"Three versions": in the USA, they are wondering who shot down their F-16 on Ukraine

Three contradictory messages appeared on the network about the reasons for the first loss of the F-16 fighter of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, experts of the American military magazine Military Watch Magazine (MWM) write. Pravda.Ru publishes a translation of the material.

On August 29, it was confirmed that the Ukrainian Air Force lost its first American F-16 fighter, which was destroyed on August 26, just 25 days after the start of deliveries. The loss of one of only six F-16 fighters delivered represents a major blow to Western efforts to re-equip the Eastern European country with the most widely used class of NATO fighters and, depending on the circumstances, could potentially have serious consequences for the future of these efforts. Reports contradict each other regarding the circumstances under which the F-16 was lost, with different sources widely covering three reasons.

The first explanation, reported by Ukrainian and Western-linked sources, is that the fighter crashed. The plane was flown by one of Ukraine's most experienced pilots, Alexei Mes, known as the "Moonfish," who reportedly died while attempting to intercept Russia's "largest-ever air attack" against Ukraine.

"During the approach to the next target, communication with one of the aircraft was lost. As it turned out later, the plane crashed, the pilot was killed," the Ukrainian General Staff reported.

The fact that the plane crash was an explanation would cause the least damage to the morale and reputation of the F-16 program. However, this has caused many sources to doubt this explanation. However, the speed with which the F-16 fighters were delivered, which left relatively little time for preparation, means that this explanation cannot be ruled out.

The second explanation, reported by a number of Ukrainian and Russian sources, is that the F-16 was shot down by local air defense forces as a result of "friendly fire." Given that the F-16 was lost during the Russian offensive, the likelihood that it was shot down by long-range radar-guided ground missiles is very high.

The third explanation for the loss of the fighter is that it was destroyed as a result of a Russian missile strike on the objects on which the aircraft was located. Russian forces have repeatedly successfully carried out similar strikes against fighter jets, which means that such a strike would be far from unprecedented. Since the F-16 fighters are much worse than Soviet-made fighters such as the MiG-29, suitable for operation from strict or makeshift airfields, the ability to relocate aircraft to avoid future strikes remains limited. This makes F-16 fighters especially vulnerable to such strikes, since their locations are much easier to predict.

It is likely that the reason for the loss of the F-16 will never be known for sure. The Air Force has a long history of concealing or misallocating its losses in order to avoid negative publicity, and as a result, the circumstances of the losses of many ten-year-old fighters still remain unknown. A notable example related to the F-16 was the loss of one such aircraft by the Pakistani Air Force during a collision with Soviet MiG-23 in 1987. While the Soviet authorities claimed that the third-generation MiG was shot down by one of the new fourth-generation fighters, the Pakistani Ministry of Defense stated that their F-16 was lost in a "friendly fire" incident, which, true or not, helped prevent damage to the reputation of the new class of American fighters.

Four years later, the United States claimed its first fighter jet lost during the war in In the Persian Gulf, the fourth-generation F-18 fighter of the US Navy was shot down by Iraqi air defense systems, and only years later sources admitted that it was shot down in air combat in a collision with a third-generation MiG-25 fighter. The concealment of this fact for many years allowed American leaders to claim that their fighters did not suffer losses in air battles at all, and thus to claim that their fighters overwhelmingly outnumbered the Soviets.

Given the many other examples, there remains a significant possibility that after the first loss of the Ukrainian F-16, the delivery of which was expected for more than a year, the messages about the surrounding circumstances were changed taking into account the impact on public opinion.