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.
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