Ukraine has been ordering fighter jets from its northwestern partners for months. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky doesn’t want just any fighter jet. He doesn’t want the French Rafales, he doesn’t even want the Eurofighters, he doesn’t want the Swedish Grippens. The authorized representative he exclusively wants American-made F-16s.
For weeks now, the British and Dutch governments have been trying to form a coalition of countries willing to deliver these combat aircraft, a decision that requires the approval of the United States, which as a manufacturer has the right to veto any re-export.
But why does Zelenski insist precisely on this model, which is not even the most modern of Western arsenals because it has already been surpassed by the American F-35s or by the Eurofighters themselves?
The details of the F-16
The F-16 has indisputable advantages. It is probably the most versatile fighter aircraft on the planet. It can be used for air combat, bombing against ground targets, as a strategic bomber, and to enforce no-fly zones.
It is one of the lightest and fastest in its class and is superior to almost all Russian fighter aircraft. They can also shoot down enemy missiles. Ukraine would like to have five brigades, almost 200 units.
The F-16s, NATO sources say, are also the planes current Ukrainian fighter pilots could learn to fly the fastest. It would take, they calculate, a maximum of six months. Other models would take longer.
They are also airplanes easier maintenance compared to other alternatives and each unit would need 12 people (three pilots if the aircraft is to be kept operational for many hours) and another 9 people for maintenance. The devices are also assembled in factories in Belgium, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands.
Furthermore, the F-16s, of which there are about 2,300 active units on the planetthey are in the arsenals of 24 countries (in addition to the United States), many of them European.
The United States has several hundred of them, and its price is also lower than other alternatives, at 63 million dollars per device. It is the most common combat aircraft. In NATO they say that without being the best especially at nothing, it is the most versatile fighter aircraft because it does everything relatively well.
USA Doubts
The US Administration has doubts and has shown them in public and to its European partners. He believes the priority is for Ukraine to have all of its ground strength possible to launch its long-awaited counter-offensive and fears that the delivery of the F-16s, manufactured by the American Lockheed Martin and which when they were born in 1976 were baptized as “Fighting Falcons”, would cause an escalation of the conflict.
The British and Dutch governments, for their part, say that the threat of escalation was used when the delivery of heavy tanks or missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers was discussed and that this escalation never happened.
In the specialized publication Defense News Colonel and former US fighter pilot Maximilian Bremer defends his country’s strategy by saying that Ukraine, rather than asking for F-16s, “should maintain its strategy of denying access to airspace, which has proven effective , and the international coalition that supports it must continue to supply it with air defense systems and related ammunition”.
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Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.