Kyiv, Ukraine – The first US-made F-16 fighter jets have not yet appeared in the skies over Ukraine, but there is already a bounty on them.
Fores, a Russian company that makes oil drilling equipment, said it would pay 15 million rubles, or about $170,000, to the first Russian pilot to shoot down an F-16.
Russia will also rain down supersonic ballistic missiles to destroy F-16s on Ukrainian soil. Kiev already plans to station some of them in other Eastern European countries, such as Poland.
“Understandably, they will be hunted down,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera. “But we will serve them, hide them, equip them and use them.”
The first dozen F-16s are expected to arrive in Ukraine within weeks as their pilots complete training.
The single-engine aircraft, also known as the Fighting Falcon or Viper, has appeared in countless Hollywood action films and video games.
It took to the skies in 1974 and was developed after the war in Vietnam, where Soviet MiGs dominated heavier and slower American fighters.
Produced by Lockheed Martin, the F-16 is one of the most widely used fighter jets in the world, acquired by two dozen nations around the world.
But 50 years after its creation and with the emergence of new generations of fighters, it is unlikely to become a game changer in the Russia-Ukraine war, observers said.
“They say the F-16s are manna from heaven. Far from it,” joked Romanenko.
The engine’s air intake is located too low and can swallow rocks from the potholed Ukrainian airstrips – which can also be dangerous for the plane’s small wheels.
A much bigger problem is the range of missiles the West would provide them.
Like a Lego toy, an F-16 can carry multiple missiles or bombs, but the planes Ukraine is acquiring come with very small add-ons.
“We are at risk with the weaponry they will give us,” Romanenko said.
The missiles will likely have a range of 120 km (75 miles) – while Russian missiles can fly up to 300 km (186 miles).
“You contort yourself any way you can,” Romanenko said. “And we’re really going to have to squirm.”
Training for Ukrainian pilots lasted six months – a short period to master the basics of flying, dodge enemy fire and engage enemy planes.
Ukrainian pilots also required training in English – and had to readapt their habits from flying Soviet-made jet fighters that were designed to combat the F-16s and their F-15 brothers – but were not inspired by them.
Dozens of other Ukrainian pilots will undergo similar training.
“The training will be extremely basic, which is also not an advantage,” Mykhailo Zhirokhov, a military expert based in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, told Al Jazeera.
Therefore, F-16s will be used “exclusively” as high-precision weapons carriers, he said.
Today, the Ukrainian Air Force has US-made GBU precision-guided bombs that can glide about 100 km (62 miles) to their targets.
They also use joint direct attack munitions kits that turn ordinary “dumb” bombs into precision-guided munitions, and have also received French-made AASM guided bombs, he said.
The F-16s will intercept Russian cruise missiles and Herans, modified Shaheed kamikaze drones developed in Iran, he said.
And because Russian missiles can potentially hit any Ukrainian airfield modified for F-16s, Kiev can only use them as “jump airfields” for refueling, Zhrokhov said.
Ukraine’s top brass hope to obtain AIM-120 air-to-air missiles that could put an end to Russia’s biggest battlefield advantage.
Last year, Russian planes did not have to fly over actual Ukrainian positions, as their heavy KAB bombs can glide dozens of kilometers to precisely destroy the most fortified buildings.
KABs have become a “miracle weapon that brings results and has practically no countermeasures,” Deep State, a Telegram channel with links to the Ukrainian military, wrote in March.
The KABs secured the widely publicized takeover of Avdiivka and several other cities in eastern Ukraine.
Only one or two F-16s will be stationed on Ukrainian soil to “shove away” Russian aircraft carrying the KABs, a German military analyst said.
“F-16s are a very precious gift and very few are provided [to Ukraine] risk them,” Nikolay Mitrokhin of the German University of Bremen told Al Jazeera.
They are not likely to engage in direct combat with Russian fighters and their dogfights will be limited to “not very effective” missile strikes, he said.
The F-16s will also attack surface targets – but only at ranges that exclude Russia’s use of the S-300 and S-400 air defense complexes, he said.
The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway have committed to supplying a total of 85 F-16s by 2028 as they receive much more advanced F-35 fighters from Washington.
That’s enough for four squadrons — but it’s far from the 120 aircraft that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked the West to combat 300 Russian planes.
‘Twice as old as their pilots’
The Ukrainian air force has been neglected and underfunded for decades.
After the Soviet collapse in 1991, Kiev donated its Soviet-era bomber fleet to Moscow.
Half of Russia’s 16 Tu-160 bombers, which can carry 45 tons of bombs or a dozen missiles, belonged to Kiev – and were “transferred” along with hundreds of missiles in the late 1990s as payment for Moscow’s natural gas. .
The “youngest” Ukrainian fighter jet is a Su-27 manufactured in 1991 – and other aircraft are often “twice as old as their pilots”, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said in televised comments in 2023.
Kiev has about 50 MiGs-29s and two dozen Sukhoi 27 fighters, whose notoriously faulty radars have a short detection range and can be easily jammed by the Russians.
Moscow uses newer, better-equipped MiGs and Sukhois, and Ukraine has destroyed at least a dozen at airfields in occupied regions or on mainland Russia.
Kiev lost at least 22 of its MiGs, but Germany, Poland and Slovakia donated 27 similar planes that have mostly become a source of spare parts.
And while Western countries like France and Sweden offered their advanced fighters, Washington pressured Kiev to accept the F-16s to ensure their use in Ukraine in the coming decades, experts say.
“This is the defense of the American military-industrial complex and a question of geopolitical influence,” Kiev-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
