Ukraine - F-16 Aircraft - 2024
The West's delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will not immediately change the situation on the battlefield, writes The New York Times (NYT) 28 July 2024. It is noted that the shortage of trained pilots and the limited number of fighters "will limit the impact" on the course of military operations in the near future. "Russia has had a lot of time to strengthen its defensive infrastructure, especially in frontline areas. F-16s and their pilots will face tough resistance from Russian air defenses both on the ground and in the sky," Hunter Stoll, a military expert at the RAND think tank (his activities are considered undesirable in Russia), told the publication.
Part of the Western F-16 aircraft , which Ukraine will receive from the allies, will be located at foreign air bases. In this way, they plan to protect fighter jets from Russian strikes, and Ukrainian pilots will also train on them. Serhii Golubtsov, Chief of Aviation of the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stated this in an interview with Radio Liberty 10 June 2024. According to him, so far four countries have confirmed their readiness to transfer the aircraft, but their number may increase as the countries gradually transfer their aircraft fleet from F-16 to F-35.
"That's why there will be more of these planes. And they will probably be offered to Ukraine as well. As for the 30 planes, about 40. It should be understood here that not all the planes that will be handed over to Ukraine will now come to Ukraine. Some of them will remain in those centers where our pilots and aviation personnel are trained. These will be Ukrainian planes that will be used to train our pilots," said the general.
According to Golubtsov, part of the Western F-16 aircraft that Ukraine will receive from allies will be placed at foreign air bases. "There is a number that will go to Ukraine. There is a certain number of aircraft that will be stored at secure airbases, not in Ukraine, so that they are not targeted here. And this will be our reserve in case of need to replace malfunctioning aircraft, during carrying out regular work. That is, so that we can always have a certain number of aircraft in the operational fleet, which will correspond to the number of pilots we will have. There will be more pilots - there will be more aircraft in Ukraine," he said.
The general noted that the calculations were made in such a way that the command knows how many pilots, how many engineers, and how many airfield service personnel there will be. "We have a certain number of prepared airfields and we know the number of planes that will enter this year. We know how many will enter next year. If the year 28 sounded somewhere... It sounded today, tomorrow it can sound the 27th, then the 26th. We this is unknown today, and perhaps it is good that it is unknown, because with each conference of the members of the aviation coalition, we receive more positive forecasts, more real numbers, more information that allows us to make this process systematic," Golubtsov noted.
The Dutch government canceled an agreement to sell its F-16 fighter jets to private company Draken International. This was reported 20 May 2024 by Oryx, a Dutch online service for defense analysis. "The Netherlands has canceled the agreement to sell the remaining F-16s to Draken International. It is easy to guess where they will actually end up," the report said. Earlier, the national security adviser of the US president, Jake Sullivan, said that the United States can give consent to the transfer of modern combat aircraft to Ukraine , in particular the F-16, on the condition that they will not be used for strikes on Russian territory.
The West will deliver the first batch of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine within the next several months, with more to come later this year, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said 20 March 2024. Denmark will be the first Western country to supply Ukraine with the advanced aircraft, with the Netherlands soon to follow, the defense minister revealed. “I’m very confident that we will start delivering F-16s this summer... Denmark first, and we have a schedule ... so in the second half of the year, the Dutch F-16s will be going this way,” Ollongren said, without providing details on how many jets would be included in the first shipments.
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