Ukraine Moves a Step Closer to F-16s as Kyiv's 'Top Guns' Graduate

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Newsweek

Published Mar 22, 2024 at 10:27 AM EDT


A batch of Ukrainian future F-16 fighter pilots have graduated from a British military flight school, putting them one step closer to flying the U.S.-made jets that Kyiv has so long advocated for.

The British Defense Ministry announced on Friday that the first 10 Ukrainian pilots to have undertaken "intensive training" with Royal Air Force instructors had graduated from flight school and will now proceed to an advanced flight training program provided by the French air force. After that, the pilots will be instructed on F-16s.

"The 10 pilots received basic flying, ground school and language training in the UK and will one day form the first line of defense in protecting Ukraine's skies from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's forces," a Defense Ministry press release said.

Defense Minister Grant Shapps said the pilots "have received some of the best training available and are now a step closer to joining the fight against Putin's illegal invasion."

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-closer-f-16s-top-guns-graduate-fighters-1882292

[Aristus]

1. It fills my heart with joy to see so many countries lining up to help the brave people of Ukraine.

The kind of soothing warmth that I feel when I read the title The Allies, referring to the powers aligned against Nazi Germany in World War II. When an entire world stood together to eradicate tyranny and aggressive militarism.

[Lovie777]

2. K & R...............................

[sheshe2]

3. This is good news.

It's past time for this to end.

Slava Ukraini

[FredGarvin]

4. Russia is raining ballistic missiles on Ukrainian cities

This is a win?

The west is being humiliated. Ukraine is starved for protection from these attacks.
North Korea and Iran are providing Russia with weapons that Ukraine is struggling against.

Incredible how neutered the US is

Sickening

[SergeStorms]

5. Complain to House republicans.

It's certainly not the Democrats' fault.

[Red Mountain]

6. Bit of a strange take on things.....

seems like Putin and Russia are the ones being neutered.

Between their losses in material and manpower they aren't what we thought they were. All at the hands of a former ally.

We could do more, of course, but we have Republicans.

[paleotn]

8. You do realize the Russians really don't have a Black Sea fleet anymore.

Much of it's firepower is on the bottom and what's left has pulled far away from Ukrainian shores.

I'd say were not exactly where we and the Ukrainians would like to be right now, much of that due to Russian assets in the US Congress and our DoD's fear of escalation, but it's not as dire as you're painting it.

[Elessar Zappa]

10. It's not as bad as you're saying.

And it’s Republicans’ fault that funding is on hold.

[XorXor]

26. The West is humiliated? How so? Ukraine, a fairly small country compared to Russia

has managed to defend itself against Russia using the massive amount of aid provided to it by the west. It's pretty amazing how much the west has united in helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia. If prior to the invasion of Ukraine you'd asked anyone if they thought Europe would provide anything close to what they've provided, they would have said you're crazy for thinking so much would be sent. The only country being humiliated is Russia. Although, I don't really like the term humiliated here, because I think it does not capture the actual damage and harm being caused to it (and also Ukraine)

The real failure comes from not helping build up the Ukrainian military during the Obama, Trump, and the first year of the Biden admin. It just wasn't enough, obviously. Although, had any of those administrations done that, how many here would have opposed it prior to Russia's full-scale invasion? It's easy to make the argument that doing so would have just provoked Russia. Of course in hindsight we know that's flawed, but that's the benefit of hindsight, we wouldn't have had that pre-2022. We might now consider how that relates to the situation in Taiwan.

That being said, this should serve as a wake up call for our capacity to supply our own troops in the event of a full-scale conflict against an adversary. We see weaknesses in both our manufacturing abilities and also the political willingness to take steps to address these issues.

[Torchlight]

30. If not a win, how would you then define it as an absolute loss? n

[Ilsa]

7. Sure, a step closer, but probably another year to go.

Or maybe F-16 training takes 18 or 24 months? I know they are motivated to train quickly, but there are only so many hours in a day, and these are expensive machines.

[paleotn]

9. To be proficient, certainly.

But on the up side, Russian pilots are notoriously undertrained by western standards. My fear is they'll enter the fight with far better equipment but there's just not enough of them to make a significant difference.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. Remember the planes cockpits and controls

are in English so in order to qualify to train, they had to be pilots who were proficient in English and then they could go from there.

They are used to flying the Soviet/Russian planes, which are not as sophisticated.

[Ilsa]

15. You're right. I had forgotten about their prior experience. nt

[Cheezoholic]

18. English is the standard communication language for civilian pilots world wide

so it may not be as difficult for a lot of them that may be coming in from Ukrainian (or other) airlines. Ukraine military airspace had also been shared with the west for a while leading up to at least 2014.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. They were trained on and flew Soviet/Russian MiGs (and other craft)

and I believe Poland and/or Romania had been giving them those types of fighters to fly to supplement what they already have. So that is where their expertise (and language skills) lie.

[EX500rider]

12. "The 10 pilots received basic flying, ground school and..."

Seems to me it would have been faster to send current Ukr fighter pilots who don't need ground school or flight training, just training on a new type.

Also seems having a few flight trainers who speak Russian or Ukrainian and just stick Cyrillic alphabet labels on everything would also be quicker then teaching them all English 1st

[BumRushDaShow]

13. I have posted a couple of videos in OPs throughout the past year

and was trying to find them and I think this was one -

I did also just find this one from Ukraine's Air Force that shows some of the "preliminary" types of training that needs to be done before they even go to the European countries currently giving the hands-on training -

It's not just the "flight training" but the fact that whatever is in the cockpit is so different from what they are used to that they basically have to "start over" with flight training.

The other issue that was brought up was that they need to train the ground crew on maintenance of them. So lots of proverbial "parts and pieces" of things that have to be done and put in place in order to get the full program up and running.

[Cheezoholic]

19. The ground crew and maintenance infrastructure is probably the biggest issue

And I would bet ta lot of these F16's are going to be used in support of ground forces (the F16 was designed to do that), something they desperately need.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. My guess is that the software is not so easily adapted.

[blue-wave]

16. I wish they were ready to go

Right now. I want them to kick orc ass back to Siberia.

[Botany]

17. Hey Ivan the F 16 can go from a dead stop on the ground and be @ 15,000 feet in seconds, it's missiles

are lethal to another plane from 20 miles out (although I think it has longer range now), it flies @
twice the speed of sound, it’s avionics are state of the art, and although it’s design it is 40 + years
old you don’t want to get into a dog fight with it.

Please get this plane along with the Swedish attack jet up and going ASAP.

Attn: Russian Pilots if you fly you will die. Guaranteed.

Time to kill Russians by the truck load and bring the fight to their homeland.

[sir pball]

21. Sadly, these aren't the latest and greatest.

They're being handed over because they're essentially surplus; they aren't quite the original A/B models but they're "Block 15 MLU" (Mid-Life Update) models that were upgraded in the 90s to bring them to basic modern standards.

They're certainly still a force to be reckoned with, and they're probably as good as the older/contemporary Flankers and Fulcrums that Russia is operating in that theater (can't risk the newer versions in a potential turkey shoot), but it's a far cry from sending Raptors over there.

[Botany]

28. I have read that the F-16's avionics was upgraded and that in air to air combat their missiles ...

… are now good from almost 50 miles out. Hopefully America’s remote sensing* (satellites …
which Trump stole the information about) are looking @ Russian plane, missile, drone, and
artillery launches both in Russia and Ukraine and the Ukrainian response is massive to those
spots.

I wish those Swedish attack jets would get into the action too. The way to stop the war is
to kill Russians by the truck load to the point that both the citizens and the Russian Military
take Putin out. Over 30 % of the Russian people don’t have decent indoor plumbing i.e. flush
toilets and hot water as Putin has 5 or so million dollar homes. Btw all of our are pro Putin
GOP stooges make me sick.

I would not want to be a worker in the Iranian drone factory that is building them for Russia.

* I have a family member who worked with that stuff and to this day he/she would be arrested
if they talked about it. Why Trump is walking free is a disgrace.

[sir pball]

29. Yes, they've been upgraded to 1990s standards...which is fine for today.

The upgrades enable them to fire the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, which has a range of 57 miles and is still one of the better mid-range missiles in operation. And we've already pledged hundreds of them so the F-16s will be very well armed – Ivan is definitely nervous about this one.

Unfortunately, the targeting isn't done by satellites or anything fancy like that, it's handled either by the fighter itself (the upgraded F-16s have radar and systems that can do that) or better an Airborne Early Warning and Control plane, aka AWACS – which Ukraine does not have, and is unlikely to obtain, as they're some of the crown jewels of a modern air force. Which, to cut the other direction, is why it's such a huge deal that Ukraine has shot down multiple Russian AEW&C planes; without them Russia has almost no battlespace awareness since they have no ground radars in Ukraine.

[sir pball]

22. This is great and all, but somebody has to have some old F-15s to donate.

The Viper is one of the greatest all-round combat aircraft ever made for sure, but the F-15 Eagle is the undisputed, Ali-level air superiority champion. It has a perfect record – 104 enemies shot down versus literally ZERO combat losses.

They were designed contemporaneously; the F-16 was a lower cost multirole "Zerg rush" plane while the F-15 was the no-holds-barred, single-purpose, shoot down the bad guys Air Superiority Fighter…and it does it damn well. Given that it's as old as the F-16 but far more capable for purpose I'm genuinely surprised nobody is offering a few well-loved castoffs to Ukraine. It would be a far more serious statement, akin to handing someone a sniper rifle instead of a handgun.

Also, it still holds the record for a climb to 30,000m/98,425 feet…3 minutes, 27.799 seconds. That's three times as high as a commercial airliner, in less than the time it takes you to leave the gate and take off.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. I don't remember where I read it

but I think some of these "donations" from EU countries were part of negotiations to hook those countries up with some F-35s.

Of course stuff has to be built and Congress FINALLY passed the FY '24 appropriations for the remaining Departments in the government (including DOD) yesterday, so hopefully there will be a little more certainty on hardware (although the Ukraine aid package itself is still up in the air).

[sir pball]

24. That would make sense

Reduce their inventory so they can get more (new) stuff.

Whatever, if it gets Ukraine more modern arms I'm all for it!

[BumRushDaShow]

25. Yup

I think that was the impetus and "carrot" to move ahead that transfer to get a more modern aircraft in exchange.

[XorXor]

27. I get the impression that people have a distorted view on how much value these will have

Almost as if people think they will completely change the course of the conflict. I don't see how. Am I missing something? I see this mostly as giving the US and allies the ability to replace what Ukraine has lost, perhaps with some upgrade in capability. However, they are still working in a dangerous environment with lots of Russian air defense. These are not super weapons. They are also a bit more finicky on where they can operate from. They have to have some pretty well prepared runways. So, you might get some increase in capabilities, but then you have to contend with the higher requirements for these. I also wonder how concerned they will be about using them in places where they have a high risk of getting shot down. Will we see these doing CAS missions on the front lines where there is likely a large amount of Russian air defense in range? I don't think we'll see these dog fighting MiG-29s over Crimea for similar reasons. Obviously this is needed so that we can give Ukraine a steady supply of replacements, but what will actually change?

I'm not a very smart or knowledgeable, though. So maybe I'm wrong about somethings or am not thinking about this right. If so, help me understand what I'm missing.

[RubyRose]

31. Will these finally cause the Russian forces to

withdraw?