Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.
“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Except, at the end of the day, someone runs out of soldiers. If Ukraine keeps wasting resources in a futile counteroffensive, it’s going to be Ukraine. Military doctrine going back centuries has told us that defending is far easier if your technological capability is even marginally close to equivalent.
Ukraine is getting fully functional F-16s, Russia has already shown that they tape down Garmin GPSs to their fighter jet dashboards. That’s… not “marginally close”.
Maybe Ukraine should regroup and stay on the defensive in the meantime, but I wouldn’t bet on Russia in 2024.
Except… It sort of is? GPS was first launched in 1978 (oh look, the year the F-16 was introduced). The F-16 is an ancient platform and Ukraine has already shown that CAS is rather challenging given how advanced modern munitions are. At the start of the war they were literally plucking planes out of the sky.
Plus, NATO doctrine relies on complete battlefield superiority and complex logistics… Things that Ukraine lacks. How exactly is Ukraine supposed to turn the tides with F-16s when the Russians have stealth planes and hundreds of Su-35/34/30s?
It’s not about how old is the platform, it’s about what you put into it. Is the F-35 still randomly rebooting mid flight? The F-16 hasn’t had that problem for decades, and it can run modern hardware just fine.
Stealth planes are irrelevant in a dogfight, or in defending ground assets, and all those Su-* have been shown to be lacking proper maintenance for decades. We’ll see how they manage against a fully operational and updated bunch of F-16s.
Dogfights are an outdated paradigm.
If an Su-57 picks up your radar signature and gets a lock, you better pray to your countermeasures suite because you’re not even going to get a glimpse of it. That’s literally the entire modern US fighter paradigm.
You’re supporting my point: those F-16s are going to have the latest countermeasure suit.
It doesn’t matter how “invisible” is the plane (Ukraine already downed a Russian Su-57) or how “hypersonic” is the missile it launches (Ukrainian ground countermeasures are also taking care of those), what matters is whether it can hit you or not.
A bunch of “old” F-16s equipped with the latest stuff, plus some decent ground support… we’ll see how it goes, but since Russia hasn’t been able to establish air superiority over Ukraine in all this time, with a little push Ukraine likely will.
With… 40 F-16s? Do you imagine Ukraine to be the size of Taiwan while the Russians fly around in Chaika biplanes?
Ukraine is already protected from those magnificent Russian Su-57s, they don’t need F-16s for that. All Ukraine needs is to keep maybe 5 of those F-16s in the air over whatever scrap of land they happen to be trying to take back at any given moment. And yes, those pieces of land are going to be much smaller than Taiwan, what matters is that piece by piece, they will no longer be under Russian control.
Ah yes, because F-16s will absolutely be able to achieve what Su-27s couldn’t… Because, reasons I guess? Just like the Patriot system. Just like the Bradley. Just like the Challenger. Just like the Leopard 2. Just like HIMARS. The Patriot system was supposed to help Ukraine gain air superiority, too. Western armour was supposed to act as a fist straight through Russian lines.
How much has Ukraine captured over the counteroffensive so far?
This war lives and dies on attrition and logistical superiority. Ukraine needs more artillery shells, more drones, more ammunition, and more men, not some new wonder weapon that’ll go straight where all the other wonder weapons are. Thing is, nobody has the manufacturing capability to produce more artillery, more drones, off more ammunition and Ukraine has been bleeding refugees since the start of the war.
Put another way: if Ukraine knew it was going to get F-16s eventually and that F-16s could gain air superiority, why go on a counteroffensive and bleed morale/resources now? By your reasoning, Ukraine could have just hunkered down until they had technological superiority and pulled some good old Blitzkrieg tactics on Russian lines to punch straight throw them. Either this counteroffensive was a severe tactical blunder or the F-16s won’t do as much as claimed.