Kiev has no new information whatsoever on the training of Ukrainian airmen to fly F-16s, and no talk whatsoever about the jets’ transfer to Ukraine, Air Force Command spokesman Yuriy Ignat has said.
“There hasn’t been a single piece of new information on the training of pilots and the transfer or aircraft or anything else. There is no talk of any transfers of F-16 fighters,” Ignat said during an interview with Ukrainian television on Tuesday.
Asked to assess the quality of training for Ukrainian pilots learning to operate the US-made planes, the Air Force spokesman said he has no information on the matter, either, and that this is a question being decided by Ukraine’s NATO “partners.”
“They will be the ones to assess” quality, he said.
Ignat characterized the situation over Ukraine’s airspace as “strained” in the face of Russian precision missile strikes “across the country” using Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, drones and long-range Kh-101, Kh-22, Kh-31, and Kh-59 cruise missiles launched by Tu-95 bombers hundreds of kilometers from the front – too far for any Ukrainian air defenses to reach. The spokesman counted 11 Kinzhals, 40 Geran drones and 110 surface-to-air missiles targeting both infrastructure and frontline areas.
Ignat is the same Ukrainian official who let slip late last month that Ukraine’s Air Defense Troops have never managed to intercept any of the estimated 300 Russian Kh-22 cruise missiles launched into the country over the past 22 months due to the missiles’ high speed and ballistic trajectory.
Ukraine’s Hard Push for F-16s
Three of Washington’s NATO allies have pledged to provide Ukraine with F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets, with Denmark planning to send 19 as early as this coming spring, and the Netherlands committing 42 warplanes, including 18 expected to be delivered sometime this year. Belgium has indicated readiness to send an undisclosed number of its F-16 fighters to Kiev in 2025, contingent on the delivery of US Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighters to replace them. The United States has over 1,000 operational F-16s in its inventory, but has not expressed any willingness to send them to Ukraine, citing their high cost compared to other equipment.
Ukraine lobbied the US and its allies hard for F-16s before launching its ill-fated counteroffensive in the summer of 2023. Without achieving air superiority and air and artillery support for the ground forces, the counteroffensive was quickly bogged down into bloody frontal assaults against heavily entrenched Russian positions, with Ukraine’s top commander characterizing the situation as a “stalemate” in November and admitting there wouldn’t be any “deep and beautiful breakthrough.” President Zelensky admitted the same a month later while announcing a push to create and expand fortifications across the country.
Ukraine wants F-16 not only for future attempts at offensive operations, but due to the fact that much of its Air Force has been decimated in Russian air and missile strikes over the past 22 months.
The US and its allies have indicated that Ukraine’s pilots could be trained up and ready to fly F-16s in between three and nine months. Russian observers estimate it may take up to a year to adequately train pilots used to operating Soviet standard Sukhoi Su-25 and Mikoyan MiG-29 aircraft to fly the NATO standard F-16, and have warned that Russia will look to quickly decimate any F-16s delivered to Ukraine using weapons custom tailored for the task dating back as far as the 1970s and 1980s.