Ukraine’s air force gets some F-16s at last

-16s to Ukraine as soon as the training of the first group of pilots to fly them is complete. The Danish air force will donate 19-16s they possess. Norway may soon follow.

The obstacle has been Washington’s reluctance to allow the transfer of the American-made jets. The stated reasons are somewhat unconvincing: that Russia would see the jets as an escalation, that they would be a distraction for Ukraine’s military planners and that it would take years before Ukraine would be able to fly and support them. But just before the announcement over the weekend, Anthony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, gave both countries the green light for the transfer.

Douglas Barrie, a military aerospace analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London, says the timing is normal: “They will arrive in batches and you want them to be in pretty good condition.” But he thinks the first Ukrainian squadron of 12-16 aircraft could be up and running within six months.

Maintaining the jets will be a bigger challenge than training the pilots. Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at, a think-tank, thinks Ukraine will have to rely heavily on civilian contractors to supervise and train Ukrainian maintenance crews, perhaps for several years. Dispersed basing will be needed to avoid Russia destroying aircraft on the ground. Ukraine has so far been good at this: it is a big, flat country with plenty of airfields far from the frontlines.

Mr Bronk questions where such contractors will come from, when European air forces are urgently retraining their people on the-16s will eat away at America’s “presidential drawdown authority”—the finite funds that Joe Biden, America’s president, can send to Ukraine without congressional approval—at the expense of other critical weapons.-16s be worth the trouble? Nobody suggests that they will be a game-changer.

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