On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would join a rapidly forming coalition of European states training Ukrainian pilots to fly American F-16 fighters — and begin discussing how to get those jets into Ukraine as well. The announcement caps a monthslong pressure campaign from Ukraine and its allies, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly helping convince Biden to change his mind.
It now seems only a matter of time before F-16s make their way into Ukrainian hands.
While several countries promise to help with training, none have yet firmly committed to supplying the jets. Still, it now seems only a matter of time before F-16s make their way into Ukrainian hands, with the Netherlands and Denmark possibly kicking things off. (Although to be clear, it will take months for Ukrainian pilots and mechanics to be trained on the aircraft, even if given a shortened crash course.)
This development was overdue. Ukraine officials have said their Soviet-legacy air force hasn’t received new combat aircraft since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Thus, helping Ukraine operate Western fighters is a sensible long-term project that should begin as soon as possible — even if the fighting were magically to end tomorrow. A modernized air force will be vital if Ukraine is to deter or defeat future invasions. In the short term, the addition of F-16s could eventually make Russia’s current invasion less sustainable.
Prior to 2022, I was skeptical that Ukraine’s air force would last long against Russian air power. But Ukraine’s fighter and bomber squadrons avoided destruction on Russia’s D-Day by preemptively dispersing to satellite bases, and put up a crucial fight in the war’s first days.
That bought time for Ukraine’s ground-based air defenses to redeploy to safer positions and get back online — and those defenses have kept Russian manned aircraft from penetrating deep into Ukrainian airspace ever since.
After heavy early war losses, Russian air…
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