Western countries have said that Ukraine will receive its first F-16 fighter jets this summer. How many planes will be put on combat duty and when exactly this will happen is not reported. But it’s not just about the machines – trained pilots and technical staff are needed.
For this reason, Ukraine will only be able to send about a dozen planes to defend its skies for now.
The small number of pilots capable of flying the F-16s is one of the main limitations, The New York Times writes, citing Ukrainian and American military officials. About 20 pilots are expected to be trained this year under the U.S., Dutch and Danish programs, according to U.S. officials.
Two pilots are usually assigned to each aircraft, aviation commanders said, so they can take turns flying missions, resting, training, etc. Thus, the Ukrainian Air Force will be able to use at best about 10 F-16s in combat missions this year, the NYT noted.
In addition, sufficient numbers of trained support personnel are needed. “It’s not just about pilots,” Gen. Charles Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who himself is a former F-16 pilot, said in June. – Maintenance and training of technicians is also important.”
The U.S., the Netherlands and Denmark said in a joint statement on July 10 that the latter two countries have begun transferring U.S. fighter jets to Ukraine and those will begin flying combat missions this summer.
It was previously reported that the Netherlands would provide a total of 42 F-16s and Denmark would provide 19. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said July 10 that his country will give six fighter jets, with deliveries to begin this year. The Belgian authorities are going to hand over the F-16s in 2025, how many there will be, it was not specified.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had this to say last year about the number of U.S. planes Ukraine needs: “Even if there are 50 of them, it’s nothing. They [the Russian Air Force] have three hundred, and we have 50. We are defending ourselves, we need 128 planes. Until we have that many planes, we will not be able to match them in the sky, it will be difficult.”
In a recent interview with The Guardian, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyy, refused for security reasons to say when the F-16s would arrive in Ukraine and how many of them there would be. He said they will help Ukraine strengthen its air defense, more effectively fight Russian cruise missiles and accurately engage ground targets. But the F-16s’ capabilities are limited, Syrsky acknowledged: they must stay “40 kilometers or more” away from the front line because they can be destroyed otherwise.
Russia struck three air bases in July – near Myrhorod, Kryvyy Righ and in the Odesa region. In the first case, a Russian reconnaissance drone suddenly appeared over the airfield, and within minutes several cruise missiles struck it, Ukrainian military officials told the NYT. The Russian defense ministry claimed the destruction of several Su-27 aircraft, while the Ukrainian ministry called them moulages.
Until now, the Ukrainian air force has dispersed the planes, moving them between and within airbases so that the fighters are not destroyed on the ground, Justin Bronk, a senior fellow in aviation and technology at the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies, told the BBC. But defending the F-16s, he said, would be more difficult: Those fighters need perfectly flat runways cleared of rocks and other small debris. Russia, using satellites or reconnaissance methods, is likely to notice attempts to improve infrastructure at existing bases, Bronk said.
Therefore, some of the F-16 fighters received from the allies will be stationed at foreign air bases, said Serhii Golubtsov, chief of aviation of the Air Force Command of the AFU. According to him, the F-16s can be used to prevent Russian planes from bombing Ukrainian positions and facilities on the country’s territory. But they will not be enough to undermine the power of the Russian Air Force; joint work with air defense systems like Patriot and information sharing with Western militaries is needed, Golubtsov said.
