WASHINGTON — Training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighters is a key step in constructing that nation’s future air force, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday — but he doubts Fighting Falcons will change the course of Ukraine’s war against Russia.
F-16s “will give the Ukrainians an increment of capability that they don’t have right away,” Kendall said in a breakfast roundtable with reporters hosted by the Defense Writers Group. “However it’s not going to be a dramatic game-changer, so far as I’m concerned, for his or her total military capabilities.”
Kendall said that while F-16s will help Ukraine, they won’t fundamentally alter the balance of power within the war. Effective ground-based air defenses on either side have meant airpower has not played a decisive role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kendall said, and fighters have been utilized in fairly limited ways in consequence.
For greater than a yr, Ukraine has repeatedly asked the USA and European nations to offer fourth-generation F-16s or other fighters. Those requests were all the time rebuffed.
The situation modified last week, when President Joe Biden announced the USA would support training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s, paving the best way for Ukraine to receive those fighters.
At Monday’s breakfast, Kendall said Ukraine has been “very understandably unrestrained” of their requests for weapons and hardware equivalent to F-16s from the USA and other nations.
But other weapons packages to Ukraine have been “incredibly useful” in thwarting Russia’s initial drive to seize Kyiv and far of the country, he said, after which pushing Russian forces out of much of the territory it claimed within the early months of the war. Ukraine has used Western weapons equivalent to High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, precision rockets and Javelin anti-tank weapons to devastating effect against Russia.
Kendall said the West prioritized sending Ukraine those weapons that may be handiest on the battlefield, before shifting focus to laying the groundwork for a future Ukrainian air force.
He said providing fighters equivalent to F-16s “is seen by some as an escalatory act on our part.”
Speed was also a think about deciding which weapons to consider first providing to Ukraine, Kendall said. Getting significant quantities of fighters into Ukrainian hands would take months at best, he said, so as an alternative the West searched for armaments that could possibly be more quickly shipped.
Kendall reiterated comments he and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown made in July 2022 that eventually, Ukraine could have to maneuver away from its current force of Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker and MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters and toward Western-made jets.
“Ukraine goes to stay an independent nation,” Kendall said. “It’s going to want a full suite of military capabilities. And so it’s time to start out considering longer-term about what that military might seem like, and what it’d include.”
Kendall said the U.S. and other partner nations will work with Ukraine to “work out a path” toward getting the jets — however it won’t occur soon. He said it can likely take at the very least several months for Ukraine to receive them.
Many details even have yet to be sorted out, Kendall added , equivalent to where the F-16s will come from, and where their pilots will train.
“We’re just starting our conversations about how we’re going to maneuver forward after the president’s announcement,” he said. “A whole lot of open possibilities [for training], including our partners.”
NBC News reported in March two Ukrainian pilots were at a military base in Tucson, Arizona, to assist sort out how quickly the nation’s fighter pilots could learn to fly advanced fighters equivalent to F-16s. The Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing in Tucson trains pilots from international partner nations to fly the F-16.
But Kendall was optimistic about Ukrainian pilots’ abilities to learn to fly the F-16, saying it could take “months, not years.”
“They’re very motivated,” Kendall said. “All the things we’ve done with the Ukrainians, they’ve shown a capability to learn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more motivated individuals, when it comes to wanting to get into the fight and make a difference.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.