. So this is another loosening, if you like, of some of the restraints that we've been placing on Ukraine. And he went further after a meeting with President Zelensky announcing a partnership to help Ukraine produce its own long-range weapons. Are we talking about new weapons, do you think? And what might they be?

Yeah, I think we are talking about new weapons, but of course, Ukraine have done quite a lot of that on their own up till now. But the idea, therefore, that Western technology can now help Ukraine perhaps improve what they've already managed to do internally has got to be a positive step. I think it was kind of used as a little bit of a smokescreen because I think Western nations want to avoid being linked internally.

directly to targeting Russian targets in Russia because of the sensitivities that brings in terms of an escalation. But I think it's worth mentioning here that there's a thing called the Arms Trade Treaty, which funny old thing, Russia hasn't signed, nor has Iran, nor has North Korea, which does impose limits on nations providing other countries with weapons and ensures that everyone

when they get them, complies with international humanitarian law. And that's what's at issue here. And I don't think giving Ukraine weapons that will be used in self-defense against an aggressive act breaks any of those rules. So I don't think we should be too shy here about what we're giving them and what we should let them do.

And there has been no commitment or no public comment yet to supplying Taurus missiles, which we know the Ukrainians badly want from Germany. I guess the first we're going to know if they are used, supplied, is when they're actually used. How are we most likely to see that?

Yeah, well, what you'll see, and we saw this with Storm Shadow a little bit when that first got introduced into the conflict, is we'll see an attack against something deeper into Russia that is clearly not a drone. It will go a lot faster and hit a lot harder. So and will tend to be used against military targets that are a lot more hardened.

or a lot better protected. So there will be signs probably that gives us clues that that's happened. It's understandable that nobody really wants to make too much of a fuss about this, but I think for Ukraine, they will see this as very much an ability to increase their capability. We shouldn't forget, and many of your listeners may not realize this, but Taurus is actually a derivative of

of the same missile Storm Shadow provided by the UK and Scalp provided by the French. So we're just talking about more of the same here rather than a completely new weapon. So would it not actually change that much that Ukraine could do with it?

It will change because they'll have more of them and the permissions will allow them to go deeper and hit targets that perhaps previously we've been a bit nervous about approving. So I think this will be an ability for Ukraine to both increase the numbers of attacks, but also the depth of those attacks. And it would also make the Kerch Bridge possible to attack?

The Kirsch Bridge has for a long time been vulnerable to a variety of attacks, whether it be one of these missiles, which would be very good at taking out that bridge, or even the maritime drones that they've been using in some of their attacks against shipping. So I think there's a more fundamental question about the bridge as to whether it's a totemic target.

and as to whether that's seen as a step too far. So everybody's trying to control the escalation here, whether it be Russia or Ukraine or even the West in providing systems. But yeah, the Kursh Bridge is one of those totemic targets that you kind of wonder when it will happen and what difference it will make. Of course, one of the arguments for not taking out the Kursh Bridge is it increases the need for Russia to maintain a land bridge to Crimea. So yeah, there's a lot of factors at play with the bridge.

Russia is widely regarded to be preparing for an offensive now in the north and south-east of Ukraine. What capabilities does Ukraine have to target those troop concentrations from the air? Might Taurus, for example, make all the difference?

It could do because it will be used against some of the targets that will be a little bit further behind the lines. Whenever an enemy attacks, a lot of the news items talk very much about the attacks at the front line, tanks, troops in trenches, etc. And the artillery fire that's being shared. And of course, the drones that are being used in that fight, they tend to be the headline grabbers. But the really sensitive targets are the logistics nodes, communication nodes, the headquarters that are quite some way back from the front.

And by taking those out, you really will blunt the attack a lot more effectively in the longer term. So what you'll be able to see now is a more sophisticated way of defeating some of those incursions. And a few days ago, Russia conducted one of its largest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine to date. It followed three nights of record strikes. How has it actually managed to step up its air war?

Well, it's clearly learning some lessons from Ukraine. And both sides have upped their manufacturing of some of these less expensive and rather easily manufactured weapons. They're pretty crude. They fail a lot. They get shot down a lot. But some get through. And even the ones that you shoot down end up falling on the ground and cause damage. I think the news today was a strike on Moscow that hit a block of flats. But it looks like the missile did that because it was

hit by a Russian air defense missile. So there's a lot of iron work here being thrown at each other. You've also seen Iran, who are obviously providing some of this technology, also a non-signatory of the arms trade treaty. And what we're seeing with Russia is a very different type of attack.

We're seeing a little bit less discriminant and certainly against the population, effectively a terror weapon. What you're seeing Ukraine trying to do is take out targets like energy, drone manufacturing factories, etc. So they're trying to basically take some of the strategic depth of Russia away from it.

An article in The Economist points to a rapidly increased production of drones by Russia from 300 drones a month last year to 300 now in just under three days. What kind of pressure do you think this is actually putting on Ukraine?

Well, it's sort of it's a sort of number of areas, really. One is clearly the pressure on the population, which is really what Russia is intending to do here. It's almost trying to sue for peace by by forcing Ukraine to give up effectively, although Ukraine looked like doing anything but.

So there's that strain on both the population, you know, people having to sleep in tunnels in the underground, listening to the sound of drones and air raids night after night after night. You know, it's sort of is the bombing of London, Second World War type stuff. That puts a strain on the economy, puts a strain on all the people that are fighting fires, hospitals, medics, etc.,

And then there's the strain on the air defense systems that are being used to intercept them. And if you're having to hit a relatively cheap drone with a relatively expensive missile, the economics of this becomes stressful for obvious reasons. So you're seeing Ukraine use a combination of high sophisticated defenses.

So the Patriot missile, for example, or some of the other sort of smaller missiles, but also going back to sort of using machine guns and even helicopters shooting them down from the air. So we're seeing the full gamut here of countermeasures, which will begin to take its top. And Russia has evolved, though, hasn't it, in making those drones more capable of evading Ukraine's defences? And in particular, it's electronic warfare to carry out these kind of swarm attacks that we're seeing. How is it doing that?

Yeah, there's a number of things going on. So we use the word drone. Unfortunately, that word doesn't cut it anymore. Drones can be anything from something you can buy on Amazon for a few hundred quid and stick a grenade on to something relatively sophisticated that can fly sort of upwards of a thousand miles. And we'll have a GPS and autonomous guidance system, et cetera, et cetera. So we are literally seeing a whole new way of warfare being developed in front of our eyes.

The relatively crude systems, ones that are flown literally using first person view, so effectively someone using a controller and guiding it in, using radio waves to talk to the drone, those have become more vulnerable because what now is happening is they're being jammed. So the signal from the controller to the drone is effectively interrupted. So we're beginning to see things like fiber optics suddenly become more normal where that is much harder to jam and effectively is almost impossible to intercept.

So but obviously that's limited by the length of the fiber optic cable that you can lay as the drone goes further and further towards its target. And we will be seeing countermeasures that try and get around some of those jamming signals. So, yeah, there's an entire almost silent war going on in the background here of counter and countermeasures. And how long do you think it will be before Russia can actually attack with a thousand drones, for example, in one go? What kind of challenge do you think that would present?

Well, obviously, you know, I certainly don't want to give away any tactics or give Russia any clues. But Russia has a choice. It can either manufacture more of these. And it's obviously trying to at a cost. It can pause for a while, save them up, if you like, and then go with a mass attack later. And we have seen peaks and troughs. So we see either where they've run out and they have to restock or whether they've deliberately chosen to do a surge there.

in the way they attack. Anything that surges a higher number is going to put more stress on the air defenses and in theory could be more likely to get through and succeed. But I think we've seen Ukraine be highly effective. I mean, the percentage of these drones getting through to their targets are sometimes in single digits.

Now, sometimes, unfortunately, that single digits means 20 or 30 drones get through. But it's not causing the impact on Ukraine's economy or its people that Russia perhaps would hope for. Highly effective in intercepting these drones. How has Ukraine had to adapt the way it defends itself against them?

Well, I think it does a number of things. Firstly, some of it becomes predictable. So either the nature of the targets, particularly around some of the cities, nuclear power stations, for example, or various parts of the country, air bases and other things. So you kind of know where they're going to hit you. You

you kind of know what time they're going to hit you because we see a pattern here of targeting effectively at night. I think Russia probably largely does that because it thinks that A, causes more disruption to the population, but also they're a little bit harder to hit in the dark for obvious reasons.

So there is a degree of predictability. I think Ukraine has become very sophisticated at detecting the launches and then effectively warning people as to where the attacks are likely to take place. So that's the first battle, if you like, is knowing what's coming at you.

And then it's a question of putting up the layered defense that you need to then take those systems out as they arrive. And Ukraine will have a system which effectively has aircraft the furthest out, then some of the longer range systems and then close in. We have things like people literally there with either handheld jammers or handheld machine guns intercepting these at the last minute.

So Ukraine is probably one of the most advanced countries now at being able to handle this, albeit having to do it on a very demanding scale. And also putting pressure on Ukraine to almost ration its use of Patriot missiles in defence. How great is the threat posed in that context by ballistic missiles?

Yeah, ballistic missiles are a whole different ballgame and are much more difficult to intercept. So you do need something like a Patriot missile to even begin to look at those. Now, the good news is Russia hasn't used too many of those. They'll be quite precious for them as well. And Russia does also need to think this through, that, you know, NATO is sat behind here. And if Russia has got designs on keeping pressure on NATO or, you know,

effectively becoming a threat to NATO, it needs to think very carefully about how much of its stuff it uses in the fight against Ukraine. And we've already seen huge losses of people and materials. So that will be a very important factor for Russia. I think it's one of the reasons we don't see their strike bombers participating greatly, because they need those. They're quite an important part of their national defense. So Russia is definitely keeping something back because it has to.

But yes, we do see Ukraine having to think very carefully about how it husbands its assets to ensure it doesn't use the good stuff, if you will, in taking out some of the cheaper and less effective missiles. And to that point, is there an alternative do you see to the Patriot missile system that would be effective that we could provide to Ukraine now?

Yeah, when you say we, I mean, the UK, unfortunately, this is not an area that we're well prepared. The UK for the longest time now has not been considering a threat like this. And our defence investment has dropped accordingly. Not only have we spent less money on defence over the decades, we haven't spent an awful lot of it on air defence systems yet.

What's going to be very interesting, if indeed it is next week, is how the Defence Review tries to address that. Because unless we are, you know, unless we're able to start producing something of our own, we don't really have anything to offer Ukraine in this area. The one system that we have that could help Ukraine, unfortunately, is on our ships. And unless we're going to stick our ships in the Black Sea, then we aren't really able to help. And what about other European allies?

Yeah, well, a lot of them use Patriot as well. So there is a sort of a headspace

a heavy reliance here on a single supply chain, which of course is from America, which brings its own challenges these days. So, yeah, there is a lot of work going on within Europe and within NATO to now look at its own systems and to look at how it can now meet this threat on its own using its own productions and its own systems. So there's a lot of work to be done on what we call in the military the integrated air and missile defence,

We've heard Trump talk about Golden Dome and we know about the Iron Dome in Israel. We're talking about something similar. Unfortunately, the title is a bit misleading. But we are certainly talking about thickening our ability to defend against some of these threats, particularly ballistic missiles.

I mentioned it earlier, and Ukraine has also stepped up its aerial assaults on Russia in recent weeks. It's closed multiple airports and targeted Russia's defence industrial base. Russia's defence ministry said this week it had shot down 296 Ukrainian drones. I mean, obviously, Ukraine has not commented on that. What kind of impact do you think these strikes into Russia are having, though?

Yeah, well, the first thing to say is it's not unusual for military leaders in Russia to not quite tell the truth to their boss and try and project, shall we say, the best possible outcomes. Otherwise, they're in big trouble and they don't last very long. So I take what Russia says it's done with a pinch of salt. The fact of the matter is we are seeing Ukraine target with relatively unsophisticated systems. They are increasing in their sophistication, but these are relatively easy to make drones that

that are striking targets around Moscow. And that must be a factor of huge embarrassment to the Russian armed forces and to Putin. Now, if he's trying to portray that he's got this under control and it's a special military operation limited to Ukraine...

There must be quite a few people in Russia now reading their newspapers or waking up to the sounds of explosions or black smoke hanging over the suburbs of Moscow, wondering what the hell's going on. So I think the impact that this is having in particular is that psychological impact. Now, it would also help if they start taking out some of these drone factories and some of the sort of manufacturing capacity of Russia. That's certainly what they were trying to do when they were hitting the energy infrastructure a few months ago.

So there is a thought behind this campaign as to what it's doing militarily. But there is also a very, very strong psychological edge to this, that how long in an authoritarian regime like Russia can Putin continue to peddle the lie that this is a special military operation? And what do you know exactly about Ukraine's progress in developing more lethal drones that can fly deeper into Russia and build on that impact?

Yeah, well, we do see it reported in Ukraine now like to show off some of their capabilities. So we've seen shots of some of their new new drone capabilities. I can't remember some of the names, but they are certainly looking sleeker and a lot more sort of sophisticated. What we've seen up to now over the first few years was literally off the shelf drones being adapted to.

What we're now seeing is purpose-built drones that are effectively designed with the countermeasures already built in, with the guidance systems and the technology and the explosive part of the warhead, which is still a key part of the whole destruction mechanism.

as opposed to what was probably not far off what a model flying club would be operating, just and strapped a bit of explosives on the front. So we are definitely seeing here systems that are both more sophisticated, can go faster, can go further, and ideally can evade some of the air defence systems. And it's clearly working because we are seeing these drones on camera footage that is readily available on social media reaching the suburbs of Moscow.

As a veteran of the RAF who served for 36 years, when you look over the last three, four years of war in Ukraine into its fourth year now, what do you think is the most interesting thing in terms of the air war when you look at the way it's evolved?

Yeah, it might not be what your listeners think. What surprised me is how little air power has been utilized, particularly by Russia. You know, on paper, this should have been, you know, a complete mismatch. It really should have been in terms of sheer numbers and sheer capability. Russia should have overwhelmed Ukraine's air defense system with its air power. And it hasn't done that.

Now, the lesson from that for me is either Russia is holding it back, and that could be true,

or is frightened of losing it and therefore doesn't believe that it will be as effective. And therefore they've gone for this much cheaper, much more sustainable method, which is to use these drones, which actually aren't that effective. You know, their explosives is relatively limited. Yes, it causes damage and yes, it causes casualties, but it's hardly bringing Ukraine to its knees. We see that every day. So that's probably my greatest lesson. I think one of the lessons that a lot of people want us to learn is that drones are now the answer.

One of the stats I think I've heard put out by many, including ministers, is that 80%, 90% of the casualties are now created by drones, not by artillery.

Yeah, but that's actually a symptom, not the cause. And because we have a very static, effectively almost like a World War I trench warfare battle, drones are able to exploit that static battlefield because it's relatively close. It doesn't move very fast. And so you can use fiber optic drones over 10, 20 kilometers.

If this was a war being fought over hundreds of miles at literally, you know, supersonic, hypersonic speed, which is how NATO would do this, you would see a very different war and it would not have progressed as the way we've had. So there is a danger here of learning the wrong lessons as well, that we now need to copy what's going on in Ukraine. Well, if we copy that...

What we're saying is we're up for a five-year attritional war with Russia with hundreds of thousands of casualties. And I'm not sure that's where we are.

And while any meaningful ceasefire negotiations are still far from reality and Russia stalls, what can or will Russia and of course Ukraine try to achieve in this war on the ground and in the air to put them in the strongest position, do you think? Well, and I think that's what's really the challenge at the moment is this on the bus, off the bus peace negotiations. It just looks like delay followed by more delay.

Putin obviously feels that he has the control of the will of his people, either because they all believe him or they don't say otherwise. So Putin probably feels that in his authoritarian regime, he's got the whip hand and therefore everything he can do to increase the pressure, increasingly take pieces of land or whatever he might be able to do to push that line as far back as he can, can only improve his own negotiating position.

What he also probably believes is that the longer this goes on and the longer there is disunity between Europe, America and Ukraine, and he can continue to let that disunity fester, then he will believe that therefore it's less likely that the West and Ukraine are going to stand together up against him, whether that's through sanctions, increased armed support or whatever. So at the moment, time is on Putin's side. It is not on Ukraine's side.

Although Ukraine don't seem likely to capitulate straight away. And I think this is quite important. The likes of J.D. Vance say, you know, Ukraine cannot win. That's probably true militarily. You know, Russia is a large country with huge reserves. It's hardly going to see an incursion from Ukraine and be unable to stop it forever. Although we have seen that recently, that it took them an awful long time to get that little bit back in the north of the region.

But what has to happen here is Russia just mustn't win.

And that means it's losing. So I think this idea that one side wins or the other side wins is a rather black and white way of approaching this. If Russia can be forced to the position where it cannot seek any more advantage, where its people no longer see the reason that they're losing hundreds of thousands of people and losing their military and seeing their economy collapse into one based primarily on military need or it's recovering their weaker economy.

then the more likely it is that Russia will sue for peace. So, yeah, we're in a very difficult situation at the moment where, unfortunately, Russia was being given the time and space to continue on its current strategy. Greg Bagwell, great to speak to you. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Kate. Thank you. When your workforce, tech stack and business needs are evolving all at once, you need HCM software that moves just as fast. That's

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