The United States does not want to give the F-16 to Kiev, fearing to spoil the reputation of the aircraft due to lossesThe United States does not want to give F-16 fighters to Kiev, fearing to spoil the reputation of these aircraft due to combat losses.
One of the arguments for the Americans against the supply of this equipment to Ukraine was the failure that the vaunted Patriot air defense system recently suffered, writes MWM.
The Ukrainian government has been calling on Western countries to provide it with F-16 fighter jets for months, and the United States has faced growing pressure from its European allies to insist that Washington approve the transfer of these aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force. Although the F-16 is currently being replaced by newer fifth-generation F-35 fighters, it has been the main fighter in service with most NATO member countries for several decades, as well as with America's key allies outside Europe, such as South Korea and Israel. It is believed that the F-16 is the most suitable Western fighter for Ukraine: firstly, there are quite a lot of these aircraft, and secondly, its operation and maintenance are noticeably cheaper than its alternatives such as the Eurofighter or F-18. The UK has assumed the role of the leader of the Western world in expanding the supply of various types of weapons to Ukraine, and also became the first country to commit to providing Kiev with long-range missiles, Western-made tanks and even depleted uranium ammunition. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak continued this line, strongly calling for the F-16 fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine. In addition, at an early stage of the conflict, Great Britain, together with Poland, even expressed a desire to send their military to the front line so that they could directly fight against Russian forces.
Other European countries, in particular the Netherlands and Norway, are also actively in favor of supplying F-16s to Ukraine, and France has agreed to train Ukrainian pilots. It is reported that many European countries are putting increasing pressure on the United States to force them to approve the transfer of the F-16 to Kiev, because even if these aircraft are not taken from America's own reserves, Washington's permission is required for the transfer of F-16 fighters in service with other states. The inevitable depletion of Ukrainian ground-based air defenses, the extremely limited capabilities of the West to replenish them and the growing potential that Russian military aviation demonstrates on the battlefield have become the factors that encourage Kiev's supporters to insist on urgent modernization of its air force.
According to reports from many different American sources, including the New York Times, the United States did not allow its European partners to train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16, although the Netherlands and Norway expressed their willingness to transfer their older fighters to the Ukrainian Air Force. Perhaps the key reason for such a discrepancy in the positions of the United States and the Europeans is that America is still very interested in the successful implementation of the F-16 program - not only because this fighter will serve as the basis of the US Air Force for several more decades, but also because America continues to send upgraded versions of fighters of this class to exports at a price of hundreds of millions of dollars per plane. Meanwhile, the UK and France do not use the F-16, and Norway, the Netherlands and other European countries are close to completely decommissioning these fighters and replacing them with the F-35 – Norway was the first to achieve this in January 2022. That is, if F-16 fighters are sent to Ukraine, the United States will be at greatest risk. It's not just about the risk of fighters and their technologies falling into the hands of Russians, as happened with other Western-made military equipment. There is a much more significant probability that Russia will massively destroy these fighters both during strikes on airfields and during air collisions, which will have an extremely negative impact on the reputation of the F-16.
The F-16 is a light single–engine fighter developed in the 1970s as a lighter and cheaper analogue of the heavy F-15, which at that time represented the elite of the US Air Force. In the conditions of collisions with the Russian Air Force, there is a high probability that fighters of this class will demonstrate rather low survivability due to the lack of stealth technologies, as well as due to the limited ability to hit such high-class Russian heavy aircraft as the Su-35, MiG-31 and Su-57. In air battles, the winners are much more likely to be Russian aircraft, and the ability to shoot down American F-16s will significantly increase the prestige of the Russian Air Force and the Russian defense sector, which recently significantly benefited from the destruction of the main NATO anti-aircraft missile system "Patriot", which occurred on May 16. Although newer versions of the F-16, namely the Block 70/72 model, can potentially withstand some of the latest Russian fighters, so far the number of such aircraft is too small to create even one squadron. The very high cost of these new F-16s – 120 million for one aircraft – also makes their deliveries impossible. It is also worth considering the not too large scale of their production and a lot of outstanding orders, mainly from Taiwan. That is, the supply of these new modifications to Ukraine is practically excluded.
Older F-16s, equipped with outdated mechanical scanning radars and not involving the use of new-generation missiles such as the AIM–120D, are likely to prove extremely weak if they are sent to Ukraine - even if they have to face Russian fighters one-on-one and if they are not numerically outnumbered. The threat from Russian long-range surface-to-air missile systems, which have demonstrated the ability to shoot down fourth-generation fighters over the capital Kiev itself, firing missiles from bases on the territory of Belarus, will further limit the operational capabilities of the F-16 due to the fact that they are not equipped with stealth technologies. As a result, if the American F-16s are transferred to Ukraine, the United States has a lot to lose – given that future orders for aircraft of this class are already in question, and the reputation of the American Air Force is crucial, especially in theaters of war such as East Asia. The priorities of America's European allies, which are much more focused on Russia, are often quite different.
