The U.S. will start training Ukrainian pilots to fly U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, beginning at an Air National Guard base in October, the Pentagon said Thursday.
The training is part of a U.S. and European effort to get the advanced fighter jets to Ukraine for its defense against invading Russian forces.
Ukraine has been calling for this since the start of the war.
I understand the political minefield this war poses, but I cannot help but recall the countless lives lost in the trenches before this decision was finally made.
If the US had begun this process sooner, is it not likely that the situation would be much different now?
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Biggest difference is that Ukraine would be doing much better in regards to control of airspace.
The best use of these f-16s isn’t going to be as air superiority fighters, but in the wild weasel/SEAD role.
Their ability to use HARM missiles in their “self-protect” and “target of opportunity” modes (which is only possible with NATO-spec avionics) will massively improve Ukraine’s air defense suppression and elimination capabilities, freeing up their Soviet built mig-29s and SU-27s to face off against Russian aircraft. Not to mention open up airspace to rotor-wing assets for CAS or logistics.
Currently, they’re only able to use the harm missiles in “pre-briefed” mode, which requires them to know the area of an air defense site, and then it targets the radar emission in that zone. The other two modes are able to detect and seek out air defense sites on the fly, as it were
The US had to test all their old weapons before to kill as much Ukrainian civilians as possible. But it’ll still be the same if they have time to complete this other madness before they have to give up trying to take over the territories
The hoops you had to jump through to make that make sense to you have left you loopy my dude. Please take a moment to orient yourself in time and space before commenting again, thanks.
Jeez the Tankie fruit loops on here running rings around in their brain to come up with some messed up take is really the only down side to Lemmy.
Like, folks, look at that logic… “America is killing Ukrainians”. Not one mention of Papa Putin and his war of aggression.
Bucha? No. Theatres full of kids? No. Ethnic cleansing? Absolutely not.
This punter has managed to convince themselves it’s America killing Ukrainians and trying to take over Ukraine.
Mental.
Yo bozo that’s not what I said. But indeed the US kind of acquired Ukraine to their cause in 2014.
I’m not even ML calm down
But please please consider that there is NATO propaganda of you consider there is Russian propaganda in BRICS countries. From there, try to underatand motives and what could be true or not
And yes, Ukrainian government, with the support of the US (why would the US want this war there?) is absolutely killiands hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians with banned weapons. Also consider invadedterritoriese were already trying to get independence from Ukraine and under Russian military presence