“The story of the F-16 is very sad. Their arrival has been so delayed that they have become something of a legend.” These are the words of Ukrainian Lieutenant General Igor Romanenko. This soldier in the reserve, one of the most recognized analysts of the war in Ukraine, demonstrated on May 1 in the middle TSNthe impatience shared by Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian army for a weapon that they trust will be decisive in driving back the Russian invader. The first forecasts, in 2022, indicated that these American fighters, the most used in NATO, would land in Ukraine in early January. Five months later, there is still no trace of them.
The most realistic estimates indicate that the first F-16s may be in service in June or July. They will be six of the 19 units that Denmark wants to donate to the Ukrainian Air Force. In addition to the Danish Government, the Netherlands has committed to delivering 24 of these aircraft, Norway, 22, and Belgium, a number that has not been made public. The F-16s are American-made and the White House must authorize their delivery. After almost a year of negotiations between kyiv and Washington, President Joe Biden approved the supply of these fighters in August 2023.
The Danish Government indicated in 2023 that the first units could be supplied at the beginning of January. The Ukrainian army later announced that the expected time to begin receiving the fighters would be in the spring. “It is evident that the delivery date has changed on many occasions. We are still waiting, and we will work with what they give us,” Ilia Yevlash, spokesperson for the Air Force, said on state news on May 1. Yevlash was still confident that the first devices will enter Ukraine in mid-May.
But the training of pilots and maintenance teams has proven to be a more complex obstacle than anticipated, according to recent information published by Le Mondeand The New York Times. Romanenko stated that the main reason for the delay is the preparation of take-off and landing runways adapted for rapid operations hidden from the enemy. Yevlash confirmed that the best option would be to build underground bases, but this is long and expensive, so the Air Force chooses to finalize a plan to disperse the F-16s to secret airfields and runways.
The F-16s will be used to intercept Russian missiles and attack the invader’s positions in the front or its logistical bases in the rear. Former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valeri Zaluzhni detailed in November 2023, in an essay published in The Economist,that these fighters will be useful, but they will arrive too late to be a decisive factor in turning the war around. The ideal moment was last summer’s counteroffensive, which ended in failure due to the solid Russian fortifications and because Ukraine did not have aerial fire. Zaluzhni stressed that the F-16s will take off when the enemy has already reinforced its anti-aircraft defense network. These defenses are precisely one of the main shortcomings on the Ukrainian side, which is allowing Russian planes to bomb their rival’s positions more easily. This is being key in the advance of Kremlin troops in the Donetsk province.
Romanenko believes that receiving six F-16s in the summer will bring practically no advantage, and that there should be at least 12, a squadron. For this general, a number that would be a qualitative leap are 100 American fighters, which could balance Russian air dominance – the invader has 300 combat aircraft directly involved in the war, and 1,500 throughout Russia. Zaluzhni revealed in November that of the 120 aircraft that the Ukrainian Air Force had at the beginning of the invasion – old Soviet Mig-29 and Su-27 fighters – only 40 remained active. Seven months later, the number is smaller, although the Ukrainian military leadership does not reveal it.
Join Morning Express to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
But the F-16s that will arrive in Ukraine are also models manufactured between the early 1980s and the 1990s. “They have promised us the cheapest fighters. They give us scrap metal while they give Israel the F-35s [uno de los mejores aviones de combate estadounidenses y del mundo]”.
United States Air Force Colonel Kirsten D. Thompson corroborated last March, in an article for the political and defense study center Council on Foreign Relation, that the more F-16s Ukraine receives, the more possibilities it has of reversing the Russian dominion. But Thompson included a determining problem in the equation: “More F-16 for Ukraine means that it will need more spare parts, more training, more ammunition and more infrastructure. All of this requires very expensive time and resources. “The infrastructures for such complex weapons systems take years to develop, which is difficult while a conflict is ongoing, and even more so for a country that is fighting a large-scale war against one of the largest armies in the world.”
Other analysts are more optimistic. Peter Brookes, former advisor to the United States Department of Defense and expert from the GIS study group, assessed in a report dated April 11 that the arrival of the F-16s “will dispute the dominance of the skies in Ukraine, will force tension in the military supply of Russian resources and will complicate Moscow’s strategic operations.” Brookes focuses on another issue, and that is the possibility that Ukraine uses F-16s to attack Russian territory, which would mean crossing a red line for the White House: the most important condition of accepting that these planes enter combat against Russia. is that they only do it in the skies of Ukraine.
Follow all the international information onFacebook andxor inour weekly newsletter.
.
.
_
