How soon will Ukraine be able to use its F-16s?

“I THANK YOU, Denmark,” Volodymyr Zelensky told Denmark’s parliament on August 21st, “for helping Ukraine to become invincible!” The hyperbole from Ukraine’s president was understandable. Mr Zelensky has been trying, almost since the moment Russia invaded his country 18 months ago, to persuade Western allies to give him F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets. Over the weekend, Denmark and the Netherlands announced that they would begin sending F-16s to Ukraine as soon as the training of the first group of pilots to fly them is complete. The Danish air force will donate 19 F-16s (upgraded in recent years) and the Dutch an as yet unclear number of the 42 F-16s they possess. Norway may soon follow.

The obstacle has been Washington’s reluctance to allow the transfer of the American-made jets. The stated reasons are somewhat unconvincing: that Russia would see the jets as an escalation, that they would be a distraction for Ukraine’s military planners and that it would take years before Ukraine would be able to fly and support them. But just before the announcement over the weekend, Anthony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, gave both countries the green light for the transfer.

The Ukrainian air force selected 32 pilots for F-16 training earlier this month. Eight are sufficiently fluent in English to start as soon as European allies’ training plans are approved by the Pentagon. A further 20 are undergoing pilot language instruction in Britain. All are highly motivated and have previous experience flying fast jets. But learning to fly and fight in an F-16, becoming familiar with its avionics and weapons systems, is a complex business. Some pilots could be ready after three months, but others will need up to six.

How soon Ukraine will get significant numbers of F-16s is also uncertain. A few should be available early next year. But much depends on how quickly Denmark and the Netherlands receive the F-35s that are replacing F-16s in their air forces. NRC, a Dutch daily, reports that one Dutch F-16 squadron of 24 aircraft may not be fully re-equipped with F-35s until late next year. Twelve other planes are two-seaters needed to train Ukrainian pilots in the Netherlands. The final six Dutch planes had been promised for sale to a private American company which uses them as adversaries in combat exercises.

Douglas Barrie, a military aerospace analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London, says the timing is normal: “They will arrive in batches and you want them to be in pretty good condition.” But he thinks the first Ukrainian squadron of 12-16 aircraft could be up and running within six months.

Maintaining the jets will be a bigger challenge than training the pilots. Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at RUSI, a think-tank, thinks Ukraine will have to rely heavily on civilian contractors to supervise and train Ukrainian maintenance crews, perhaps for several years. Dispersed basing will be needed to avoid Russia destroying aircraft on the ground. Ukraine has so far been good at this: it is a big, flat country with plenty of airfields far from the frontlines. But scattered bases require more contractors and ground-support equipment.

Mr Bronk questions where such contractors will come from, when European air forces are urgently retraining their people on the F-35s. He also worries that the money to service the F-16s will eat away at America’s “presidential drawdown authority”—the finite funds that Joe Biden, America’s president, can send to Ukraine without congressional approval—at the expense of other critical weapons.

Assuming the difficulties can be overcome, will the F-16s be worth the trouble? Nobody suggests that they will be a game-changer. But if all 61 Danish and Dutch F-16s were to end up in Ukraine, it would increase the country’s air force’s frontline inventory by more than half. Moreover, they give it a platform that can be fully integrated with American and European air-launched missiles and data links along with NATO ground-based air-defence radars, such as those used for Patriot missile batteries. Equipped with up to six AMRAAM “over-the-horizon” missiles or shorter-range Sidewinders, they should be far more effective at shooting down Russian cruise missiles and scaring off Russian fighter-bombers than anything Ukraine has now.

Whether the F-16s will help Ukraine on the battlefield, where its counter-offensive is making only slow progress, is less certain. Dropping short-range guided bombs, which are already used by Ukrainian MiG-29s, would put them at risk from Russian fighters with more advanced radars. Mr Barrie thinks America is unlikely to supply its JASSM-ER missile, which has a range of 1,000km and could be used to strike targets in Russia. Ukraine’s existing Su-24s can already fire the Anglo-French Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missile. These Soviet-era aircraft could no doubt also provide a platform for the German Taurus cruise missile, if Germany supplies it.

But the F-16s are important for other reasons. Their arrival is a boost to morale. Most crucially, Mr Barrie notes, they mark the start of Ukraine’s shift to a NATO-compatible air force. That will mean a lot for the country’s combat power and for deterring its giant adversary from future attacks, once this war is over. ■