Russia’s military has already been testing countermeasures against the fighter jets, the outlet reported
FILE PHOTO: An ad urging the supply of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine during a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. © Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images
There may be little value in Ukraine deploying Western-provided F-16 fighter jets because Russia has already taken measures to counter them, according to comments made by Ukrainian military officials to Politico.
The officials, who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity, generally complained that decisions by the US and its allies to provide new military capabilities to Kiev often come too late. The F-16s are an example of systems that “come when they’re no longer relevant,” according to one official.
“Every weapon has its own right time. F-16s were needed in 2023; they won’t be right for 2024,” he said.
The official explained that in recent months Russian forces had been launching long-range anti-aircraft missiles from Crimea but without explosive payloads. The Ukrainians were initially puzzled by this but subsequently realized that it was an exercise in range-finding in order to determine the optimal placement of its S-400 radars and batteries to target the F-16s and keep them at bay, he explained.
READ MORE: ‘Eye-rolls’ in NATO as Stoltenberg pushes for Ukraine long-term support – Politico
The Politico sources had served under Valery Zaluzhny, the former top general in the Ukrainian armed forces who was replaced by President Vladimir Zelensky in February after a public disagreement on the feasibility of continued attempts to retake territory. In a keynote article he wrote for The Economist last year, Zaluzhny said that without a radical breakthrough in military technology on the scale of the invention of gunpowder the conflict would turn into a war of attrition.
“Zaluzhny used to call it ‘the War of One Chance,’” one of his officers told Politico about the general’s thinking about arms quickly becoming outdated.
The officer was referring to the air-launched weapons that the UK and France donated to Ukraine.
The sources who spoke to Politico criticized the replacement of their ex-boss, General Aleksandr Syrsky, who claimed last week that a reassessment of personnel needs by the army allows it to drastically reduce the target for mobilization. Zaluzhny had said that as many as 500,000 men needed to be conscripted, a statement that elicited a rebuke from the president. The senior officers said Syrsky was “playing along with narratives from politicians.”
