Westliche Unterstützung für die Ukraine (Sanktionen/Waffenlieferungen/Sonstiges)

[Quintus Fabius]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/18...ghter-jets

“Understandably, they will be hunted down,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, ex-deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces, told Al Jazeera. “But we will serve them, hide them, equip and use them.”

“They say F-16s are manna from heaven. Far from it,” Romanenko quipped.

The engine’s air intake is located too low and can swallow pebbles from potholed Ukrainian airstrips – that can also be dangerous to the plane’s small wheels.

A much bigger problem is the range of missiles the West would supply for them.

Like a Lego toy, an F-16 can carry various missiles or bombs, but the planes Ukraine is getting come with very small add-ons.

“We’re on the hook with the weaponry they will give us,” Romanenko said.

The missiles will most likely have a range of 120km (75 miles) – while Russian missiles can fly up to 300km (186miles).

“You wriggle any way you can,” Romanenko said. “And we will indeed have to wriggle.”

“The training will be extremely basic, which is also not a plus,” Mykhailo Zhirokhov, a military expert based in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, told Al Jazeera.

Therefore, the F-16s will be used “exclusively” as carriers of high-precision weapons, he said.

These days, the Ukrainian Air Force has US-made GBU precision-guided bombs that can glide for about 100km (62 miles) to their targets.

They also use Joint Direct Attack Munition kits that turn average “dumb” bombs into precision-guided munitions, and also received French-made AASM guided bombs, he said.

The F-16s will intercept Russian cruise missiles and Herans, modified Shaheed kamikaze drones developed in Iran, he said.

And as Russian missiles can potentially reach any Ukrainian airfield modified for F-16s, Kyiv may use them only as “jump airfields” for refuelling, Zhrokhov said.

“F-16s are too precious a gift, and too few are provided [to Ukraine] to risk them,” Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University told Al Jazeera.

They are not likely to be involved in direct fights with Russian fighter jets, and their duels will be limited to “not very effective” missile strikes, he said.

The F-16s will also strike surface targets – but only from distances that rule out Russia’s use of S-300 and S-400 air defence complexes, he said.

Meiner rein privaten Einschätzung nach wird es noch für Monate nur geringfügige präzise Einzelangriffe geben und die F-16 ansonsten primär russische "Drohnen" abfangen, sowie die Russen durch ständiges Katz- und Mausspielen binden. Der tatsächliche strategische Effekt wird sehr gering sein.