- Dutch officials say the US has finally authorized the delivery of American-made F-16s to Ukraine.
- F-16s will be more capable than Kyiv's jets, but they aren't silver bullets, a top US general said.
- The jets will be better suited for the Western-made weapons that Ukraine is already using, however.
The US has signed off on plans to transfer F-16 fighter jets from Denmark and the Netherlands to Ukraine after Ukrainian pilots complete their training on the jet, paving the way for F-16s to arrive as soon as early next year.
F-16s would be an improvement for Ukraine's air force, but anyone expecting them to start knocking out top Russian air defenses as soon as they get into battle will likely be disappointed, the top US Air Force general in Europe said Friday.
Ukraine's MiG-29s "are pretty capable," Gen. James Hecker, commander of US Air Forces in Europe, said during a Defense Writers Group event, but F-16s will be better suited for the Western-made weapons that Ukraine has received, like the radar-hunting missiles the US began providing a year ago.
"Right now, weapons that we're giving them have to be adapted to go on a MIG-29 or to go on a Su-27 or something like that," Hecker said, adding that F-16s are "already interoperable" with those weapons, "so that will help out and give them an added capability."
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly asked for F-16s, arguing they would provide an edge against Russia's larger and more advanced air force. Hecker and other US officials have said F-16s would have limited utility for Ukraine right now, in large part because of the extensive air-defense weaponry deployed by both sides, which has prevented either from gaining air superiority.
"It's not going to be the silver bullet and all of a sudden they're going to start taking down SA-21s because they have an F-16," Hecker said Friday, using the NATO designation for Russia's modern S-400 air-defense system.
In addition to anti-radar missiles, Ukrainian jets have employed US-made guided bombs, which Russia has countered with electronic warfare. While F-16s would allow Ukraine to better employ those weapons, Hecker said Russia's military will continue to adapt and adjust.
Russian forces are staying out of the range of the missiles Ukraine is using now, Hecker told reporters, "and then any time we give them a new capability, we might hit one of [Russia's] command posts and they go, 'Oh, now they can go 20 miles as opposed to 15,' and then we see them adapt and they move all their command posts back to 25 miles."
The Russians would likely respond the same way to Ukrainian F-16s, "and the problem is you won't be able to chase them down in the F-16 over their land to get close enough because you'll get shot by one of the Russian surface-to-air missiles," Hecker added.
Training Ukraine's pilots
Dutch officials first announced this week that the US had finally approved the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine, allowing the much-anticipated training of pilots to move forward.
"I welcome the US decision to clear the way for delivery of F-16 jets to Ukraine," Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said Friday. "It allows us to follow through on the training of Ukrainian pilots. We remain in close contact with European partners to decide on the next steps."
Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch foreign affairs minister, thanked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for the cooperation and said the approval "marks a major milestone for Ukraine to defend its people and its country."
The Netherlands is one of several NATO countries that pledged in July to train Kyiv's pilots to fly F-16s. Ukrainian officials said at the time that training would begin soon. Although the timeline has been somewhat unclear, Denmark — one of 11 countries in the coalition — announced on Friday that it would start training pilots later this month.
"The US is prepared to support the training effort in coordination with the coalition, and is willing to host training for Ukrainian pilots within the US if the capacity of training is reached in Europe," Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement to Insider.
Hecker said Friday that training had begun with "young pilots that barely have any hours at all, so they're not currently fighting in the war." Those fliers are getting language training in the UK and will go through more training on propeller-driven planes before heading to France to fly in the Alpha Jet training aircraft.
"That all is going to take time, and that's probably not going to happen before the end of the year," Hecker added. "So that's why it's going to be at least until next year until you see F-16s in Ukraine."
The rapid depletion of Ukraine's Soviet-era military hardware and the swift influx of Western-made weapons has transformed Ukrainian arsenals. Experts and officials have said Ukraine's air force will ultimately have to shed its Soviet-designed jets, which are getting harder to maintain, and adopt Western-made jets.
But training and equipping Ukrainian airmen to operate F-16s and other sophisticated jets will be a long-term project, Hecker said Friday.
"To get proficient in the F-16, that's not going to happen overnight. You can get proficient on some weapons systems fairly quickly, but ones like F-16s, that takes a while to build a couple squadrons of F-16s and to get their readiness high enough and their proficiency high enough," he said.
"This will be four or five years down the road," he added. "But I think in the short-term that will help a little bit, but it's not the silver bullet."
