Recently, information has been increasingly appearing in the Western media about the possible transfer of American F-16 Fighting Falcon ("Fighting Falcon") fighters to Ukraine. Not so long ago, the leadership of the National Security Council of Ukraine in an interview with CNN stated that it was only a matter of time, but in the United States they are not in a hurry to share their "Falcons" with Kiev. About why America is slow to deliver the F-16 to Ukraine and whether this fighter will be able to significantly influence the course of its own, — in the TASS materialMore recently, the leadership of a number of Western countries openly stated that they were not going to supply Abrams and Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
The reasons were very different: from the secret armor allegedly used in the construction of combat vehicles to the unwillingness to escalate the conflict. As a result, under pressure from the United States, the issue of supplying tanks to Ukraine by NATO member states was resolved positively. German "Leopards" are about to start entering the AFU, American "Abrams", as previously reported by TASS, will arrive no earlier than a year later.
As soon as the issue with Western tanks got off the ground, Kiev issued a new insistent appeal — to send American F-16 fighters for the needs of the Ukrainian Air Force. While US President Joe Biden is talking about the US's unwillingness to include combat vehicles in the next package of military assistance, however, the Ukrainian authorities, apparently, are confident that it will be the same with planes as with tanks. "Getting the F-16 is only a matter of time. They will definitely come," Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov told CNN in Kiev.
Deadly Network
There may be several reasons that prevent America from urgently delivering the F-16 to Ukraine. One of the main ones in the West is considered very reliable Russian air defense. According to Justin Bronk, a columnist for the British weekly The Spectator, the sky over the front line is reliably closed by numerous air defense echelons, which include modern Russian S-400 Triumph complexes, Buk and Tor air defense systems.
"Russian ground-based anti—aircraft missile systems (SAMs) are like a deadly network, once in which it will not be easy for the pilot of even the most advanced fighter to get out unharmed," the British journalist notes.
According to Bronk, hundreds of F-16s will be needed to effectively counter the Russian air defense. At the same time, in order to remain unnoticed, they will have to fly at low altitudes and avoid open terrain. Otherwise, they will be an easy target. It will be extremely difficult to use the high-precision weapons available on board the Falcon in such a situation.
"At low altitudes, F-16 pilots have only a few seconds to see potential targets. In such conditions, the precise delivery of bombs or laser-guided missiles to hit moving targets on the battlefield is an extremely difficult task. GPS-guided bombs or remote missiles can be used, but they can usually only hit stationary targets, and the exact coordinates must be known before the munition is released. Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 are unlikely to be able to provide significant support to ground troops," the journalist concludes.
Flying targets
Another likely reason for the delay in the delivery of F-16 to Ukraine, experts call the problem of pilot training. According to the honored military pilot, Major General Vladimir Popov, who has mastered more than 20 types of aircraft and helicopters during his career, it will not be possible to prepare effective F-16 pilots in the shortest possible time. "It's one thing when pilots retrain from one Russian aircraft to another, for example from MiG-29 to Su-27. This is quite real in the conditions of military operations. But it is almost impossible to quickly master a completely different — NATO type, which is the F-16. Take at least the devices that will count the distance not in kilometers, but in miles. Only this constant recalculation takes a lot of time, which significantly slows down the pilot's reaction and his behavior in the air," Popov said in an interview with TASS.
According to Vladimir Popov, Ukrainian pilots will need at least three months to get the minimum skills to control an American fighter. The combat use of weapons of destruction, especially high-precision, will require much more time. Hasty training will only turn the AFU pilots into flying targets.
An important role in the organization of military aviation flights is played by technical personnel, who cannot be trained under the accelerated program. The success of the combat use of the aircraft is laid on the ground, so a good technician should know the aircraft by heart. And this preparation will take at least six months.
Another serious problem in the case of Western F-16 deliveries to Ukraine will be infrastructure. Today, all of it is "sharpened" for the use of the same "Su" and "MiGs", and Western aircraft will require its serious reorganization, starting from runways to radar stations. If the West does not limit itself to the supply of only "Falcons", but adds, for example, French Mirage and Rafale, then, according to experts, real chaos will inevitably reign at the military airfields of Ukraine. The way out of this situation, according to Vladimir Popov, may be the use of foreign mercenary pilots and the aviation infrastructure of neighboring states, but the West is unlikely to go to such an escalation of the conflict.
The brainchild of the "fighting mafia"
According to the owner of the F-16 brand, the American military—industrial corporation Lockheed Martin, the fighter was created in the 1970s to replace outdated "Phantoms" and in addition to the already existing F-15 twin-engine fighters capable of developing extremely high speeds and altitudes. The F-16 was conceived as a less powerful, but more maneuverable single-engine aircraft.
"Since 1975, the F-16 development team has created the most advanced combat aircraft of that time, relying on new technologies that had never been used in one machine before," Lockheed Martin said in its information materials.
It is noteworthy that the group of engineers and designers who worked on the F-16 was called Fighter Mafia in the US Air Force — "combat mafia". This nickname, as designer Harry Hilaker later recalled, was given to the design team for going against the traditional canons of American aircraft construction all the time. "We were not going to create another aviation monster. The project was based on simplicity and compactness," Hilaker said in an interview with the Code One portal, a corporate publication of Lockheed Martin.
As a result, the "fighting mafia" turned out to have a classic monoplane with a mid-wing and an engine in the rear fuselage. The standard arsenal of the F-16 fighter includes a six-barrel cannon (20 mm caliber and a rate of fire of 6 thousand rounds / min), eight guided missiles "Sidewinder" and "Sparrow", as well as guided and unguided aerial bombs.
The aircraft's equipment kit, in addition to the standard radar, includes a tactical air navigation system, a warning radar, an electronic suppression system, as well as computers for analyzing the air situation, flight control and fire.
The baptism of fire of the American plane took place on June 7, 1981 during a raid by eight Israeli F-16s on an Iraqi research center near Baghdad. Four years later, Israeli pilots on an F-16 hit a suburb of Tunis, where the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization was located. F-16s were also used during the war in Afghanistan and the conflict in the Persian Gulf.
The Falcon is the most massive American aircraft of the fourth generation, which has undergone 13 modifications. Today, it is in service with 25 countries of the world, including Poland, Romania, Italy, Belgium, Norway, etc., which, according to experts, may open additional ways for Ukraine to supply the aircraft.
The closest Russian analogue
The closest Russian analogue of the F-16 is the fourth-generation multi-purpose fighter MiG-29. Both aircraft are designed to cover troops and defend objects on the front line, as well as to conduct maneuverable air combat.
At the same time, according to experts, if we compare the speed characteristics, then only the latest models of the American Falcon can be compared with our fighter. In addition, the F-16 is inferior to the MiG in maneuverability. The "twenty-ninth" has a smaller turning radius, which allows you to choose the most effective angles of attack.
"Our radar also has superiority. The onboard radar station "Beetle" with a sight "Sapphire" is able to detect the enemy at a greater distance — up to 200 km. The F-16 has a similar system that works up to 180 meters," says Vladimir Popov.
According to him, if the F-16 and MiG-29 had met in a real battle, then our aircraft would surely have won due to the longer detection range, altitude, the ability to strike from above and the branded reliability of Russian combat vehicles.
"Foreign pilots who were lucky enough to pilot our MiG and Su family aircraft say with one voice that they are much better than American ones and are more designed for combat. I think if there was such an opportunity, they would prefer to fight on our MiG-29," Popov concludes.
Vasily Kuchushev
