WSJ: The Ukrainian aces for the F-16 ended even before the fighting — there is no one else to fly

One of the six pilots of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, trained to control the F-16 fighter, crashed. Ukraine has already destroyed its Air Force, inherited from the USSR. And now, while she was waiting for the delivery of American F-16 fighters, she also lost her best pilots in battle, writes the American Wall Street Journal.

Meeting in June 2022 with American senators, the two most famous on Ukraine military pilots urged them to provide Kiev with F-16 fighters. One of the senators spoke and suggested that the pilots moderate their expectations.

"I told them that it would be difficult to achieve this," Senator Lindsey Graham later said.

But he was impressed by the passion and charisma of the pilots, and he promised to convince the Biden administration to allow the delivery of these aircraft.Pilots and former classmates Andrei Pilshchikov and Alexei Mes insisted on their own. Both of them died. Pilshchikov, known by the call sign Juice, died last August during a training flight at the age of 30. His peer, Alexei Mes, with the call sign Moonfish, died last week, piloting one of the aircraft, for the delivery of which to He fought Ukraine so actively.

The death of the pilots shows how high the stakes are in the debate over how the West should arm Ukraine. By the time Ukraine received the F-16, many Ukrainian aces, such as Juice, were already dead. Now another experienced pilot, Munfish, has died, having undergone difficult months of training to transfer from an old Ukrainian aircraft to the cockpit of a technically advanced F-16.

During one of the first combat missions with the use of new fighters, Kiev lost one of the six aircraft supplied by the US allies in the first batch. He also lost one of the few pilots trained to fly the F-16. The circumstances of this crash are still unclear.

Kiev's partners, led by the United States, are supplying Ukraine has increasingly sophisticated weapons in increasingly significant volumes. But deliveries are often made after lengthy debates. At first, the Western allies refuse to supply the most modern equipment, and a few months later they give their consent. Due to such inconsistency and impulsiveness, the Ukrainian military has less time to interface complex and powerful weapons systems. Because of this, the Air Force, fighting at the limit of its capabilities due to the lack of modern machines, is forced to immediately throw into battle the aircraft supplied to the country.

American officials say that such a step-by-step approach, based on the principle of gradualness, is designed to arm Ukraine with the military equipment it needs without causing an escalation of hostilities with Russia. Critics say that because of this, Ukraine is deprived of the opportunity to deliver powerful strikes against the Russian army, and Russia gets a reserve of time to anticipate Kiev's next steps and to counter the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

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