L’Ucraina accusa gli Stati Uniti di ritardare deliberatamente l’addestramento dei suoi piloti F-16, sostenendo che avrà solo 20 piloti completamente addestrati entro la fine dell’anno, nonostante l’arrivo di oltre 20 jet.

Don’t bite the hand friend. There are reasons

Is an elected representative to parliament an “official?” I suppose you could say so, but the article makes it sound like she is somehow a Zelensky government representative, which she is not. She is one person with an opinion.

Okay, fine. Everyone gets to say their piece, right?

But this has always been the plan. There were always going to be more planes than pilots. Everyone knew this for the past 2 years. There are over 2000 F-16s in the world, many hundreds of them surplus and available to send to Ukraine. But Ukraine was never going to have many hundreds of pilots ready to fly them.

Almost no one does. Look at it this way. The entirety of Poland’s military includes about 50 F-16s and Poland has been doing this for over a quarter of a century. For Ukraine to get 20 airborne in under 3 years is already an astonishing achievement.

I’m sure there are Americans who want to hold Ukraine back. But they are not calling the shots here.

Anders Puck Nielsen’s take on that topic: [ **Escalation management and Biden’s strategy for Ukraine**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxZ402BMSs8&t=406s)

>The last type of escalation that the Americans are trying to balance is, it’s a little different.

>**It’s the risk that things can start to suddenly spin out of control if the Putin regime starts falling apart**. So there is in the American government a very strong conviction that this is an unwinnable war for Russia and that if the war continues long enough, then that is going to lead to a collapse of the Russian state.

>And there is also a strong concern that a transformation of power in Russia is not going to be a peaceful process.

F-16s might do that, so it’s conceivable that the administration wants to introduce them slowly to gauge their impact.

1. Not all the pilots are being trained in the US. The pilots being trained in Europe are not ‘delayed’ by the US.

2. Ukraine could have had 0 trained pilots. They will have at least 20, if not more that we don’t know about publicly. Would you prefer to have 0? Keep pushing negative narratives if so. Keep the complaining reserved for officials having face-to-face meetings with people who matter, but if you want public opinion to keep supporting Ukraine then you need to at least pretend to be grateful publicly.

3. The instrumentation and systems on ‘western’ (non-soviet) aircraft are VERY different from that on soviet/russian aircraft. Ukraine should have conscripted all the now-unemployed airline pilots who flew Boeing and Airbus equipment (*cough* Denys Davidov) to accelerate the training process. Since 2014, Ukraine should have had all of its Air Force pilots at least studying the academic material for western aircraft systems and instrumentation, which would have made them more prepared for training. Spending decades in MiGs and Sukhois and then crying that your pilots are taking longer to learn how to fly actual airplanes (not soviet shitboxes) is disingenuous.

Let the first group of pilots and aircraft do their thing. Maybe they’ll be the turning point of the war. Maybe they won’t.

I’m deeply cynical but when you’ve a country controlled by the military complex, ending wars quickly isn’t really good for share holders. I cannot express how much I want that to be untrue.

Many countries are currently training pilots, so to say the US is somehow holding back training is disingenuous. Second, US pilots take years to complete the training, to say nothing of the many ground crew and mechanics it takes to keep the planes in the air. The US and other countries are trying to compress the training down and still put out people that are competent enough to do a good job flying the planes and/or taking care of them.

Sending Ukraine 100 planes won’t do a damn bit of good if they are lawn ornaments because Ukraine can’t take care of them. In the same vain having 100 or 1,000 pilots won’t do a damn bit of good if they are not competent enough to go from a basic fighter like a SU 27 to a much more advanced F-16. All of us would love to see 100’s of F-16’s flying around Ukraine locking down Ukraine airspace however that doesn’t magically happen in the span of months no matter how much this one politician would like them to.

Lastly, there are a ton of US politicians that are pissed off the US is spending billions to a country on the other side of the world and not here in the US. The US is in for $120-130 billion in aid. Articles like this one and/or people in Ukraine saying things like this is going to provide even more ammunition for them to try and cut off all funding. Agree or not the US very well could have a different president in 6.5 months. One who is already not keen on spending money in Ukraine. Statements like this are not helping that cause.

You have to bribe them harder.

Unreliable article. Every week same article or a version of it is published. Propaganda.

I smell shenanigans. The article depicts disorder and confusion and “other countries ahead of the queue” in front of Ukraine, and what can you do?

It’s like probing a gullibility line, perhaps. I just assume a lot of static about whatever air power is going to sum to in Ukraine in 5 months time.

There is a difference between flying an F-16 and fighting with it.

There is a program to train Ukrainian pilots from beginning to end. To my knowledge the first group going through this just moved to fast jet training in France. Thats the future F-16 pilot pipeline.

The current ~20 pilots this article is talking about are the twenty experienced pilots who are making a transition from Soviet fighters to F-16. The USA has a specific training unit in Arizona that is established to train foreign pilots – 162nd Wing – who has an established program but it has limited seats. Other US training wings are not set up or equipped to train foreign pilots. That’s why they have a dedicated unit to do that.

Part of the problem was getting Ukrainian pilots who had proficient enough English skills to go through training. It’s very difficult to do some something as complex as transition to a much more modern fighter while also learning new tactics entirely through a translator. Hence the phrase “lost in translation”. The US can’t do anything about The small number of Ukrainian pilots who are proficient in English.

Finally, transitioning from legacy Soviet fighters to modern NATO aircraft has proven incredibly difficult for countries. As an example – Poland gave up. Instead they consolidated all their older pilots in the Mig-29 squadrons and started over from scratch with the F-16 pilots. It’s not a simple process.

Ukraine is never going to be able to wage a NATO level air campaign. In truth NATO can’t do it either – Libya showed that – only the US with all its massive support structure can do it. F-16 will make a positive impact for the Ukrainians and the more they have the better. But it’s not the magic key to winning. Hopefully it’s a piece of the puzzle though.

Fucking garbage article