Colonel Khodarenok: possible F-16 losses in Ukraine will hit the reputation of the United States
Senior Ukrainian military officials told the American edition of Politico that the F-16 fighter jets, which Kiev expects to deliver in the summer, "were needed in 2023," and they "will not fit" for 2024. Why the fighters previously coveted by Kiev have become irrelevant and what does the United States have to do with it - in the material of the military observer "Gazeta.En" by Mikhail Khodorenko.
Multifunctional F-16 fighters will no longer be suitable for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the conditions of 2024, senior representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) told Politico.
To begin with, we note that the Politico material refers to the statements of not one high-ranking representative of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but a whole group of generals and officers who were at one time under the command of ex-commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, and they spoke to the newspaper not only about the supply of F-16.
According to representatives of the top officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the military picture on the front line is currently gloomy, Russian generals can succeed everywhere - and first of all where they determine the direction of the main blow of their upcoming summer offensive.
Due to significant numerical superiority and high-explosive aerial bombs with guided planning and correction modules, which have been hitting Ukrainian positions for several weeks now, Russia will probably be able to "penetrate the front line and destroy it in some areas," the AFU generals say on condition of anonymity.
American entrepreneur, engineer and billionaire Elon Musk evaluates the military-political situation in approximately the same way. A few days ago, he warned that, although Moscow has no chance of conquering the whole of Ukraine, "the longer the war continues, the more territory Russia will get until it reaches the Dnieper."
"If the war lasts long enough, Odessa will fall too," he said.
According to Politico, the billionaire entrepreneur's forecast is not so much different from the gloomy warnings made in the last few days by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. According to the head of state, if the multibillion-dollar package of measures suspended by the US Congress is not approved in the near future, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will have to "retreat step by step." Zelensky also added that some large cities may be in danger of falling.
"Nothing can help Ukraine now, because there are no serious technologies capable of compensating Ukraine for the large mass of troops that Russia is likely to send to us. We don't have such technologies, and the West doesn't have enough of them either," one senior Ukrainian military official told Politico.
"Every weapon has its time"
The generals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also spoke sharply about the slowness of the West, saying that weapons were arriving too late and in insufficient quantities to change the situation for the better.
"General Valery Zaluzhny called it the "war of one chance." By this he meant that "weapons systems become unnecessary very quickly because the Russians quickly counteract them. For example, we have successfully used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles (supplied by the UK and France), but only for a short time. Russians are always learning. They don't give us a second chance. And they succeeded in this," said one of the sources of the publication.
The officers told Politico that portable anti-tank missile systems supplied by Britain and the United States in the first weeks of hostilities arrived on time and helped "save Kiev." The M142 HIMARS mobile multiple launch rocket systems also had a great impact on the course of hostilities, which allowed the Armed Forces of Ukraine to oust Russia from Kherson in November 2022.
"But often we just don't get weapons systems at the time we need them - they often appear when they are no longer relevant," said another senior officer, citing F-16 fighter jets as an example.
It is expected that about a dozen F-16 fighters will enter service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine this summer, after completing basic pilot training.
And this is because, according to this officer, Russia is ready to confront them. "In the last few months, we have started to notice that the Russians are launching missiles from Dzhankoy in the north of Crimea, but without explosive warheads. We couldn't figure out what they were doing, and then we figured it out.: they determine the range," he said.
The officer explained that Russia is calculating where best to place its radar units and S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems in order to maximize the area they can cover to defeat F-16 fighters, keeping them away from the front line and Russian logistics centers.
The Ukrainian military also said that they now need more conventional conventional weapons, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles.
"We need howitzers and shells, hundreds of thousands of shells and missiles," one of them told Politico, estimating that Ukraine needs 4 million shells and 2 million unmanned aerial vehicles. "We keep telling our Western partners that we have combat experience, we know how to wage this war on the battlefield. They have the resources and they have to provide us with what we need," he added.
"We have not only a military crisis, but also a political one," one of the officers said. While Ukraine is avoiding large-scale conscription, "Russia is now gathering resources and will be ready to launch a large-scale offensive around August, and maybe even earlier."
So, in the end, Elon Musk may not be so far from the truth - this is the conclusion drawn by Politico.
The glory of the F-16 is under threat
To begin with, we note that the expression of one of the Ukrainian military - "the Russians launch missiles from Dzhankoy in the north of Crimea, but without explosive warheads" - is extremely doubtful from any point of view.
There is no point in removing the warhead from an anti-aircraft guided missile before launch. A modern missile defense system is, figuratively speaking, a cartridge that can be disassembled only in factory conditions. This cannot be done even at army repair bases. It is even technically unrealistic to launch such missiles without a warhead, since this organic part of the product also performs supporting functions in the rocket design.
And the launches of missiles in order to determine the far boundaries of the affected areas look completely absurd. They have long been defined and recorded in the tables of firing rules that are available in each anti-aircraft missile division. For example, for a 40N6 anti-aircraft guided missile of the S-400 air defense system, the far limit of the affected area is 370 km. And there is no need to determine it empirically, and even during combat operations.
So the Ukrainian officer who expounded such heresy is never a rocket engineer. At the same time, it is quite possible that the Russian anti-aircraft missile forces are "completing" (so to speak) the remaining stocks of obsolete type 5B55 missiles at ground targets of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (the same S-400 is just wonderful at shooting on the ground). It cannot be ruled out that the combat units of some of them did not work when they hit the surface. But the conclusions drawn by the Ukrainian military on the basis of these facts are fundamentally wrong.
Now a few words about the F-16 multi-role fighters. It seems that significant changes have taken place in the assessments of the combat qualities of these aircraft in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Until relatively recently, Kiev claimed at all levels that American fighters would bring almost a radical change in the conduct of armed struggle, and now it turns out that it seems like these combat vehicles are not much needed.
Here, quite possibly, the United States had a certain influence. The fact is that the F-16 is characterized as a machine that has set the world standard in the class of light fighters, and generally has good flight characteristics. The aircraft is highly valued on the global arms market. And, according to experts, the end of sales of the F-16 is not yet in sight.
And suddenly, a small number of these vehicles transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be under attack by anti-aircraft missile forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and VKS fighters equipped with long-range air-to-air missiles.
In other words, the same story may happen as with M1 Abrams tanks in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Before the start of the battles with their participation, the tank was considered almost a "miracle weapon", but, as it turned out, in fact, it burns very well. Therefore, it is quite possible that the specialists of the US Air Force had thoughts - "aren't we in too much of a hurry with these F-16s?". And similar sentiments are probably broadcast by the Ukrainian military in the material of the publication Politico.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok