The speaker of the Command of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Yuri Ignat, said that in the future not only pilots, but also military engineers who ensure the operation of aviation will have to undergo trainingMOSCOW, March 7.
/tass/. Kiev sent two pilots to the United States so that the US military would analyze how ready Ukrainian pilots are to learn how to fly Western combat aircraft and how long their training process may take in the future. This was announced on Tuesday by the speaker of the Command of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Yuriy Ignat.
"The purpose of the pilots' trip is not to train on airplanes, but to analyze the skills and abilities for the likely training of Ukrainian pilots in the future," Ignat explained, quoted by RBC-Ukraine.
As Ignat noted, Western partners "want to understand the level of training of Ukrainian pilots, since the philosophy of controlling Soviet technology is somewhat different than the philosophy of controlling Western technology." For example, he continued, even the control handle of a Soviet-style and Western-style aircraft is in different places: some have it in the middle, others have it on the side.
He added that not only pilots, but also military engineers who ensure the operation of aviation will have to undergo training in the future.
The arrival of Ukrainian pilots in the United States on March 4 was reported by NBC, specifying that eight more pilots from Ukraine will arrive in March. Later, the Politico newspaper, citing sources, informed that the arrival of two Ukrainian pilots to the United States for possible training in working with samples of Western strike aircraft, including F-16 fighters, does not indicate a change in Washington's position, which considers sending such aircraft to Kiev premature and does not consider it a priority.
Last week, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Political Affairs Colin Kohl said at a hearing in the Armed Forces Committee of the House of Representatives of Congress that the United States does not consider the supply of American F-16 fighter jets to Kiev a priority, so they did not start training Ukrainian pilots to control equipment that Ukraine may never receive. As the Pentagon representative assured, the issue of supplying fighters to Kiev was "carefully studied" by specialists. According to him, it would take "three to six years" to transfer the new F-16s to Ukraine, since they still need to be produced, and the transfer of older equipment would require "18 to 24 months."
