On the menu today: The Biden administration’s stance on sending Ukraine F-16 fighter jets makes no sense. Ukraine has been asking for those kinds of jets for a year, and the requests are getting more intense and insistent, and yet President Biden insists there’s no good reason to give the Ukrainians the jets they say they desperately need. The oddly stubborn refusal hints at a really embarrassing explanation for why the U.S. can’t spare any of those jets. Meanwhile, I know this is going to shock you, but Senator Dianne Feinstein isn’t as healthy as her aides say, and you can probably guess who’s been arrested for stealing luggage from an airport — for a third time.
Give the Ukrainians the Jets They Need
Why is Joe Biden so convinced that he knows what Ukraine needs to win the war better than President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian military do?
If the Biden administration is fine with other NATO allies sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, why does it oppose sending U.S. fighter jets to Ukraine?
It can’t be that it sees sending U.S. fighter jets to Ukraine as inherently too escalatory or provocative, because if it did, it would oppose allies sending the same kinds of jets.
It can’t be that the Biden administration genuinely believes it would take too long to train Ukrainian pilots on the F-16s for them to make a difference. The Ukrainian government admitted it would take six months for its pilots to train for combat in a Western-made jet like the F-16 . . . three and a half months ago. If we had started training those pilots then, they would be more than halfway done by now!
In fact, there’s evidence that Ukrainian pilots are particularly fast learners: “Yahoo News has exclusively obtained an internal U.S. Air Force assessment that concludes it would take only four months to train Ukrainian pilots to operate American-made F-16 fighter jets, a far shorter time frame than what has been repeatedly cited by Pentagon officials.” When your country’s civilians are being bombed by the Russians every day, you’re a highly motivated student.
The Ukrainian Air Force requested F-15s and/or F-16s back in March 2022. If we had started training the Ukrainian pilots back then, and supplied Ukraine with the jets once their pilots were ready, the Ukrainian skies would be full of F-16s winning air superiority by now.
Put another way, six months from now, the war will almost certainly still be going on. We can decide whether that ongoing war six months from now features Ukrainian pilots in U.S.-made F-16s, or whether it does not. Which one do we want?
Back in February, Biden insisted in an awkward interview — does he have any other kind? — that Zelensky and the Ukrainian military didn’t need F-16s, even though they have been begging for them for a year:
“You don’t think he needs F-16s now?” Muir asked in an exclusive interview at the White House Friday.
“No, he doesn’t need F-16s now,” Biden responded.
Asked by Muir if that meant “never,” Biden said there was no way to know exactly what the Ukrainian defense would require in the future, but that “there is no basis upon which there is a rationale, according to our military now, to provide F-16s.”
“I am ruling it out for now,” Biden said.
Contrast Biden’s bizarre insistence that there’s just no good reason for a country at war to have its air force flying more advanced fighter jets, with this recent comment from Congressional Ukrainian Caucus co-chair Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat: “For Ukrainians, that is one of their top priorities,” she said. “Every person that comes to see us from Ukraine mentions F-16s — every elected official, every interest group leader. That’s very important to them.”
It’s not like Ukraine doesn’t have the pilots to spare for training; it has more pilots than functioning jets right now. Back in February, the Ukrainian government said it had already identified nearly 50 pilots who would be allowed to leave the country for training.
Ukrainian Air Force major Vadym Voroshylov reportedly shot down five Iranian drones in one day, and he told the British Guardian newspaper, “Look how many targets we have hit with old Soviet equipment. Imagine what we would do if we had F-16s. Give us these planes and we would be become a safe shield for the entire democratic world.”
Yes, fighter pilots are usually brimming with bravado and confidence, but you can see why Ukrainian pilots — who have been getting the job done with outdated Russian-made MiG-29s — would be drooling at the thought of taking to the skies with an American-made plane that has a proven record of dominating dogfights and combat missions, and that can do a little bit of everything:
In an air combat role, the F-16’s maneuverability and combat radius (distance it can fly to enter air combat, stay, fight and return) exceed that of all potential threat fighter aircraft. It can locate targets in all weather conditions and detect low flying aircraft in radar ground clutter. In an air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more than 500 miles (860 kilometers), deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point. An all-weather capability allows it to accurately deliver ordnance during non-visual bombing conditions.
Last month, the Ukrainian Air Force estimated that F-16s would be “four or five times” more effective than the Soviet-era planes it’s currently using. Right now, Ukrainian pilots are flying the equivalent of a minivan, and Biden insists they don’t need the keys to the sports car. The Ukrainians claim that with just 24 F-16s, they could turn the tide of the war. Maybe they’re exaggerating, but the general principle holds. A more advanced air force would mean greater control over the skies, and air supremacy has been the cornerstone of military strategy since World War I.
Right now, the Russian strategy is to pound Ukrainian cities, hold the lines, and hang on in a long, bloody war of attrition. Time is not necessarily on the Ukrainians’ side.
A recent Politico article offered this absurd sentence: “The Biden team has suggested that discussions over sending F-16s should wait until after the war is concluded.” Yes, that’s brilliant, fellas. Let’s give them what they say they need to win the war, but only after they’ve lost the war.
There is one legitimate reason for the U.S. to not send F-16s to Ukraine, but if the Biden administration discusses it publicly, it would mean admitting that the entire U.S. industrial base is in unnervingly weak condition, and that the problem has gotten worse on their watch. That reason is that the U.S. is way behind in supplying Taiwan with the jets that it needs to help deter a Chinese invasion:
Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said on Thursday that the delivery of 66 advanced new F-16Vs from the United States has been delayed due to supply chain disruptions and the ministry was working to minimize the damage and “make up deficiencies”.
The United States in 2019 approved an $8 billion sale of Lockheed Martin Corp. F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, a deal that would take the island’s F-16 fleet to more than 200 jets, the largest in Asia, to strengthen its defenses in the face of a stepped up threat from China, which claims Taiwan as its own. . . .
The first of the new F-16Vs was meant to be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year, but that has been delayed to the third quarter of next year due to pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, the ministry said.
Speaking to reporters at parliament, Chiu said Taiwan had asked the United States to “make up the deficiency”, including prioritizing spare part deliveries for the existing fleet. . . .
Taiwan has since last year complained of delays to U.S. weapons deliveries, such as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, as manufacturers turn supplies to Ukraine as it battles invading Russian forces, and the issue has concerned U.S. lawmakers.
If the Biden administration is indeed hesitant to send F-16s to Ukraine because it’s way behind in sending Taiwan the F-16s it needs, then former Pentagon strategist and all-around China wonk Elbridge Colby is entitled to a few rounds of “I told you so,” as he has been arguing for months that the U.S. cannot give both Ukraine and Taiwan what they want, and will be forced to prioritize one over the other.
Whether or not Taiwan is a factor, the fact remains that Joe Biden is an old man who gets easily confused, and who, on the issue of Ukraine, is gripped by contradictory impulses that turn his policies into a jumbled, paradoxical mess. Biden wants Ukraine to win the war, and Biden wants the war to end. Biden wants to punish Vladimir Putin, and he’s terrified that strikes in Russian territory would enrage the bear. Biden wants to see himself as the second coming of Winston Churchill, leading the Western alliance and standing by Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” and also the conciliatory peacemaker who spent his first year seeking a “stable relationship” with Vladimir Putin. Biden stumbles around in a happy little fog, apparently having genuinely believed, “Putin knows that when I am president of the United States his days of tyranny, and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over.”
Speaking of old people who are easily confused . . .
The Sad, Embarrassing, Dishonest End to Senator Feinstein’s Career
Why do lots of Americans not trust elected officials when they say their health is fine? Because elected officials lie about this sort of thing. The New York Times reported — or perhaps I should say confirmed — yesterday that California senator Dianne Feinstein looked like she was in terrible shape when she reappeared on Capitol Hill because her condition is much, much worse than her office’s vague public statements made it sound:
Ms. Feinstein’s frail appearance was a result of several complications after she was hospitalized for shingles in February, some of which she has not publicly disclosed. The shingles spread to her face and neck, causing vision and balance impairments and facial paralysis known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome. The virus also brought on a previously unreported case of encephalitis, a rare but potentially debilitating complication of shingles that a spokesman confirmed on Thursday after The New York Times first revealed it, saying that the condition had “resolved itself” in March.
Characterized by swelling of the brain, post-shingles encephalitis can leave patients with lasting memory or language problems, sleep disorders, bouts of confusion, mood disorders, headaches and difficulties walking. Older patients tend to have the most trouble recovering. And even before this latest illness, Ms. Feinstein had already suffered substantial memory issues that had raised questions about her mental capacity.
The grim tableau of her re-emergence on Capitol Hill laid bare a bleak reality known to virtually everyone who has come into contact with her in recent days: She was far from ready to return to work when she did, and she is now struggling to function in a job that demands long days, near-constant engagement on an array of crucial policy issues and high-stakes decision-making.
Stop lying to us! (Feel free to envision me slamming my open palm on the desk while shouting that, and then hurting my hand in the process.) We have eyes and ears. We know what a healthy senior citizen looks and sounds like, and we know what a struggling senior citizen looks and sounds like. For that matter, we know what a stroke victim who is still struggling to recover looks and sounds like.
If you find yourself wondering who is enabling this blatant gaslighting:
Ms. Feinstein flew on a chartered private plane last week to return to Washington, accompanied by her dog, her longtime housekeeper and Nancy Corinne Prowda, the eldest daughter of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker who has been a longtime friend of Ms. Feinstein’s and has been practically living at her house during her recovery.
Ah, so Nancy Pelosi, who has accumulated so much baggage during her 35 years in the House of Representatives, has one last gift to give Congress: a nonfunctioning senator who is so close to the circumstances of Weekend at Bernie’s that the jokes comparing her to the title character in that absurd slapstick comedy aren’t funny anymore.
Speaking of baggage . . .
ADDENDUM: Kudos to the Daily Wire for this scoop:
Rob Yingling, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), said airport police “executed a search warrant May 17 in Montgomery County, Maryland, in connection with allegations of stolen property in luggage from Reagan National Airport that was brought to the department’s attention in February 2023. With the assistance of Montgomery County Police, Samuel Otis Brinton, age 35, of Rockville, Maryland, was taken into custody Wednesday pending charges of Grand Larceny.”
Yes, it’s that guy. This is the third airport where Sam Brinton allegedly stole luggage; the other thefts occurred at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas and the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport.
As I observed last month, is it really asking too much for the Department of Energy to come out and say, “This was not a good hire. We screwed up, and we will scrutinize applicants for positions like this more closely in the future”?