Global Courant 2023-05-04 02:53:30
A United States Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon from the 408th Fighter Squadron, Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, conducts a training flight over Germany on Sept. 9, 2015.US Air Force photo by Tech. Sergeant Jason Robertson/Freed
Ukraine has repeatedly asked the US for fourth-generation fighter jets, such as the F-16.
But air combat experts have argued that these aircraft would have little impact on the battlefield.
A former F-16 pilot said these jets have no fighting chance given Russia’s air defense systems.
Ukrainian officials have long pressured their Western militaries to send them modern fighter jets, arguing that Kiev needs air power to defeat invading Russian forces, and while some in the West agree, others argue that fighter jets as Ukraine wants, would not stand an opportunity in the current threat environment.
There have been repeated requests for the delivery of American-made F-16s, leading to discussions about how effective the fourth-generation aircraft would be in the air. A former F-16 pilot told Insider he wouldn’t want to fly missions over Ukraine at this point, claiming the plane can’t outrun Russian air defense systems.
Fourth-generation fighters “have no business on a modern battlefield,” John Venable, a 25-year veteran of the United States Air Force, told Insider in a recent interview.
Since the early days of the full-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022, Ukraine has done just that asked fighter jets from its Western allies to supplement its dwindling fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters, which arguably cannot compete against the superior air force of Russia.
Air National Guard crews in California and Alabama replace an Air Data Controller on an F-16 at Mirgorod Air Base during Exercise Safe Skies on July 25, 2011.US Air Force/Tech. Sergeant Charles Vaughan
Kiev has asked Washington for American on numerous occasions fighter jets such as F-15s, F/A-18s and F-16s, Colin Kahl, the Secretary of Defense for Policy, told Congress in late February, but the Biden administration has pointed to the request, insisting that planes like the F-16 are not what Ukraine needs.
Some legislators and military officials have pressed the Pentagon to to steer F-16s to Ukraine, and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel said he believed the jets could give Ukraine a edge above Russia above the battlefield.
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But other aerial warfare experts and officials have argued that supplying Ukraine with F-16s would be too much of a stretch. heavy lift for the Kiev Army, in assessing that, in addition to the demands of establishing major maintenance and support facilities, these fighter jets would struggle to survive in the current threat environment and would have little impact on the protracted conflict.
As Insider before reportedGeneral James Hecker, commander of the US Air Force in Europe, argued earlier this year that jets are simply not needed now, explaining that “both Russian and Ukrainian success in integrated air and missile defense have contributed to a large part of that planes worthless.”
F-16 fighters would likely be outnumbered by Russian air defense systems
Airspace over Ukraine remains in dispute after 14 months of war. But Russia has enjoyed a numerically larger air force, stronger technical capabilities in its fighter jets and long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, according to a recent report. report on Russian Air Force published by the Center for Naval Analyses.
The proficient SAM systems “have proven extremely lethal” against Ukrainian aircraft and are the “primary killer” of Ukrainian jets, helicopters and drones, the report notes.
Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 at a military airbase in Ukraine, November 23, 2016.Daniel Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Fourth- and fourth-generation fighter jets like the F-16 that lack stealth capabilities are “completely outmatched in high-threat environments” because of advanced air defense systems like Russia’s S-400, argued Venable, a veteran and senior research fellow for defense policy at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.
In commentary Published on the think tank’s website last month, Venable wrote that the F-16 is not suitable for the Ukrainian Air Force for several reasons, including that the S-400 can outsmart the F-16’s targeting systems and that he can attack the fighter jets before they are in range to fire weapons such as small diameter bombs.
“Giving Ukraine more MiG-29s will not help the battlefield. And even if we gave them modern F-16s – I would say more modern F-16s – the battlefield will not change or affect in a year, let alone in time for a spring offensive,” he told Insider in an interview this week, referring to Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive.
Venable said when he flew F-16s over Europe earlier in his career as a pilot, his plane had solid jamming pods that worked against the threats of the Soviet-era SA-6 and SA-11 SAM systems. He explained that he would have felt comfortable operating against integrated Soviet air defenses in the 1980s and 1990s, knowing he was backed by HARM targeting systems designed to deal with them.
An S-400 missile is launched at the Ashuluk military base in southern Russia during an exercise, September 22, 2020DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
“The threat would have been great. There would have been a good chance that I would have been shot, but also an equally good chance that I could have reached the target, hit my target, and then successfully dropped and then safely leave the battlefield,” said Venable.
But since then there has been a “whole leap in capabilities” between that and today’s Russian SAM systems that have evolved over time. “I then had a fighting chance,” he said. “Today there is no chance to fight.”
While sending F-16s to Ukraine doesn’t seem to be on the table right now, the U.S. could do something to train the Ukrainian air force in using the fighter jets and bring them up to Western standards, Venable said. In other words, the US could orient the Ukrainians to Western calibration – learning about the specific technology, logistical supply lines, maintenance, hydraulic systems and combat tactics.
“The ultimate goal of that wouldn’t be for them to deploy F-16s in combat. It would be for them to be ramped up to a Western standard — a NATO standard, if you will — to where they’re capable of deploying fleet to a platform of the fifth generation, then that step will be much easier for them to take,” he said.
While it remains to be seen whether the US will eventually send advanced fighter jets to Ukraine, NATO countries such as Poland and Slovakia have already committed to sending MiG-29s to Kiev.
“Proud to be on the right side and doing the right thing to help protect #lives,” said Jaro Nad, the Slovak Defense Minister, wrote on social media in mid-April after all the jets his country had promised to Ukraine were delivered to the Kyiv Air Force. “We Stand w/ Ukraine.”
Read the original article Business Insider
