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Ukraine is expected to receive its first F-16 fighter jets from its Western partners this summer.
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But the exact number of planes is unclear and Zelensky said it would likely not be enough.
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He compared the problem to Ukraine’s Abrams tanks, of which the country received only 31 and were not used much.
Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets are en route to Ukraine and are expected to begin flying missions later this summer.
But they may still not be enough to make a difference on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a discussion this week on Ukraine’s needs, comparing the planes to American-made Abrams tanks delivered to Ukraine last fall.
Asked by Fox News host Bret Baier at the Reagan Institute whether the 31 Abrams Ukraine received as its counteroffensive was already faltering made a difference, Zelensky said“I am not sure that such a number of tanks can change the situation on the battlefield.”
Speaking Wednesday in Washington, D.C., as the NATO summit was underway, he said, “It’s like the F-16 dialogue.” The utility comes down, in some ways, to numbers and timing.
“We are still waiting, like my mother was waiting for me after school,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s the same thing, but much more serious.”
“The problem with the F-16s,” the Ukrainian president said, “is the number and the dates.”
The Ukrainian president said that since Russia operates many combat aircraft “on Ukrainian territory,” a small number of F-16s will not make a difference.
“Even if we have 50, it’s nothing. They have 300. Since we are on defense, we need 128,” he said, adding that unless Ukraine has such a number of F-16s, it will not be able to “compare with them in the sky.” “It will be difficult,” he added.
As Zelensky pointed out, his concerns about the number of F-16s coming and the timing of those deliveries mirror discussions around the U.S.-supplied Abrams tanks, which arrived in Ukraine last fall. The U.S. sent only 31 M1A1 Abrams in total, and they were delivered to Ukraine months after the British and German tanks.
THE Abrams is recognized as a “tank killer” and renowned for its lethality and heavy armor. It has a fearsome reputation, especially given its exploits in the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Experts and former tank operators have praised the Abrams’ capabilities, noting that it is far superior to any Russian tank.
But the Abrams has been unable to fight the battles it was designed for in Ukraine, where massive armored assaults have not been an option and tank-to-tank combat is rare. drone threatsanti-tank weapons and mines, and it is a prime target available only in limited numbers.
For comparison, Ukraine received about 300 American-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, almost ten times more than the number of Abrams sent.
Zelenskyy’s comments follow U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement earlier Wednesday that the first transfer of F-16 fighters in Ukraine — from Denmark and the Netherlands — is underway.
“These aircraft will fly in Ukrainian skies this summer to ensure that Ukraine can continue to effectively defend itself against Russian aggression,” he told the NATO public forum.
The arrival of the fourth-generation aircraft will be important for Ukraine and an improvement over kyiv’s Soviet-era air power and another marker of closer relations with the West. But questions have been raised around how useful the fighters will be on the battlefield and whether there will be enough planes and trained pilots to make a difference. Some also fear that these planes will arrive much later than when Ukraine needs them most.
The West attributes the length of the journey to get the F-16s to Ukraine to complicated logistics.
“The problem is that for the F-16s, it’s not as simple as just getting the planes and handing them over. The planes have to be reconfigured from the different air forces they come from to make them suitable and usable by the Ukrainian air force,” a NATO official told reporters at a briefing on the sidelines of the summit on Thursday.
The official also highlighted the training, logistics and capabilities needed to operate and defend the airfields and said the year-long process of acquiring and delivering the fighters was “actually quite good.”
“If you look at a program like this, typically, even (when) a peacetime allied country gets a new cell like this, it could take much, much longer to get it all in place,” the official said.
In a press call Thursday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged that the “ramp-up period” to get the F-16s operational in Ukraine has been significant, but added that the jets are expected to have a short-term impact and give Ukraine the ability to regain control of the territory currently occupied by Russia.
Read the original article on Business Insider
