Ukraine’s hopes and challenges after long wait for F16s

The first F-16 fighter jets are expected to arrive in Ukraine from NATO member states, after many months of preparation and pilot training.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said they were essential to helping Ukrainians push back Russia’s air dominance and “unblock the skies.”

Russian forces are also preparing to confront Ukrainian F-16s.

They have targeted a number of Ukrainian military airfields and there are growing fears that these long-awaited planes will be attacked and destroyed soon after their arrival.

In July alone, at least three airfields were attacked: Myrhorod and Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine and one in the Odessa region in the south.

Moscow claims to have destroyed five Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jets and one MiG-29, as well as a radar and valuable Patriot air defense launchers.

Authorities in kyiv have remained largely silent and the air force declined a BBC request for comment, claiming on social media that the destroyed planes and air defense system were in fact decoys that had cost Russia several expensive Iskander missiles.

Deceptions or not, Ukraine’s allies, and many Ukrainians themselves, fear that the protection of the U.S.-made F-16s is insufficient.

Until now, the Ukrainian air force has relied largely on “dispersed operations” to ensure its fighter jets are not hit on the ground, according to Professor Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow in air power and technology at the Royal United Service Institute.

Aircraft and equipment are regularly moved within and between bases, he explains, so “if Russia launches an airstrike, it will probably just hit a tarmac or empty grass.”

But that may have to change if Ukraine wants to protect its valuable fleet of Western aircraft from Russian missiles.

F-16s need perfectly smooth runways, clear of stones and other small debris, if they are not to run the risk of engine failure.

“Any attempt to improve the infrastructure of existing bases will be visible to ‘Russian observers, whether from orbital sources or human intelligence,'” Professor Bronk believes.

Until recently, Russia relied on surveillance or satellite imagery to spy on Ukrainian airbases, so it never knew for sure whether its missiles had hit their targets.

The country now has spy drones such as Zala, Supercam and Orlans, capable of sending real-time images from inside Ukrainian territory, thus avoiding Ukrainian electronic detection and jamming systems.

The commander of the drone unit, Oleksandr Karpyuk, said that drones can now be pre-programmed to fly long distances in radio silence.

A Russian Defense Ministry video showing the attack on the Myrhorod air base earlier this month appears to show the moment Iskander ballistic missiles struck the area where several planes were parked.

There is no indication that the F-16s have yet arrived in Ukraine, although kyiv-based aviation expert Anatoliy Khrapchynsky suggests that Russian forces are “probing” Ukrainian airfields because they believe they might be there.

This month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the transfer of F-16s was already underway from Denmark and the Netherlands.

Some 65 F-16s have been promised by NATO countries.

Once on the ground, they will roughly double the number of fighter jets Ukraine currently has, all of which are Soviet-era MiG-29s and Su-27s.

For Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, these measures cannot come too soon, after 18 months of waiting.

It had initially opened twice as many as the 65 it had been promised, as fighter jets are needed to carry out the main types of missions:

• Suppression of enemy air defenses – SEAD missions – military desperate to destroy Russian surface-to-air missile systems
• Air interdiction operationsto disrupt, delay or destroy Russian ground forces
• Defensive air counterattack (DCA)), to protect Ukrainian territory from Russian aircraft and missiles.

These defensive missions are perhaps the most important at the moment.

This year Ukraine has been under enormous threat Russian gliding bombswhich are essentially dumb bombs equipped with retractable wing kits and guidance modules to provide precision strike capabilities at standoff, similar to the US JDAM munitions.

Russia is producing these additional kits and these improved bombs are wreaking havoc on the front lines.

About 3,000 missiles were dropped in March alone, mostly from Su-34 fighter-bombers.

If Ukraine can protect its F-16s on the ground, it is hoped that they can play an important role in pushing back Russian aircraft to the point where glide bombs can no longer target Ukrainian ground forces.

The F-16s would operate alongside the limited number of Western-supplied surface-to-air missile systems, such as Patriot and NASAMS, which are already on the ground.

The fighter jets will be armed with AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, which can become “autonomous” and self-guide to the target after a certain distance after launch.

Currently, Soviet-era Ukrainian aircraft use missiles that require constant “lock-on” to a Russian aircraft throughout the targeting and launch phase.

This puts Ukrainian aircraft in an even more threatening situation because they cannot fire a missile and then turn away, which is what the F-16s do.

Not everyone believes that the F-16s will be able to protect frontline cities in Ukraine.

If the planes fly at high altitudes, they will be vulnerable to Russian air defense systems, warns Professor Bronk. If they fly at low altitudes, they will have to penetrate deeper into Russian territory to give their missiles sufficient range. And that carries even greater risks.

Rather than viewing the F16s as potential targets, Anatoliy Khrapchynsky argues that they will only strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses, due to their ability to intercept cruise missiles while Patriot batteries shoot down ballistic missiles.

Each air base will have crews on standby who will take off in the event of an air threat.

But the problem is that Ukraine is facing a severe shortage of Patriots and missiles. President Zelensky claims that Ukraine needs at least 25 Patriot defense systems to protect its skies, while it has only a handful.

The F-16s will not necessarily change the course of the war, but they will have a significant impact in ground and air attacks.

The question is whether there will be enough of them and whether it will be possible to protect them on the ground.