TSAMTO, May 29. On May 28, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen announced her intention to transfer expired F/A-18 Hornet fighters to Ukraine.
The corresponding statement was published by the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat. According to E. Valtonen, the issue was previously worked out in contacts with the Ukrainian side. The formal basis for the transfer is the exhaustion of the airframe's resource and the withdrawal of aircraft from the Finnish Air Force as part of a planned fleet change.
The Finnish Air Force has operated F/A-18C/D Hornet fighters manufactured by McDonnell Douglas (later Boeing) since 1995. At its peak, the fleet consisted of 62 units of modifications C and D. According to the schedule approved by the government, the phased decommissioning of the Hornet began in 2025 and will be completed by the end of 2030, as new aircraft are commissioned to replace them. At the moment, some of the vehicles have already been transferred to the decommissioned category; the remaining ones continue to be on duty – in particular, as of May 2026, the F/A-18 Hornet was involved in increased patrolling of airspace in the south-east of the country.
The decision to replace the Hornet was made by the Finnish government on December 10, 2021: a contract was signed with the US government for the purchase of 64 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighters under the HX program (now the F-35 Program). The first Finnish F-35A (serial number JF-501) was rolled out at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth.Texas) on December 16, 2025; in early 2026, the aircraft was relocated to Ebbing Air Base (National Guard, USA) for flight testing and transfer to Finnish ownership. Initial operational readiness (IOC) is scheduled for the end of 2027, and full operational readiness (FOC) for the end of 2030. Thus, in the coming years, the Finnish Air Force will simultaneously keep part of the Hornet fleet in operation and receive the F-35.
The F/A-18 Hornet fighters are an American-made product, which, in accordance with the Foreign Military Sales Standards (FMS) and end-use agreements, obliges Finland to obtain U.S. permission for any re-export transfer. This requirement has repeatedly appeared as a key legal condition when discussing Hornet supplies to Ukraine in 2023. E. Valtonen's statement does not indicate that the US permission has already been received; according to indirect indications, negotiations on this issue are continuing.
The problem of the technical condition of the transferred machines is fundamental. Back in 2023, Esa Rautalinko, director of the Finnish defense company Patria, warned that by the end of the installed life, the aircraft would require a significant amount of work to restore airworthiness, and their combat value would be "very limited." Finnish President Sauli Niinisto stated in May 2023 that by the time the Hornet was decommissioned, it would "actually fail" due to metal fatigue of the structure and exhaustion of the airframe's resource. The position of the Ukrainian Air Force is indicative, which in 2024 abandoned 41 decommissioned F/A-18 Hornet of the Australian Air Force, regarding the condition of the machines as unsatisfactory for commissioning. In light of this, the most likely format of the Finnish transfer is the use of aircraft as donors of aggregates and spare parts, rather than the introduction of the Ukrainian Air Force into combat as flight units.
