Ukraine has received the first F-16 fighter jets that it has sought for months to fight back against an onslaught of Russian missile strikes, a U.S. official confirmed to The Associated Press.
A Ukrainian lawmaker also confirmed Ukraine had received a small number of F-16 fighter jets. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak on the subject publicly.
Ukraine has been pushing its Western allies for F-16s for Ukraine for months, saying they were critically needed to fight back against the onslaught of missiles Russia has fired against it. The F-16 is specialized in suppressing enemy air defenses. The West has hesitantly moved toward providing the jets, after previous concerns that arming Ukraine with advanced weaponry would further escalate the war with Russia.
The U.S. has also been training Ukrainian pilots on how to fly the jets and has already graduated the first group of pilots on its operation.
Anyone more informed than me have a read on the possible impact that could have on the war? I imagine at the very least they will be getting pilots back who were training for this plus extra jets than they already have which by itself would be quite helpful. Beyond that does this represent a significant step change in the capabilities of the Ukrainian airforce? I’m guessing and hoping yes based on all the anticipation around this but I know nothing about this stuff.
EDIT: Thanks for the replies below. I also saw another interesting analysis that pointed out that Ukraine can now use a much larger stockpile of standard NATO munitions that the F-16 is compatible with. Seems like an absolutely huge deal.
One of the main things it does is actually prevent them losing a capability rather than granting them a new one. It can replace a lot of the Russian- or Soviet-built planes that Ukraine started the war with and obviously can’t easily replace now. That’s not particularly exciting and doesn’t change the course of things, but it does prevent the course changing in a bad way
Here’s what I think I’m remembering right from a video I saw a couple months ago:
Ukraine currently has a fleet of aging MiGs which they’ve improvised ways of using some NATO munitions on. One of which is the HARM anti-radiation (anti-radar, basically) missile. Again if I understand this right, when used on their MiGs the HARM missile can only be used in one or two of several modes it has, where an all NATO F-16 can use all modes of the missile.
Also, they have more total jets now, so they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.
Short answer is this gives them quick, powerful strike capabilities that are simply not possible with drones and ground forces. They can also “scramble” for quick reactions to enemy action/intel on enemy locations.
Generally in terms of numbers, if they get all the f-16s that were promised, they will be back to something around the size of the Air Force they had when they started the war. It will still be much smaller than Russia’s, but it will be a big improvement over where they are now.
As for additional capabilies, these are the main ones:
But it’s also worth considering that learning to use a new fighter jet even in the most basic way takes a year. To get really good in one takes many years. So it will probably take some time still before they really get proficient with this new capability.
It enables the use of NATO munitions, or which there’s a lot of possible sources. Ukraine’s previous platform was Soviet.
My impression is that they’ll be important in pushing Russian jets further back from the front line, which is crucial in stopping the glide bombs, which have been all too effective.
In addition, while Ukraine already has HARMs, my understanding is that using them from an F16 gives some capabilities that make them much more dangerous to Russian air defence.