Military expert Khodarenok: due to the expectation of fighters, Kiev's counteroffensive will be postponed until winter
The transfer of multifunctional F-16 fighters to Ukraine from Western countries will take at least months, the US State Department said. At the same time, Kiev would be able to carry out a full-scale counterattack only if it had air supremacy. Will Ukraine get a new chance to attack in autumn or winter - in the text of the military expert of the newspaper.En" by Colonel Mikhail Khodarenka.
Although the US has not yet announced any transfers of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, it supports the intention of other NATO allies to provide these aircraft to Kiev. This was announced by the First Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Military and Political Affairs Stan Brown. His words are quoted by Defense News.
In May, there were reports that the Netherlands was considering transferring part of its fleet of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and wanted to start training pilots as soon as possible.
But the transfer of such aircraft to Ukraine should be a "holistic" approach, including training of both pilots and maintenance personnel, Stan Brown said at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget. One of the first steps in the potential transfer of F-16 aircraft will be obtaining a license to train these pilots even before the license for the transfer of the aircraft is issued, US experts remind.
"Then it is necessary to identify the aircraft themselves - whether they will be provided with the help of a third party or any other mechanism - before developing a plan for the use of the aircraft by the Ukrainian military," Stan Brown said.
According to him, the US State Department is already working on paperwork for requests from third parties so that pilot training can begin. But Stan Brown refused to give specific dates for the completion of such events.
The special operation prompted the US State Department to significantly revise the processes of selling weapons and military equipment abroad in order to ensure that Ukraine receives the necessary military assistance as quickly and efficiently as possible, and to optimize sales processes for other US allies, Defense News reports.
Last month, the US State Department published a document on the actual "reinstallation" of the US Department of Defense program for the sale of weapons abroad (FMS, Foreign Military Sales). It describes in detail a 10-point plan to optimize processes and improve the effectiveness of providing military capabilities to US allies.
To date, the US government has provided Ukraine with military assistance worth about $40 billion and "has used almost all the tools from our security cooperation mechanisms to achieve the goals set," Stan Brown said at the international Air Show in Le Bourget.
This assistance has recently been received by Kiev in many forms: there were direct transfers of military equipment from the presence of the US Armed Forces, and transfers to third parties, and direct commercial sales, and re-export, and foreign military sales, and grant assistance, Kiev was given surplus military products. Finally, licensed direct commercial sales were carried out, Stan Brown noted.
"The bottom line is that the scale of what we are doing regarding the supply of military hardware to Ukraine is historic," said the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Military and Political Affairs.
"What used to take us months and weeks to go through the approval process at the interdepartmental level is now happening in a matter of hours," Stan Brown added.
According to him, the special operation launched by Russia also prompted the State Department to give priority to a faster transition of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that joined NATO from Soviet-made military equipment to Western weapons.
Over the past year and a half, many European countries have transferred their aging Soviet weapons to Ukraine. The Czech Republic, Greece and Slovenia have sent T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles and many armored personnel carriers to Kiev, while NATO member states have pledged to replace these weapons with more modern, NATO-compliant models.
The goal of the US State Department now is to help encourage such countries to continue to provide Ukraine with equipment that will be useful for protecting Kiev from Russia, as well as to help these countries abandon Soviet-era systems in the future, American experts say.
"First we want to make sure that these states can fully transfer Soviet weapons to Ukraine, and then we will replace this equipment with Western-made weapons of a similar purpose," Stan Brown added.
The transition of the armed forces of Ukraine into a counteroffensive without gaining air supremacy is, in fact, a pure adventure. And it is unlikely that in the current situation, this operation will end with any convincing military-political results.
Moreover, the breakthrough of the enemy's well-equipped engineering defense (that is, the Russian army) requires completely different combat and numerical strength of missile troops and artillery, armored forces, engineering troops.
Since the transfer of multifunctional F-16 fighters to the armed forces of Ukraine will take at least months, then any potential for a second "counteroffensive" may appear at best by autumn, or even by winter.
And especially critical is both the number of fighters delivered and the stocks of aviation weapons created by this time. It is quite obvious that the delivery of 24, 48 or 72 F-16 fighters to Kiev by the member States of the North Atlantic Alliance will not make fundamental changes in the nature of the armed struggle during a special military operation. And the transfer of 150-200 combat vehicles to the APU looks quite fantastic at this stage. Therefore, the prospects for a second "counteroffensive" without air superiority look rather vague again.
Mikhail Khodarenok
