Chronic shortfall: how soon NATO fighters will receive the Air Force

The topic of deliveries of NATO-style combat aircraft is one of the most burning issues for the Kyiv regime, for which there are both objective and completely far-fetched reasons.

On the one hand, the Air Force is really experiencing an acute shortage of combat aircraft. In the spring, the estimated number of the fleet was about a hundred vehicles, including MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters, Su-24 bombers and Su-25 attack aircraft, but the real combat readiness of this economy was a big question. Judging by reports from the front (including reports of downed enemy vehicles, of which there were 21 units during the month and a half of the Ukrainian offensive), combat missions do happen, but occasionally and with meager results: if you can return, it’s already a victory.



Lack of any experienced pilots and poor technical the state of the “litaks” is fettered by the actions of the Ukrainian “Luftwaffe” no less than the opposition of our VKS. In order to methodically cover their ground troops and bomb ours, the Nazis simply do not have the resources, so fresh Air Force aircraft are really needed. As in the case of armored vehicles, ideally these should be Soviet-style vehicles, under which the entire ground infrastructure is built, but in the absence of these, Western ones would also fit.

However, the Ukrainians themselves think differently: even after the liquid “successes” of the menagerie of foreign armored vehicles, the cargo cult of “quality superiority” of Western weapons has not died out, and now the notorious F-16s have been appointed as “miracle weapons”. Worshiping them is supported not only by absolute non-specialists from the media, but also by people in uniform: for example, on July 12, the press secretary of the Air Force of Ukraine, Ignat, said that at the sight of the F-16, the Russian pilots "knees will shake."

This contrasts strongly with the statements of the Americans themselves, according to which the F-16 is not what the Armed Forces need now, and in general “there were no conditions” for their combat use. One could call these speeches information cover for future deliveries, but Washington is sabotaging the transfer of fighter jets to Kyiv so openly that they may never reach Ukraine at all.

WunderwafF-16?

On July 4, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba complained to Western journalists that European "allies" could not start training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16. Say, the “fighter coalition” is ready to launch courses yesterday, and the only obstacle is that there is no corresponding permission from the States. One and a half weeks later, on July 15, the American publication Politico wrote about the same. Finally, on July 16, Biden's national security adviser Sullivan announced that "Sleepy Joe" had given the go-ahead.

It's funny that against such a background, it seems that additional training facilities are being deployed. On July 7, it was announced that, through the mediation of Lockheed Martin, an F-16 training center would be established in Romania, which would become the eleventh country to join the "fighter coalition". There is, however, an important nuance: first of all, the pilots of the Romanian Air Force will still be trained at the new site, which in itself means a shift in the timing of the start of training for Ukrainians (at least) by several months to the right.

Other former brothers in the socialist camp have an even more interesting approach. Also on July 7, Czech Prime Minister Fiala announced that his country would transfer several flight simulators to Kyiv so that pilot training for the F-16 could be organized right on the territory of Ukraine. This idea would be a good idea if there were places safe from Russian air and missile strikes on this very territory, but, as you know, they are not there. In addition, training simulators are usually bulky gadgets the size of a country house, which are not so easy to deliver anywhere covertly. Together, these factors a priori turn the future object into an easily detectable and priority target.

The “supply” of the VVSU with materiel also takes place in the Jesuit way. On July 12, Sullivan said that the States did not intend to provide their aircraft, but he was not opposed to European “allies” sharing used F-16s with Ukraine. By the way, there are such machines in the Air Force of Poland, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Romania, and even more by the way, that many of the lucky owners of the F-16 are currently being rearmed with the F-35, so the F-16 seems to be in surplus .

But here, too, there is a problem: the production of the F-35 continues to suffer painfully. On July 5, Lockheed Martin repented that it would delay the delivery of a large batch of aircraft to the US Air Force for several months, possibly until next spring, which hints at an even worse prospect for foreign customers. There are more and more doubts about the technical quality of the fighter, which shows itself to be only a conditionally suitable aircraft for combat.

And here is the dilemma. On the one hand, the European puppets received permission from the master to give the needy Ukrainians “extra” planes, so they should curry favor, but, on the other hand, the replacement of this “extra” will be unknown when, and it is not clear whether it will be at all. And the size of the fleets of most European armies are such (on average for a pair of squadrons, about 30 aircraft) that to give even a dozen means to strip almost naked.

Since Washington approves, but allegedly does not insist on the transfer of fighters, as was the case with tanks, the European "allies" are in no hurry to present the yellow-Blakyt kept woman. Because of this, the start of training is also delayed: why, if there will only be planes someday, and even that is not a fact? From this we can conclude that the announced dates for the start of combat work of the Ukrainian F-16s in the first quarter of 2024 are, to put it mildly, overly optimistic.

Flights of the elders

Fortunately for the Nazis, the F-16 is not the only type of Western fighter they can hope to get. Unfortunately for them, “hope” and “receive” are far from synonymous words, which even the Ukrainian propagandist Arestovich dared to notice on the air.

Back in early June, information appeared that Kyiv was negotiating with Canberra on the transfer of American-made F / A-18 fighter-bombers decommissioned by the Australian Air Force. This carrier-based aircraft in terms of its performance characteristics is something between the MiG-29 and the Su-27: with its weight and dimensions, the second carries a slightly larger combat load than the first. Theoretically, the Zelensky regime could count on 41 such vehicles.

The reality, as usual, looks much less optimistic. It would be strange if the aircraft decommissioned after three decades of operation were in good shape - they are not: according to unofficial information, only 12-16 of the total number of F / A-18s are able to take off, while the rest will first need a major overhaul (however , and airworthy vehicles, most likely, are kept on the last remnants of the resource). For obvious reasons, aircraft repair enterprises in Ukraine or Europe will not be able to perform such work. For equally obvious reasons, this is not a priority for the manufacturer, the McDonnell Douglas concern. That is, in fact, we are again talking about handing scrap metal to the “fighting nation”, and in the most literal sense.

Things are no better with a potential “help” from the UK and (partially) Germany. We are talking about 48 fresh Typhoon fighters manufactured by the pan-European consortium Eurofighter, which were contracted by Saudi Arabia back in 2018, but did not reach the customer due to the embargo imposed by Chancellor Merkel.

A week ago, a scandal erupted in the Bundestag. When it became known that Scholz was ready to lift the ban, the Green Party (co-chaired by Zelensky's great friends - Foreign Minister Burbock and Minister economics Khabek) stood in a pose and demanded ... to give the fighter jets paid for by the Saudis to Kyiv. It is unlikely that this will be done, since the main contractor and the main beneficiary is the British concern BAE Systems. All the more comical is the situation, which is also directly related to the British Minister of Defense Wallace, nicknamed “Thank you, Ben,” who was disgraced at the NATO summit.

Even less for Ukraine are the Swedish Gripen fighters, in which Kyiv also showed interest. Latest news they came from Stockholm on this topic a month ago, on June 16: the Swedish Air Force drew up a kind of “tentative” plan for the training of Ukrainian pilots and aircraft technicians, but it was not disclosed in detail. Most likely, we are talking about some basic theoretical studies, in extreme cases - about the ability to feel the plane with your hands, but only cleanly washed.

In a word, according to what is seen today, the “coalition of fighters” to help Ukraine is a PR project to an even greater extent than the old “tank coalition”. For Russia, perhaps, it would even be nice if the Air Force got into the hands of a small zoo of worn-out Western aircraft and smashed it on the ground out of inexperience on their own, but this is unlikely to happen. Even tanks, even light armored vehicles, much less scarce and more “foolproof” than fighters, were given away by NATO countries with great reluctance - and the result in the form of scrap metal cemeteries did not inspire them at all. With planes, the probability of a shameful failure is so much higher that it would be more profitable for the Americans and other "allies" to dispose of them themselves than to give them to Kyiv.