Despite the agreement of some partner countries to transfer Western F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, they will appear in Ukrainian skies no sooner than in six months. Before the Ukrainian military will be able to use these planes, both pilots, technicians and engineers must be trained.

ADVERTISIMENT

And how much time it may take, it is difficult to say now, because the systems that hundreds of Ukrainian specialists need to master are quite complex, preliminary training of specialists will take 6-7 months. This was stated by the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov.

The Minister recalled that the "aircraft coalition" was created during the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12. Then 11 partner countries signed an open memorandum. The coalition can be joined by other countries, which can transfer their F-16s to Ukraine after receiving US authorization.

However, the partners' desire to strengthen Ukraine in the skies alone is not enough.

"The key fact is that the airplane itself is just a platform. We have to talk about the weapons, the missiles, the missiles, the shells, the bombs that the F-16s will use. We have to talk about preparing the infrastructure so that we can maintain them and they can perform combat missions. And that means training not only pilots, but engineers, technicians, people who plan operations. "This is a serious set of tasks and it is several hundred people we have to train for the first 'birds' in the Ukrainian sky," Reznikov said.

ADVERTISIMENT

How long such training may take is not yet known exactly. Reznikov suggests that the first fighter jets may appear in Ukraine in six months at the earliest.

"So objectively, without inflated expectations, I think that 6-7 months is the minimum term that should be consciously estimated. But if it will be a little bit longer - not to be disappointed, because our pilots have demonstrated their ability to be ready in 6 months. But the technicians and engineers - we don't know yet. Very complex systems of maintenance, repair, so - we will see", - emphasized the Minister.

At the same time, he rather highly estimates the Ukrainians' ability to master even complex Western systems, so he believes that Ukraine will receive the airplanes in the shortest possible time.

"I believe in one thing: our people are so talented that they "overcame" Patriots in 10 weeks instead of 10 months, 155-mm artillery in three weeks instead of three months, so I am convinced that Ukrainian F-16s will be in the Ukrainian skies to liberate the temporarily occupied territories," the defense minister stressed.

ADVERTISIMENT

We will remind, on August 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that Ukraine will receive 42 F-16s from this country.

On the same day, during Zelensky's visit to Denmark, it became known that this country volunteered to transfer 19 more such fighters. According to the head of the Danish government, the first airplanes will arrive in Ukraine by the New Year.

The AFU Air Force called the Western fighter jets "the key to success" and emphasized that they could change the course of the war.

Meanwhile, Russia threw a tantrum over the decision to provide Ukraine with dozens of F-16s and started talking about the escalation of the war again.