Ukrainian Air Force admits modern Russian jets trump F-16s
Ukraine's Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets are outmatched by Russia's newer aircraft and missile systems, the head of the Communications Department of the Ukrainian Air Force, Yury Ignat, has said.
Washington gave its NATO allies the green light to send their surplus US-made jets to Ukraine in 2023.
'We are getting Western equipment, we are getting aircraft. Today, we have F16s, we already have Mirages,' he said in an interview with the outlet Ukrainian Pravda published on Tuesday. 'They have already been in use. We understand that they are not the newest.'
Ignat stressed the importance of the detection range of the jets' radar, and the strike range of its weapons.
'Unfortunately, Russia has planes today that see further, and missiles that shoot further. Even compared now with the F-16,' he said.
Ukraine's older Soviet-era jets such as the MiG-29 and Su-27 are 'no comparison at all,' he added. 'It's like pitting a Makarov pistol against a sniper rifle.'
The current modifications of the F-16 that Ukraine has 'cannot compete one-on-one in an air battle' with the newer Russian Su-35 multirole fighter, Ignat said in March.
The total number of F-16s given to Kiev has not been released, but it is believed that Ukraine was given 18 last year. Three of the jets have been destroyed, Ignat has confirmed.
Last month, Ignat admitted that US-designed Patriot air defense systems have also been struggling against Russian weapons. Russian Iskander cruise missiles 'perform evasive maneuvers' and drop decoy flares in their final approach phase, 'thwarting the Patriot's trajectory calculations,' he told Le Monde.
Russia has repeatedly condemned the supplies of Western armaments to Kiev, stressing that they will not change the course of the conflict, and slammed F-16 deliveries as an escalation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that if jets taking part in the conflict take off from air bases outside Ukraine, Moscow would consider those bases to be hostile.
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