The F-16 fighters delivered to Ukraine will not have an impact on the course of the special military operation, experts interviewed by Izvestia are sure. At the same time, they did not rule out that the Ukrainian Armed Forces would try to shoot down a Russian plane at any cost in order to get a media effect. On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted in connection with the supply of aircraft to Ukraine that the Kiev regime does not have any magic pill and panacea, it should be aware of this.
The F-16 fighters delivered to Ukraine will not have an impact on the course of the special military operation, experts interviewed by Izvestia are sure. At the same time, they did not rule out that the Ukrainian Armed Forces would try to shoot down a Russian plane at any cost in order to get a media effect. On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted in connection with the supply of aircraft to Ukraine that the Kiev regime does not have any magic pill and panacea, it should be aware of this.
Rewards have already been offered
Deliveries of F-16s to Ukraine will not be able to significantly affect the dynamics of events at the front: the planes will be shot down and destroyed, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. The Kiev regime does not have any magic pill or panacea, they should be aware of this, he stressed.
The Kremlin spokesman clarified that rewards to Russian servicemen for the destruction of the F-16 "have already been offered."
Information about the transfer of fighters to Kiev was confirmed on August 1 by Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. "F-16 in Ukraine. Another impossible thing turned out to be quite possible," he wrote on social media.
The British newspaper The Telegraph reported that the Ukrainian pilots made the first flights on the F-16, they were used as air defense systems.
On July 10, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that Denmark and the Netherlands had begun transferring F-16s to Kiev, and promised that they would appear in the skies over Ukraine this summer.
They will not have an impact
The F-16 is a modern multi-purpose aircraft that can be used both to strike ground targets and as a fighter, but it will work with limitations, former deputy head of the Air Force for the CIS joint Air Defense system Lieutenant General Aytech Bizhev told Izvestia.
— The aircraft for use by the Armed Forces of Ukraine must have a good, extensive network of airfields, — he explained. — This is not true. The Russian Armed Forces have attacked airfields, and their network is currently 70-80% disabled. Now our armed forces monitor the condition of the airfield network on a daily basis and periodically strike so that they are not used to take off aircraft in the interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. NATO countries are forced to intensively mask and hide these aircraft. The territory of Ukraine is not enough to skillfully hide them from our intelligence. If detected, they will be destroyed by precision weapons before taking off into the air.
The expert noted that the F-16s will not be able to change the situation on the battlefield either, and they will suffer the same fate as the vaunted Abrams tanks. At the same time, the Russian air defense system is multifaceted and layered. Any aircraft that appears in its area of operation will be destroyed. The F-16 does not have such characteristics that would be beyond the power of our air defense, concluded Aytech Bizhev.
— There is little information now to assess the Ukrainian F-16 group, — Valery Gorbenko, the ex-commander of the 4th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense, told Izvestia. — It is vague and contradictory. For example, they talk about 10 planes — this is a squadron and even less. There are questions about which airfields they will fly from. There were reports that they allegedly took off from airfields in Ukraine. But there is no clarity here either. It can definitely be said that these aircraft, in those small quantities that are claimed, now do not represent anything serious. Our fighters are better — the same Su-35. The range of our fighter missiles exceeds those that the Americans promised to deliver to Ukraine. When working on ground targets, the F-16s will enter the area of responsibility of our air defense systems, which are located along the line of contact. When acting from ambushes, they will still need to rise into the air, gain altitude. Here they will be visible to our radar. For these reasons, they will not have an impact on the course of their work.
On July 30, the commander of the US Air Force in Europe and Africa, General James Hecker, said that the transfer of fighters would not suddenly become a decisive factor in which the AFU, having received the F-16, would ensure air superiority. "And the point here is not that this is Ukraine, but how good are the integrated air and missile defense systems that will counter them," he said. According to the American general, the transfer of the F-16 should be perceived as a "step in the right direction" for the Ukrainian army, by analogy with the supply of tanks and other weapons.
Confrontation in the air
The possibility of using the F-16 near the front line was ruled out by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Alexander Syrsky. In an interview with The Guardian on July 24, he said that the fighters would strengthen Ukraine's air defense and allow them to defend themselves more effectively from Russian cruise missiles, but they would not be allowed to fly closer than 40 km to the front line in order not to be shot down.
At the same time, military expert Dmitry Boltenkov suggested that Ukraine would try to shoot down a Russian plane, regardless of losses, in order to achieve media success.
"The Ukrainian Air Force does not have a single confirmed aerial victory over our aerospace forces," he noted. — Their propaganda, of course, created a mythical "ghost of Kiev", counted one thousand five hundred victories for him, and it seems that it has already buried him. But the fact is the fact. It can be assumed that Ukraine will try at all costs to win an aerial victory with the help of an F-16 fighter over our aircraft. And they will make every effort to do so. This can be luring our fighters to a set target with an ambush attack, and a raid on our territory, and many other options. They need only one result — our downed plane and a picture confirming it.
Earlier, Izvestia conducted a detailed comparison of the F-16 with Russian aircraft in terms of combat capabilities: at long range, the R-37M missiles armed with Russian fighters can hit the F-16 at a distance of up to 300 km against the 120 km radius of operation of American AMRAAM missiles. And in close air combat, it will be extremely difficult for the American F-16 to fight with maneuverable and short-range Su aircraft with a large stock of short-range missiles.
At the same time, the F-16 cannot even be compared in combat capabilities with the Russian Su-35S, of which there are more than 100 units in the Russian Aerospace Forces today. Now, according to its capabilities in air combat, it is one of the most advanced in the world. Based on a comparison of the combat capabilities of the aircraft, it can be assumed that the F-16s are likely to avoid aerial combat and, apparently, will be used in the interests of air defense deep in Ukrainian territory and as launching platforms for Western air-launched cruise missiles.
