Fighter Jets For Ukraine: Kyiv Pushes West to Break Final Taboo

This week has been dominated by debates and news regarding Western armor deliveries to Ukraine. American, German, and British heavy tanks will soon be on their way to Ukrainian battlefields, making a major diplomatic victory for Kyiv almost one year in the making.

Eleven months of unprecedented Western support has broken many military taboos. One year ago, proposals to supply shoulder-launched man-portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons were controversial. Now, Ukraine's armed forces are operating some of NATO's most advanced systems to devastating effect.

Kyiv requested Western-made fighter jets as soon as Russia's full-scale invasion began in late February 2022. To date, Ukraine has received Soviet-made fighters and spare parts from some NATO nations. But provision of modern Western platforms has been deemed impractical and a dangerous step that might be interpreted as escalatory by the Kremlin.

With Ukraine making plans for its new tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles—specifically the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS—appear to be the the only remaining military taboos.

Last week, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said the Netherlands would consider any Ukrainian request for American-made F-16 fighter jets with an "open mind," adding there are "no taboos" on military aid. Soon after, President Volodymyr Zelensky made another public appeal for fighter aircraft.

U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Michael Carpenter told Baltic news website Delfi he believed Washington D.C. would support any European nation wishing to send its American-made jets to Ukraine.

Negotiations between Kyiv and Washington D.C. have been progressing behind the scenes for months, according to a Politico report from September. Ukrainian air force spokesperson Colonel Yurii Ihnat said this week that the U.S. has already decided what kinds of military aircraft will be sent.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for airpower and technology at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, told Newsweek there is "a genuine change in the political risk appetite" among Western leaders on the fighter jets issue.

"There is a relatively finite window in the next six months or so for Ukraine to make potentially decisive territorial gains before the next major wave of Russian mobilization and industrial reengagement," Bronk said.

The West's realization that supporting Ukraine is a long-term project that will likely outlast the current war is helping to advance proposals for military aircraft. "There's no scenario in which the need utterly tails off, even if Ukraine were to win on the ground this year," Bronk said.

"It's less a question of whether we supply heavy weapons like tanks and potentially fighter aircraft, and more about when we do it. And that there is therefore a strong argument to say that you should do it now."

Why F-16s?

Russia's inability to establish air superiority over Ukraine is one of its most glaring failures of the war. Almost one year into the full-scale invasion, Russian aircraft largely avoid flying over Ukrainian-controlled territory and limit close air support missions at the front lines.

Western aircraft could, in theory, bolster Ukrainian sorties while helping defend Ukrainian cities from Moscow's ongoing missile campaign.

"They're crucial now," Oleksandr Danylyuk, the former chair of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, told Newsweek. Western fighters, he said, offer significant value in "their offensive operations as well as to defend ourselves against missiles."

"For me, actually, it's a bit disappointing that on planes we are moving quite slowly," Danylyuk said.

Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Zelensky, told Newsweek that Russia's missile attacks have cost Ukraine around 1 percent of its GDP since the campaign began in October. "These attacks are extremely costly," he said, noting that fighter jets might help blunt the barrages. "One percent of our GDP is a huge, really huge, number."

David Deptula, a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General and the dean of The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Newsweek that U.S.-made aircraft could have a decisive impact on the battlefield, both in the defense and offensive operations that Kyiv will need to hold ground and liberate more territory.

"Airpower provides advantages over armor, artillery, and infantry with respect to these attributes: speed, range, flexibility, perspective, agility, mobility, and lethality," said Deptula, who served as the principal offensive air campaign planner for Operation Desert Shield in 1991 and the director of the Combined Air Operations Center for Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001.

"While ground forces are certainly necessary, 'combined arms warfare' is not effective without airpower," he said.

Among the F-16s capabilities are "area air defense; cruise missile defense; close air support; interdiction; direct attack; and suppression of enemy air defenses," Deptula said. "In the anticipated three-prong Russian spring offensive against Ukraine, F-16s could rapidly swing from one front to another providing the lethality and capabilities necessary at the time and place needed—air forces can do that in minutes, ground forces cannot."

Ukraine's air force, which was not even expected to survive the opening salvoes of a full-scale Russian assault, has been unexpectedly successful across 11 months of intense combat. Kyiv has received additional Soviet-made aircraft and spare parts from some European partners, but Deptula suggested a more radical resupply mission is required.

"Attrition losses have reduced their current air force size, leaving insufficient numbers to be effective," he said. "The reduced fighter numbers drive up the load on remaining aircraft and that presents availability challenges. Then there is the finite pool of spare parts and munitions that will be consumed soon without replacements."

"Unless Ukraine acquires a replacement fighter force of Western origin in coming months, it will lose the ability to defend its airspace and support its ground forces, and without control of their airspace they will lose."

F-16 Limitations

Beyond the political maneuvering, sending Western fighter jets to Ukraine will pose significant logistical issues.

"There's still quite a number of reasons why there are grounds to be reasonably skeptical about fighter jet deliveries being imminent," Bronk said. "Fundamentally there is a finite capacity in terms of the logistics system that has been developed both through Europe and also transatlantically for getting things to Poland or Romania, and then into Ukraine and across Ukraine to where it's needed."

"If you open a new big line of effort like Western tanks, or Western armored personnel carriers, or fighter aircraft, potentially, that is broadly speaking going to be at the expense of another line of effort," Bronk added. Fighters, he said, would represent "really quite a significant one...because it's going to take a lot of specialist people and logistics capacity away from other things."

"If you have an operational squadron of F-16s or something in Ukraine in three months' time compared with two battle groups of tanks, is that a good trade? And the answer is probably no."

Western fighters would, Bronk said, make it even more dangerous for Russian aircraft to operate over combat zones. But he suggested that the environment for Western jets flying combat sorties at the front would be just as dangerous as for Ukraine's existing fleet.

"They would still be subject to the same extremely high level of threat from the Russian ground-based SAM [surface-to-air missile] systems, which would be a problem for most Western aircraft except the most modern," he said.

"An F-16 cannot operate at medium level comfortably over the frontlines dropping precision guided bombs with its targeting pod as they have done in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya...the Russian ground based air defense threat is too high."

Congress authorized a $100 million program this summer to train Ukrainian fighter pilots to fly American aircraft. Bronk said that for such pilots to join the fight in the coming months, training would have to begin as soon as possible and fliers could be airborne within "a couple of months."

"The biggest bottleneck is setting up sustainable and survivable in-country logistics and maintenance chains to actually operate these things," he added. "It takes a long time to train qualified maintainers, so it would probably involve significant numbers of Western contractors on the ground to do some of that maintenance or supervise it. And then that's also an additional layer of political risk."

Deptula likewise said that American fighters could be airborne with Ukrainian pilots within "three to six months," adding that training, maintenance, and infrastructure challenges "are all manageable in the near term if creative—not bureaucratic—thinking is applied."

"The quickest way to maintain their F-16s would be to rely on contract maintenance support," he added. The actual aircraft, Deptula added, could come from NATO nations with around 30 or so F-16s—enough for a squadron—with the U.S. promising to backfill them with newer versions as an incentive.

"Ukraine can transition their air force from Soviet aircraft to Western aircraft, and while it will take some time, it will be worth that time and expenditure of resources as modern airpower will prove their most leveraged tool in their fight to expel Russian forces."