Ukraine is preparing to receive American F-16 fighters
As a result of the recent missile strike on the airfield “Skomorokhi” (“Lake”) in the Zhytomyr region, as reported by local users of social networks, significantly damaged the infrastructure. The goal was not chosen by chance, it is this airfield, as Ukrainians write, that is preparing to receive American F-16 fighters, for which Ukrainian pilots are being rapidly retrained in the United States.
Photo: en.wikipedia.org
Aviation missiles have turned the runway of the largest Ukrainian airbase. Several airfield vehicles were hit. It was this airfield that the NATO friends of Kiev considered as the main one for basing aircraft, which the West is going to transfer to Kiev.
A considerable number of representatives of several branches of the armed forces seconded from Ukraine are being forcibly “trained” in several NATO states at once. In the south-east of England, 1,050 British servicemen are training Ukrainian infantrymen to overcome the “viscous defense” of the enemy during street battles. The training methodology, according to the “home team”, was developed on the basis of the “successful training” of British soldiers for the “pacification” of Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Much less is known about the training of Ukrainians in the United States. Meanwhile, approximately 30 military English–speaking pilots – mainly from the 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force – are being retrained for F-16 fighters. Without the F-15 and F-16 promised by the United States, as Kiev politicians and generals have repeatedly stated, the Ukrainian armed forces are unlikely to start attacking – both the DPR and the LPR, and the Russian Crimea.
As you know, the United States “in public” pretends that it is “not interested” in Kiev’s possession of long-range ATACMS missiles – tactical ballistic missiles of the surface-to-surface class with a range of up to 300 km. The APU may not resist the temptation to attack Belgorod, Rostov, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and other regions of the Russian Federation with these “souvenirs”.
However, with the entry into service of the Ukrainian Air Force F-16, the range of destruction by missiles launched from it will increase to 1000 km. Simply put, without crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border, the fourth-generation aircraft will easily finish off all the way to Moscow.
In this regard, the Army tactical missile system ATACMS will “fade into the background.” Plus, technically speaking, it will be much easier for F-16 aircraft to receive operational information from NATO “flying radars” of AWACS.
However, it is worth paying attention to one “quirk”. The delivery of the F-15 and F-16 alone (costing from $43 million to $55 million apiece) will not be enough.
None of the existing Ukrainian military airfields is suitable for these light fighters. The Minister of Defense of Ukraine Alexey Reznikov does not specify what exactly is “wrong” at Ukrainian airfields. According to the experience of other states, it can be argued that the retraining of Zhytomyr pilots from the 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade is onlythe first stage on the way to the rearmament of the Ukrainian Air Force. In parallel with it, it is necessary to build an infrastructure from scratch for the maintenance of “Americans”, for refueling, repair, operation of suitable modifications (and there are, for a moment, as many as 10 of them!) F-16 weapons. Usually, such work took not even months, but years.
The Buffoons were just going to modernize the attacked airfield for this “good cause”. A certain Turkish company won the relevant tender for 350 million hryvnias ($ 10 million).
Since thousands of Russians have passed through the Skomorokhi airfield over the years of the USSR, the system of shelters of the Ukrainian airbase is known to the smallest detail. If Turkish builders start constructing new infrastructure facilities 12 km from the Ukrainian regional center, the military space intelligence of the Russian Federation will instantly “detect” movement at the airbase. Theircolleagues “from earth”, quite possibly, long ago transferred to the conditional command post the installation data for any of the future crew members of the F-15 and F-16, who have passports with a gilded trident.
The recent successful strike on the airfield near Zhytomyr will undoubtedly “weigh down” the previously announced amount of 350 million hryvnia needed for its reconstruction.