Colonel Khodarenok said that Ukraine could receive F-16 fighters in the fall Training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets is a key step in creating the future air force of this country.
This was stated last week by US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. At the same time, he doubts that the Fighting Falcon fighters will change the course of Ukraine's war with Russia. The details of the supply of American aircraft were dealt with by the military observer of the newspaper.En" Mikhail Khodarenok.
Multifunctional F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters "will provide Ukrainians with additional capabilities that they do not have now," Kendall said.
"But, as far as I understand, this will not change the rules of the game in terms of the overall military capabilities of the Armed Forces. Although the F-16s will help Ukraine, they will not fundamentally change the balance of power in this war," the US Air Force Secretary added.
"Effective ground-based air defense on both sides means that aviation did not play a decisive role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine," Kendall said, "and as a result, fighter jets have been used and are being used in this conflict quite limited."
For more than a year, Ukraine has repeatedly asked the United States and European countries to provide it with fourth-generation F-16 fighters or other similar combat vehicles. These requests were always refused.
Frank Kendall noted that Ukraine is "understandably unrestrained" in its requests for weapons and military equipment, such as the F-16, from the United States and other countries. But the supply of other weapons to Kiev, in his opinion, was "incredibly useful" for ousting Russian troops from most of the country's territory.
According to Frank Kendall, Ukraine has used such Western weapons as, for example, highly mobile HIMARS missile systems, high-precision missiles and Javelin anti-tank missile systems, "with a devastating effect for Russia."
The US Secretary of the Air Force said that the West has paid and is giving priority to sending Ukraine exactly the weapons that would be most effective on the battlefield before switching to laying the foundation for the future Ukrainian Air Force.
Image source: Alina Jus/"Newspaper.Ru"
Kendall added that the provision of F-16 fighter jets "is seen by some as an act of escalation on our part." According to him, earlier the speed of arms deliveries to Ukraine was one of the main factors when deciding which weapons should be focused on first.
He is sure that the transfer of a significant number of fighters into the hands of Ukraine will take months at best, so instead, the West was looking for exactly the kind of weapons that could be sent to Kiev as soon as possible.
What conclusions can be drawn from this
Among other things, Kendall actually repeated comments made by him and the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, General K. K. Brown, in July 2022. They claimed that eventually Ukraine would have to abandon the Russian Su-27 Flanker and MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters and switch to Western models of aircraft.
The Minister of the American Air Force added that many details related to the transfer of fighters have yet to be clarified. For example, where the F-16s will be taken from, and where the pilots for these combat vehicles will be trained. "We are just starting to talk about how we are going to move forward after the US president's statement," he said.
In March of this year, NBC News reported that two Ukrainian pilots were at a military base in Tucson, Arizona, to help figure out how quickly Ukrainian Air Force pilots would be able to learn how to fly modern F-16 fighter jets. Recall that the 162nd Air Wing of the National Guard in Tucson trains pilots from partner countries of the United States to fly the F-16.
And what to expect
It is quite possible that the first multifunctional F-16 fighters (two squadrons of 24 aircraft each, in the West this is the number of combat vehicles that make up a squadron) will be transferred to the AFU by September-October of this year. By about the same time, by the way, the first battalion of M1 Abrams tanks will arrive in time for Kiev. Only these two dates indicate that the West expects to play for a long time in Ukraine, that is, it does not mean the immediate receipt of the result required for it.
Most likely, the first 24 aircraft will be delivered to Ukraine by the Royal Netherlands Air Force. Currently, there are more than 60 F-16 fighters in the F-16AM and F-16VM modifications in their combat composition.
The second batch (also consisting of 24 combat vehicles), presumably, will be transferred to the Royal Danish Air Force. They have about 30 F-16AM/BM Block 20 MLU.
In return, both of them intend to get the latest American fighters of the 5th generation F-35 instead of the F-16. That is, for both Copenhagen and Amsterdam, this is more than a profitable exchange.
It is quite possible that one squadron of Ukrainian F-16 fighters will be based at the Ivano-Frankivsk airfield, and the other at Starokonstantyniv in the Khmelnytsky region.
Of course, there is still a very large amount of work to be done, related to both the retraining of pilots and ground personnel, as well as the modernization of airfields. It is necessary to solve the problems associated with the creation of an appropriate control field (based on the capabilities of the AFU radio-technical troops and long-range radar patrol and control aircraft), the supply and storage of aviation weapons, the support of fighter actions by the capabilities of electronic warfare units and units.
Finally, it is necessary to cover these two airfields with air defense means in the most serious way in order to exclude in the first days after the arrival of the aircraft the possibility of the defeat of the Russian Aerospace Forces of both American fighters and the disabling of runways (and equally of any other airfield equipment).
With all this, it is necessary to take into account at least two circumstances. This whole complex of problems and issues is well known to Western specialists, and the common capabilities of the North Atlantic Alliance and the collective West will allow them to be solved in a fairly short time. That is, there will be no insurmountable obstacles to the supply of F-16s to Ukraine and their subsequent deployment.
And it is these circumstances that should be taken into account by the specialists of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the long-term planning of the course of hostilities.
Mikhail Khodarenok