F-16 Fighters Combat in Ukraine Analysis

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Western F-16 fighter jets have arrived in Ukraine and we’re finally getting some initial reports on how they are performing in combat. How does the F-16 match up against the Russian fighters they’ll be flying against? What tactics and strategies will Ukraine deploy them with? And which types of new support aircraft might significantly enhance the F-16s firepower?

On August 4th, President Zelensky announced that the first batch of the much anticipated F-16 Fighting Falcons were in-country and had begun combat operations as part of the Ukrainian Air Force. I’ll say right off the bat, there is a tendency by some publications to get overhyped on weapon systems and create outsized unrealistic expectations for the effect they will have on the war in Ukraine. On the other hand, there’s also an effort by the pro-Russian media to downplay the positive cumulative effect these weapon systems like the F-16 have for Ukraine. I think you’d rather me just give you the straight skinny.

A total of around 85 F-16’s have been pledged by NATO countries. Of that 6 have been delivered so far and are in active combat operations, the rest may take years to arrive in batches.

By august 27th these jets were deployed for the first time in active combat. I wanted to wait until now to give until some facts were in to give you an assessment. The F-16 initially successfully intercepted and shot down incoming Russian cruise missiles and drones. This mission is vital for Ukraine from a strategic point of view because the Russian missiles are aimed at their power generation facilities.

But August 29th saw one of the worst Russian missile attacks when 74 drones and 5 missiles were launched. An F-16 pilot who goes by the callsign moonfish was responding to a wave of russian missiles. During the engagement radio operators lost contact with Moonfish’s F-16. The Ukrainian government confirmed his plane crashed and the pilot was KIA but there is no word yet on whether it was shot down, mechanical error or something else.

However the thing that jumps out to me about this engagement is that it reveals to us more information about the Ukrainian Air Forces’s strategy with the F-16. The aircraft was not lost flying near Kursk or Sumy and it was not lost near the border while dropping glide bombs. It appears that early assessments were accurate and Ukraine is using the F-16 so far in a defensive role to intercept missiles. And we’ll get more into why exactly that is later in the video. The F-16’s are tasked with air defense duty.

One of the huge advantages Ukraine is about to gain that has a huge impact on the F-16 , that a lot of people aren’t talking about is the Saab 340 airborne early warning radar aircraft. Sweden announced in May they were sending 2 which will significantly enhance their air and sea surveillance capabilities. This gets talked about less because it’s not a sexy F-16 firing missiles at peoples faces but it’s actually a completely new capability because Ukraine has no radar aircraft currently in their inventory. The only way to take more full advantage of the F-16 and its weapons is with this asset.

This is essentially a twin turbo prop plane with a fancy high tech radar slapped ontop and software to communicate with the F-16. It absolutely kills me in my heart of hearts to use the defense buzzword word “force multiplier” but that’s exactly what this is for the F-16. ptwu pwtwu gross buzzword. The reason its a force multiplier is because its radar can identify and track incoming missiles then pass that target data to the F-16’s weapons systems. Its like when you use the Satellite Uplink in Command and conquer to reveal the fog of war over the battlefield. It gives you a clear view of the enemy movements. Once these two are paired and once more aircraft arrive is when we could start to see the Ukranian F-16 switch to a more offensive role. Their only downside is that they fly slow at 300 miles per hour so they’re a bigger target as we’ve seen Russia has already lost 2 of their radar aircraft.

However, Ukrainian pilots are fighting with some disadvantages. Their Russian adversaries outnumber them in total aircraft 13 times over, and Russian pilots have access to the latest versions of Eastern fighters and weapons.

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Written by: Chris Capelluto & Diego Acetinuo
Edited by: Kadi

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