The arguments for denying Ukraine F-16s are becoming steadily more threadbare. Ukraine’s air force will have to be recapitalised with new aircraft sooner or later, so why wait?
are becoming threadbare. At the start of the war, Ukraine had about 125 elderly combat-capable aircraft, of which a little over half were air-superiority fighters. At least 40% of them have since been lost. Russia can still field roughly five times as many fighters as Ukraine started the war with. Nearly all are newer, with longer-range radars and air-to-air missiles.
Even so, Russia has not been able to establish air dominance over Ukraine. That could change. As well as losing planes, Ukraine is running low on the Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles on which its ground-based air defence has mainly depended. It is getting more Western systems, but integration takes time. If flying in Ukraine’s airspace becomes less dangerous, Russia could establish air superiority—first over Donbas and then other areas.
Nevertheless, Ukraine’s Western backers say that beefing up its ground-based air-defence system is the priority, and that fighter jets would be an expensive distraction. Even if approval were given to supply-16s, they say, it would be a year before they became mission-capable because of the time required to train Ukrainian pilots and maintenance crews.-16s need smooth runways that Ukraine lacks. Finally, they argue, Russia would regard the supply ofs into Ukraine is indeed vital.
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