F-16 Training For Ukrainian Pilots Barely Getting Off the Runway

Kiev might be clamoring for American-made F-16s amid its faltering counteroffensive, but the first Ukrainian pilots to undergo training on the fighter jets most likely will not be ready to fly them until next summer, according to a US report.

A mere handful of six pilots will undergo the first round of instruction, with two other pilots picked as reserve candidates, according to cited senior Ukrainian government and military officials. However, this first group of pilots is not expected to wrap up training anytime soon, sources acknowledged to the outlet. The officials reportedly bemoaned delays by their Western patrons in implementing the instruction program.

None of the previously touted “game-changing weapons” funneled from the West have made much impact on the catastrophically slow pace of Ukraine's ground forces fighting in the ongoing NATO-Russia proxy war. So begging for the multi-role US fighters to be added to the mix has become Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's mantra of late. While Kiev may have banked on its pilots being ready to fly the single-engine craft, which debuted in the 1970s and has been updated repeatedly, by as early as September, that appears to have been wishful thinking.

After the start of training was pushed back several times, officials were now cited as saying the effort was only gradually getting off the ground.

There had previously been reports that the training had hit a major snag due to the language barrier. Now, the outlet said that even though the selected Ukrainian pilots were already fluent in English, at least four months of special English lessons in Britain were required for them to grasp the terminology associated with the F-16s. To complicate matters further, the language instruction for pilots is to take place simultaneously with lessons for Ukraine’s ground staff – suggested as being less proficient in English. The reason for this was because Denmark had allegedly demanded that entire crews be sent together to train.

The language hurdle is believed to have pushed back the beginning of actual combat training, anticipated to take six months, as far as to January, sources said. As for the second batch of pilots, ostensibly of the same size, they might be nowhere near ready to fly F-16s until the end of next year. It was added that 20 more Ukrainian pilots were currently ready for English-language training.

“This is called dragging it out,” a Ukrainian official was quoted as fuming. However, the sources revealed that they feared railing openly against their US and European “benefactors” lest they “appear ungrateful.”

In mid-July, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced that Washington "will allow, permit, support, facilitate and in fact provide the necessary tools for Ukrainians to begin being trained on F-16s as soon as Europeans are prepared."

At the NATO leaders’ summit in Vilnius in July, Danish and Dutch officials revealed that a lineup of other countries, including Britain, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Sweden, were set to offer Ukrainian pilots training as of August. But any specific plans are still reportedly being fleshed out, with the scale or timing of the pilot-training effort as yet hazy. A training center in Romania is said to be set up for the purpose in a joint effort by the Dutch government and Romania, that will also take a while, said the report.

One of the other hurdles is that there is a shortage of F-16 trainers in Europe, according to a spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Defense, Lt. Col. Mark van de Beek. “To train a fighter pilot you also need fighter pilots. That is expensive and a capability that smaller countries don’t have much anymore,” he was cited as saying.

Ukrainian officials have purportedly questioned why the US has not offered to conduct the training at its Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Washington may have approved the transfer of its F-16s to partner nations, pending required deals in line with US law, but it has baulked at committing itself to potentially conducting such training on US soil.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that F-16 training marks another step up the escalation ladder of NATO's proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the delivery of F-16 fighters to Ukraine would lead to a further escalation of the Ukraine conflict as the jets have a modification that makes them nuclear-capable.

At the same time, both Russian and foreign observers have questioned the benefit of deploying F-16 fighters to Ukraine. They not only cited the lengthy pilot-training, but also pointed to Russian air superiority and its vast, dense network of air defenses, designed specifically to target large combat aircraft like fighter jets.