The United States has changed its program to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets, adding younger cadets with no prior flight experience, the Wall Street Journal has cited unnamed officials as saying.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier warned the USA and its NATO allies that Moscow perceives the presence of nuclear-capable F-16’s in Ukraine as a nuclear threat.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in turn emphasized that Ukraine’s NATO-supplied F-16 jets would not have the power to alter the situation on the battlefield.
He warned that if these fighter jets are deployed from the territory of third countries, they will be considered legitimate targets for Russian forces. The president further stated that the F-16’s, just like other Western equipment delivered to Kiev, would be destroyed.
The first batch of NATO F-16’s, which was delivered to the Ukrainian military in late July, failed to change the situation on the battlefield in favor of the Kiev regime.
With the Ukrainian Air Force confirming that one such jet crashed just weeks after the first batch supply, they argued that even before the decision was taken, Ukraine would hardly have 20 F-16’s and 40 pilots to operate them until spring next year at the earliest.
The decision to refocus the training on the cadets rather than experienced air force members may extend the timeline in when the Kiev regime could start to operate a full squadron of F-16’s on the battlefield by many months, according to the sources.
The insiders also said that the move to change the training program is the result of a lack of experienced Ukrainian pilots with requisite English-language abilities who can be spared from the battlefield.
Two months of operations by Kiev’s first batch of F-16 jets have had little if any notable strategic effect, with the Zelensky regime turning its attention to demands for Saab Gripen and Eurofighter aircraft, and keeping the bulk of its attacks on Russia drone-based.
Aircraft are a delicate piece of technology, that even shrapnel damage from a nearby blast could put an F-16 out of action, and require costly repairs, carried out by foreign or foreign-trained specialists, which aren’t easy to come by.
Ukraine [received] only six F-16’s to date. They lost one themselves, shooting it down by accident using a Patriot and killing their own pilot.
As for strikes against Russian territory, sending F-16’s to destroy our ammo depots or to launch a possible nuclear attack situated far from the border zone requires coming closer to our air defenses.
Russia has plenty of air defenses along the front, both Pantsirs and various SAM’s, as well as fighter jets, capable of destroying air targets at distances up to 300 km.
Ukraine’s Air Force expects to be flying about 20 F-16’s by the end of the year, and as many as 79 by 2025, assuming Russia doesn’t destroy them first.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
The moment these NATO delivered F-16’s come out of their bunkers they must be destroyed to avoid a possible nuclear attack on Russia.
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