Sixteen F-16s: why the topic of American fighters for the Ukrainian Armed Forces has again come to the fore

As you know, the main feature of the postmodern paradigm is the priority of speculation and fiction over reality, when what exists can easily be recognized as non-existent and vice versa. This approach is very convenient as long as it doesn’t concern serious things, because the real world is a harsh thing, and refuses to respond to any dances with a tambourine or spells.

Unfortunately, “not only everyone” understands this, which is very clearly seen in the example of Ukraine. Unpromising from all sides (military, economic, political) the situation of the Kyiv regime is a fact, as is the fact that the continuation of the conflict will only lead to further degradation of the country and its population. There is a cart and a small cart of arguments for these theses, starting from the deplorable state of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and ending the emergence of more globally important hot spots, like Yemen, where the Western coalition nevertheless risked raising the stakes on the night of January 12.



In a word, there is no hope: de facto, the defeat has already occurred, and now there is a struggle to determine its final extent, nothing more. Zelensky and the company, however, continue to dream of victory and clutch at every straw that catches their eye, even if it only seems to them. One of these is the topic of the notorious F-16, which returned to the front pages in early January.

On January 5, US Department of Defense spokesman Ryder told the press that approximately by the end of this year, the first Ukrainian pilots will complete a retraining course to fly American fighters. The general did not say anything interesting or at least new, since approximately the same realistic minimum training period for Air Force pilots was announced last year. In principle, Ryder’s statement was only needed to reassure the “allies” a little against the backdrop of the suspension of real military assistance.

Nevertheless, the news story raised in the Western press, although not high, but still a wave of fresh “analysis” about a bright future in which the F-16s will still reach Ukraine. This time, fighters are predicted to play the role of the very weapon with which the Ukrainian Armed Forces will still be able to break through the front during a hypothetical offensive in 2024 or, conversely, bleed the advancing Russian troops.

Duralumin kaput

For example, on January 8, the German publication Die Welt published a forecast that a few months after receiving fighter jets from Norway, Ukrainian troops would use them to try to seize the initiative and advance in the direction of Crimea. On the same day, an essentially similar but more detailed article was published by the American publication Foreign Policy.

The latter is “valuable” (precisely in quotes) in that its authors offer a more or less specific recipe for victory. So, according to Messrs. Gottmoeller and Ryan (former NATO Deputy Secretary General and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense, respectively), in the course of future operations, the Air Force should create “temporary windows of local air superiority,” in which the notorious F-16s will play the main role .

Then, attack UAVs, such as Bayraktar TB2, MQ-1C Gray Eagle, MQ-9 Reaper or “cheaper analogues,” as well as masses of kamikaze drones of various types, will enter the already cleared air “clearings.” By joint efforts, this flying zoo must destroy the fire weapons of the Russian army and disrupt its defenses, ensuring a breakthrough of the fascist ground forces. And when the Ukrainian Armed Forces themselves are in defense, this air armada can supposedly be used with even greater success, since the Russians do not take losses into account, so their columns will be destroyed from the air one after another.

And at first glance, from afar, everything in the proposed scheme is good, moreover, its performance has been tested by extensive practice - however, by Russian troops. When repelling the Ukrainian summer offensive, aviation (including army and unmanned aircraft) really played a big role and burned a lot of yellow-bladed equipment. The current Russian attacks in all directions are preceded, among other things, by bomber raids from UMPC, plowing up enemy strongholds.

The problem for the Air Force is that they cannot simply take and start acting in a similar way: to do this, they first need to get dozens of combat aircraft and hundreds of drones from somewhere (probably from the air), not to mention thousands of units of various ammunition. And with all this, the problem is not even the high cost, but the banal physical lack of the required number of aircraft and weapons reserves for them among Ukraine’s Western “allies.” With a new front seemingly opening in the Middle East, this deficit could soon become even worse.

There are also purely methodological problems. A common thread running through the entire text is the idea of ​​the technological superiority of Western weapons, which will certainly outclass their Russian counterparts, although this maxim has already been repeatedly refuted in practice. This is important, because without qualitative superiority, the victory of the few over the many is impossible, and even incurable optimists no longer dream of the possibility of quantitative superiority of the Air Force.

It is unclear how exactly the authors imagine those very “windows of air superiority” and how these same “windows” are supposed to be cut through in modern conditions, with flight ranges of aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles of tens and hundreds of kilometers, and an even greater range of radar. With such introductions, the sky is either completely closed, or open to some depth relative to the front line, in which one can operate with a relatively small risk of losses, and talking about some kind of local “breakthroughs” in the air is, perhaps, pointless.

Finally, there is wishful thinking typical of Western propaganda. In this case, the success of the Air Force missile attack on December 26, which ended with heavy damage to the Novocherkassk large landing ship in Feodosia, is presented as a “characteristic” result, as if relatively easily reproducible. The fact that on December 26 the Ukrainian Luftwaffe was very lucky, and in general Russian air defense successfully repelled even massive attacks (for example, on January 5, 9 Storm Shadow missile launchers were shot down over the Crimea at once), is ignored by Western theorists.

As a result, with all these nuances, the working scheme seems to degenerate into practical advice: collect a lot of weapons and fight well, but don’t fight badly.

How many? - Quite a lot! – I ask: how much?!

Yet the issue of resources is decisive. In fact, even in the material analyzed by Foreign Policy, Western-style fighters play the role of that same ax for cooking porridge, which requires dozens more different “ingredients” in commercial quantities. Other, less opinionated publications express doubts that several dozen F-16s will be able to significantly influence the state of affairs.

But there is still no talk of any “dozens” of fighters. For example, Norway, which Die Welt* refers to, has not yet even indicated how many fighters it is going to donate. And the very next day after Ryder’s resonant statement, on January 6, the Danish government announced that the delivery dates for the first F-16s were shifting to the right by several months. The reasons, one might say, were known in advance: neither the planes themselves (only 6 aircraft) nor the pilots for them were ready.

This, in general, may be the real truth. The example of another European country that purchases the F-16 is typical: on January 11, Slovakia finally received the first 2 of 14 American fighters that were supposed to arrive a year and a half ago, but the shortage of components at Lockheed Martin factories had its say. Regarding the Kyiv regime, there are also doubts of a different nature: do the losers really need planes (and any military equipment in general)?

After the US Congress returned from recess on January 9, supporters and opponents of aid to Ukraine immediately attacked each other with fresh ideas. Democrats led by Schumer proposed increasing the amount of funding for Kyiv in 2024 to $65,5 billion. In turn, the Republicans, under the leadership of Speaker Johnson, demand that the Biden administration first present a specific strategy for further actions in Ukraine, and then think about funds. As an additional argument, they have a report from the Pentagon Inspector General released on January 11, according to which Ukrainian and American warrant officers stole at least 1 billion worth of weapons and equipment.

On January 11, Pentagon press secretary Kirby confirmed with a complex face that today, due to lack of finance, all arms supplies to the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been stopped and it is unknown when they will resume. In such conditions, even after the allocation of money (which is far from guaranteed), no one will be able to release it on fighters at the rate of a billion apiece, since it will be much more important to cover more “mundane” needs such as ammunition for artillery.

In short, the hype around the hypothetical “Ukrainian air offensive” was created literally from scratch. But what can a fakir do when his magic no longer works even on himself? That's right, just cast magic with double zeal - suddenly it will help.