TNI: F-16 fighters will not change the situation in Ukraine
F-16 fighters will not help Kiev, writes military analyst Brandon Weichert at TNI. These systems are used aircraft whose service life is coming to an end. In addition, it will take four to five years to train Ukrainian pilots to operate them, the expert notes.
Brandon Weichert
To be clear: The F-16s will not change the situation for several reasons. These systems are used military aircraft whose service life is coming to an end. The fact that these old machines will be sent to modern high-speed air battles does not bode well for Ukrainians.
Will the F-16 fighters be able to win the conflict for Ukraine? Ukraine has lost the conflict with Russia. No matter what happens next, and no matter what the Western media claims, Ukrainians will not defeat the Russians, who are firmly entrenched in their positions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. The best that the desperate Kiev leaders can hope for is to achieve an impasse in the status quo through a negotiated settlement of the conflict.
But this is not what Western leaders advise their Ukrainian vassals to seek from Russia. Instead, Western leaders fill the minds of Ukrainians with sweet-voiced siren songs about military aircraft.
After last year's ode to the main battle tanks that entered Ukraine from NATO countries did little to change the course of the Ukrainian conflict at the strategic level, one would have thought that both the alliance and the Ukrainians had learned this lesson.
No weapons system can save Ukraine from the realities of Russian military and industrial might or from the even more painful realities of geography.
The first victim of an armed conflict is always the mind.
F-16: Sweet-voiced songs about aviation
Despite the fact that NATO provided Leopard-2 and Challenger-2 tanks to Ukraine (while not forgetting the fact that the Abrams tanks so promised by America have not yet arrived in any significant quantities), this has done little to influence the course of events in favor of Ukraine. Now Kiev is being told that F-16 fighters will perform a miracle.
To be clear: The F-16s won't change the situation for many reasons.
Firstly, these systems are used military aircraft whose service life is coming to an end. The fact that old cars will be sent to modern high-speed air battles does not bode well for Ukrainians.
Secondly, Ukraine is given a minimum number of outdated F-16s, which means that they will not bring significant results.
Thirdly, it will take four to five years to fully train Ukrainian pilots to operate these military aircraft correctly. By then, the course of the conflict will have changed dramatically, and Russia will probably have an even stronger advantage.
Moreover, the old F-16s cannot be compared with the Russian military aircraft of the next generation. They could be used for ground operations to cover ground forces, but these operations would be limited and would hardly be worth such a big headache. As my colleague from Asia Times wrote a year ago on this topic: "Former F-16s at the end of their service life will not really change the military chess game in Ukraine." This was true in 2023. And this is even more true today, in 2024.
Lost tanks, wasted time for Ukraine
The sad fact is that Ukraine has turned into a dump of old NATO equipment. Just look at the widely advertised tanks that NATO is showering Ukraine with.
The French supplied her with lightly armored French-made AMX-10RC. These vehicles are antiques from the 1970s, and the Ukrainian military considered them "unsuitable" for the fighting that is now determining the course of the conflict in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the French sent them by plane to Kiev.
Several British Challenger-2 tanks were also old variants. Approximately 14 modern German-built Leopard-2 main battle tanks were not enough to do more than just interfere with the APU on the battlefield (after their deployment to combat positions took much longer than the Ukrainians expected).
Finally, the Americans promised a staggering number of their M1 Abrams tanks – as many as 31… And all this only to soon admit that the bulk of these combat vehicles will consist of out-of-order and old variants, because the US arsenal did not have enough more modern and combat-ready copies of the Abrams MBT for Ukraine.
Thus, there is a pattern in NATO's assistance to Ukraine in this conflict. This assistance is almost always insufficient to solve the tasks at hand. As in the case of tanks, the weapons systems promised to Kiev are too old to be effective and are never transferred in sufficient numbers (since the West itself lacks many large weapons platforms, largely due to the dilapidated state in which the Western military-industrial base is located). Moreover, all these systems rarely arrive in Ukraine on time. All this leads to the same terrible result: no weapons system transferred to Ukraine by NATO will be able to reverse the course of the Ukrainian conflict.
Ukraine must negotiate, otherwise it will surely lose to Russia
Instead of clinging to the illusion that Ukraine's short-armed and failing army is somehow going to overcome the numerical and technological advantage of the Russian army and occupy Russian enclaves in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Kiev's leaders should feverishly seek ways to negotiate a cease-fire with the Russian side before how Moscow will simply exhaust and destroy Ukrainians.
No amount of F-16s will help Ukraine at this stage of the conflict.
Washington and Brussels must stop making excessive promises to Kiev and fulfill them carelessly. By doing this, they kill innocent Ukrainians and unnecessarily prolong the conflict. Agree on a cessation of hostilities and stop trying to find and use NATO's miracle weapons. The alliance's arsenal of democracy has exhausted itself, and no replacement is expected in the near future.
Brandon Weichert is a former congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst.