This fighter pilot drops Putin’s MiG’s “Putin’s bloodhound” has found his horse – mocking the Ukrainian secret service

Western fighter jets have long seemed out of reach for Ukraine, but now resistance in NATO countries is diminishing. France has agreed to train Ukrainian pilots, Britain and the Netherlands want to form a coalition to supply Kiev with F-16 jets. It would not be surprising if US President Joe Biden also changes his mind and agrees to a delivery.

From the Ukrainian point of view, the F-16 is the ideal aircraft to replace its own fleet of Soviet MiG fighter jets. The F-16 developed for the US Air Force has been in serial production since the mid-1970s. According to the manufacturer Lockheed Martin, about 3,000 of the aircraft are in service in 25 countries to date – more than any other fighter jet. Incidentally, Germany is outside the debate about possible deliveries to Ukraine, as the Bundeswehr has never deployed the F-16.

The largest F-16 fleet in Europe

Most of the F-16s are in the arsenal of twelve NATO armies. The U.S. military has the majority — over 2,200. Turkey has the largest fleet of F-16s in Europe with 270, followed by the Netherlands with 213, Greece with 170 and Belgium with 160. Poland, Denmark and Italy each have several dozen F-16s in their hangars. The Ukraine would therefore have many possible suppliers and technical know-how in the immediate vicinity.

The F-16 was initially developed as a pure fighter aircraft to counter the fast and agile MiGs of the Soviet Union and its allies – in the dogfights of the Vietnam War, the US aircraft were often much inferior. It was then further developed into a universal aircraft that can also be equipped with bombs against ground targets.

The F-16 is relatively cheap

This versatility has earned it a reputation in many armies as a workhorse capable of all sorts of missions. The F-16 also became a bestseller thanks to its relatively low price of less than 30 million euros each. By comparison, the Bundeswehr’s new F-35 fighter jets cost more than 100 million euros each.

There were also technical innovations such as the teardrop cockpit window, which gives the pilot an almost complete all-round view; The F-16’s control stick is placed on the side, which allows it to remain agile even under extreme G-forces in high-speed turns. The F-16 was also one of the first fighter jets to support the pilot with an onboard computer that compensates for the machine’s unstable flight behavior in subsonic flight.

The F-16 hits at a distance of 180 kilometers

The F-16’s standard weapon for engaging enemy fighters is a six-barrelled automatic cannon built into the fuselage. Their wings can also be armed with short-range heat-seeking missiles, such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder and the AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-based long-range missile. The latter can shoot down enemy aircraft at a distance of up to 180 kilometers. This is also what makes the F-16 so valuable to Ukraine.

So far, Russia has barely been able to play off its air superiority against the skilful air defense of the Ukrainians. Since the spring, however, Russia has been increasingly using so-called glide bombs: simple aerial bombs with small wings, sometimes equipped with satellite control, are fired from a great distance and then glide towards the target. The Russian fighter jets remain out of range of the Ukrainian air defense. So far Kiev sees no way to counter this new Russian tactic.

“Pilots need two years of training”

This is one of the reasons why President Volodymyr Zelenskyj must have insisted more on the supply of Western fighter jets during his European tour. However, it will probably be some time before the Ukrainian military actually has them. “Pilots without previous experience need at least two years of training before they are combat ready,” says defense expert Christian Mölling t-online. “This is also a step to make Ukraine resilient to Russia in the medium and long term.”

For Mölling, the first question is whether the US government will give up its opposition to the delivery of F-16s to Kiev. That does not necessarily mean that the US itself sends planes; However, Washington would have to issue an export permit, so that the Netherlands, for example, can hand over their jets to Ukraine.

For the upcoming counter-offensive, Kiev will probably benefit more from the cruise missiles with a range of over 200 kilometers that Britain has now supplied, Mölling believes: “The ‘Storm Shadow’ is an important building block for the struggle in Ukraine. . If the British supply hundreds of them, Russia should make every effort to resist.”

Used sources: