We still don't have an answer to our question from January 23:
Next up, who will fly the F-16's when they are delivered to Ukraine?
From Deutsche-Welle, February 17:
Kyiv is already preparing runways for the western planes, which could prove decisive in the war against Russia. On the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Poland will push for a decision to deliver F-16s.
The desperate call has rung out from Kyiv since the first hours of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022: "Close our sky," the people in Ukraine continue to plead. But a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, such as the one over Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war there in the 1990s, has been categorically ruled out by the countries supporting Ukraine, first and foremost the US.
Such an operation would draw the western alliance into the war. And that should be avoided at all costs. Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reformulated the call to close the sky during his speech to the UK parliament: "give us wings," was his new plea — by which he meant fighter jets to enable Ukrainian pilots to secure the country's airspace.
US-financed pilot training
The US House of Representatives already approved $100 million (€94 Mio.) to fund the training of Ukrainian pilots for US-made F-16 fighter jets in July 2022. Shortly after the Russian invasion began, Poland delivered old Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force. According to Warsaw, they were to be used for spare parts.Further deliveries of MiG fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots are used to, have not been ruled out. However, after a year of the war, they would no longer help his country much, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat told DW: "Soviet aircraft will not be able to change the course of the war now."
According to him, the MiGs could only replenish the small fleet of aircraft remaining in Ukraine "with spare parts, armament, maybe missiles." They would not be much help against the air superiority of the Russian attackers.
"We must switch to Western aircraft," Ignat analyzed, otherwise Ukraine will remain "technologically inferior" to Russia. In their old Soviet jets with outdated radar, Ukrainian pilots could not know when a missile had been fired at them, the spokesman for the Ukrainian air force said.
The main problem, however, is that Russian military jets have meanwhile been firing their missiles at Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians from a safe distance. That is because of the western military equipment Ukraine has received over the past 11 months: anti-aircraft tanks such as the Gepards from Germany seem to have kept the Russian planes at bay....
....MUCH MORE
