Long-Awaited F-16s Arriving in Ukraine, To Begin Operations During Summer – Zelensky Complains that They Are ‘Too Few’

 

One of the longest waiting periods of the Ukraine war has finally ended, as the Western powers announced, during the NATO summit in DC, that the first F-16 jet fighters are arriving and will be operational during the summer—leaving the expectation of an operational start in less than six weeks.

Kiev will finally get the fourth-generation fighter jets to fight Russia — but in far fewer numbers than it had hoped and asked.

Bloomberg reported:

“The move to send warplanes — a much hyped element of this week’s NATO summit in Washington — has been bedeviled by delays, questions around spare parts, and a language barrier between Ukrainian pilots and their foreign trainers, according to people familiar with the matter. Planners also worry that the country doesn’t have enough runways — and those it does have are vulnerable to Russian attacks.

The result is that Ukraine may be able to field a squadron of F-16s, anything from 15 to 24 jets, well short of the 300 its leaders have called for, according to one of the people. Another said Kiev expects to get six F-16s this summer and up to 20 by the end of the year.”

 

But as the wunderwaffe arrives, the calls are already underway for the public ‘not to expect miracles’.

All the Ukrainian airfields are vulnerable targets, and Russia has already hit some of them, repeatedly.

“Jake Sullivan, Biden’s top national security adviser, said Thursday the transfer of jets is underway and that they’ll be operational in Ukraine by summer. Denmark and the Netherlands are supplying the planes, with Belgium and Norway also pledging jets. Sullivan added the F-16s are expected to defend front-line forces in the short term and help retake territory ‘down the road’. He declined to provide further details.”

 

It took a year to get the planes.

It took more than a year to get to this point, since frail US President Joe Biden relented to the pressure and dropped his opposition to sending the F-16s.

The Ukrainian pilots, used to Soviet-era MiGs, had to also be also trained not to rely so much on ground controllers.

“’It’s more a burden than a blessing, with minimal impact before many, many months and great chances of losing many planes and pilots’, said Serge Stroobants, founder of Brussels-based BANTS Consulting. ‘An F-16 is more than a plane and a pilot, it’s a team of nearly 200 people who all play a role in getting the plane off the ground’.”

And now that the planes are arriving, Zelensky pivoted to a new line: ‘they are too few and will make no difference’.

Business Insider reported:

“But they might not yet be enough to make a difference on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated in a discussion this week on what Ukraine needs, comparing the jets to the US-made Abrams tanks that Ukraine got last fall.”

The many old and infirm Ukrainian soldiers are a problem that western weapons won’t fix.

 

Speaking to Fox News host Bret Baier during the NATO summit, he said that such a low number of Abrams tanks could change the situation on the battlefield – hinting that the same applies to the fighter jets.

“‘He said, ‘It’s like the dialogue about F-16’, adding that usefulness came down, in some ways, to numbers and timing. ‘We always wait, like my mother waited me after school’, Zelensky said. ‘This is the same but much more serious’.

The ‘problem’ with F-16 he president said, ‘is the number and the dates’. It hasn’t arrived and it’s already framed as a ‘problem’.

Russia is operating so many combat aircraft that small numbers of F-16s wouldn’t make a difference.

“‘Even if we will have 50, it’s nothing. They have 300. Because we are defending, we need 128’, he said, adding that unless Ukraine had that amount of F-16s, they wouldn’t ‘compare with them in the sky’. He said that ‘it will be difficult’.”