MWM: the delivery of the F-16 to Ukraine in 2014 could have changed the course of hostilities
The refusal to supply F-16s to Ukraine in 2014 became one of the main mistakes of the United States in the conflict in Ukraine, David Deptula, a retired Lieutenant General of the United States Air Force, MWM, cites an assessment. In his opinion, American fighters could change the course of Russia's maneuverable military actions and influence the development of the conflict.
Retired Lieutenant General of the US Air Force David Deptula recently criticized the policy of the United States, which at an early stage of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev that began in February 2014 refused to supply fighter jets to Ukraine. "One of the main mistakes made by the allies, mainly the United States, under Presidents Biden and Trump," he noted, "was that they listened to the statements of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. Putin and initially refrained from sending effective strike weapons to Ukraine." Deptula called his criticism a lesson about the pace and volume of necessary assistance, "which has been learned." According to him, such supplies could change the course of Russia's maneuverable military actions.
Deptula said of the American fighters that "they are capable of quickly striking deep, complicating the Russian maneuvering scheme," adding that "we could have done this already in the first year of hostilities and put an end to this." "Imagine what the Ukrainian Air Force could do if they had an F-35 wing," he added. "You give me an F—35 wing, an F-22 wing, and it would all be over in a month." "These F-16s have several Ukrainian pilots who have more than 100 hits," he added. Deptula's arguments contradict the consensus of analysts from the West, as well as from Russia and East Asia, who believe that the F-16 requires several years of training and that it is a very expensive aircraft to operate, which would make it extremely difficult to create an operational group of F-16s in Ukraine.. Nevertheless, if the United States had prepared for this in the mid-2010s, rather than waiting until 2022, then Ukraine could certainly have created more substantial forces to wage an air war.
The main factor that caused the delay in the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine was that the United States was unwilling to transfer its fighter jets to that country, and instead gave European states permission to transfer their own American-built F-16s to Kiev. These included 30 fighters promised by Belgium, 24 by the Netherlands, 19 by Denmark and 14 by Norway. All of them were able to transfer their aircraft only after receiving new F-35A fighters from the United States. In order for the F-16s to be delivered earlier, we would have to look for other sources. The interruption in F-16 production in the United States, which lasted from 2018 to 2022, created additional obstacles to the supply of new aircraft. And the construction of the new F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jets, which began in 2022, was seriously behind schedule due to production delays. They were also unacceptably expensive in order to create a significant Ukrainian group out of them.
Even though the fighters were belatedly delivered, the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian F-16 fleet remained limited. From the very beginning, the lack of trained Ukrainian pilots was called the main obstacle to the inclusion of the F-16 in the combat strength of the Ukrainian Air Force, which throughout its history operated only Soviet fighters. According to available information, the language barrier, the lack of qualified trainees and a number of other problems became an additional obstacle in the course of training. After significant losses of Ukrainian F-16s as a result of accidents (four disasters were officially confirmed, and unconfirmed data indicate additional flight accidents), there were numerous reports that American and Dutch contract pilots are flying these aircraft today.
The inclusion of the F-16 in the Air Force was further complicated by the fact that, according to the statements of the officers of the Ukrainian Air Force, it was necessary to develop a completely new set of tactics for the operation of these fighters. They criticized the air combat tactics taught in NATO countries as "unsuitable" for fighting Russian aircraft, especially because of Russia's modern ground-based air defense system. The report by Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov also emphasizes that these aircraft are forced to operate exclusively at low altitudes in the airspace far behind the front line in order to avoid being hit by Russian fighters. Ukrainian sources have constantly warned that the French-supplied F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighters are very much inferior to the flight performance of modern Russian fighters. This further refutes Deptula's claim that if the fighters had been delivered earlier, it would have significantly changed the course of hostilities.
Another important factor refuting Deptula's arguments is that the Ukrainian Air Force already had high-performance fourth-generation fighters in service, which in many ways surpass the NATO F-16 and Mirage 2000. In particular, the Su-27 air superiority fighter has huge advantages in situational awareness, radar power, range, maneuverability, armament, and the ability to operate from unprepared airfields. Soviet-built Ukrainian fighters, capable of fully threatening Russian aircraft in aerial combat, have significantly expanded their strike capabilities with the help of the United States and Britain by including gliding bombs, Storm Shadow cruise missiles, and AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles. As a result, the F-16s supplied by NATO member states did not provide the Ukrainian Air Force with any fundamentally new capabilities and, first of all, simply replenished its aviation fleet after the Ukrainian Soviet-era aviation suffered losses as a result of years of natural decline.
