On the menu today: The U.S. is signing off on Denmark and the Netherlands sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine as soon as the training of Ukrainian pilots is completed — but that may not be until next summer. At least we’re past the awkward stage of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky frequently and publicly mentioning his country’s desperate need for more advanced fighter jets like the F-16s, and our president publicly insisting that the Ukrainians don’t need them. But this further illuminates the oddity of the complaint about Biden from the GOP grassroots, that the president is recklessly sending over too many weapons to Ukraine. If anything, it’s the opposite. The “famously indecisive” Biden — CNN’s words, not mine — keeps hemming and hawing and dragging his feet, sending Ukraine weapons systems long after the Ukrainian government says it needs them. In the case of the F-16s, it’s been merely one year, four months, and 18 days after Ukraine publicly asked for the West to send these jets.
In other vague news, I will be traveling again next week, and updates to the Morning Jolt and NR central will be . . . intermittent.
Plane Talk
It is spectacularly bizarre to hear Republican grassroots complaints that President Biden is sending way too much military equipment to Ukraine too quickly, when there is so much evidence that the opposite is the case. Biden hems and haws and goes back and forth, and habitually agrees to send particular weapons systems many months or even more than a year after the Ukrainians have privately and publicly stated they need them — M1A1 Abrams tanks, Patriot missile batteries, and now F-16 fighter jets.
A U.S. official told Reuters yesterday that the Biden administration has approved sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands to defend against Russian invaders as soon as pilot training is completed:
A coalition of 11 countries will start training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 fighter jets later this month in Denmark, the Danish defense ministry said on Friday.
The country’s acting Defense Minister Troels Poulsen said in July that the country hoped to see “results” from the training in early 2024. . . .
According to figures from the Dutch defense ministry, the Netherlands currently has 24 operational F-16s which will be phased out by mid-2024. Another 18 of the jets are currently available for sale, of which 12 have been provisionally sold.
The news came as senior Ukrainian government and military officials said that the first group of six Ukrainian pilots is not expected to complete training on the U.S.-made F-16 before next summer.
This video put together by the Washington Post — which features some cockpit footage of Ukrainian pilots on a bomber-escort mission, flying low to avoid Russian jets’ radars — demonstrates the difficulties the Ukrainian pilots face, even when they’re particularly skilled. While the Russians’ more advanced Su-35 fighter jets can detect targets 125 miles away, the Ukrainians’ less advanced version of the MiG-29 jets can only detect the Russian jets 45 miles away. The U.S. Navy contends, “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 fight aircraft. This aircraft can locate targets in all weather conditions and detect low flying aircraft in radar ground clutter.”
You may have heard that one of the many reasons you should never mess with the U.S. military is that while only one branch of the armed forces is called the “Air Force,” four branches have stuff that can fly and shoot at you. The most recent figures available to the World Directory of Modern Military Aircraft show that the U.S. Air Force has about 5,200 aircraft; the U.S. Navy has about 2,600; the U.S. Marine Corps has about 1,200; and the U.S. Army has almost 4,400 (mostly helicopters). That adds up to more than 13,000 aircraft of all kinds — fighter jets, bombers, transport, tankers, support, surveillance, search and rescue, and training craft. When ranked by size and technological superiority, those four branches are four of the top five air powers in the world. The one that ranks third is the Russian Air Force, which has an estimated 3,600 aircraft . . . although that number gets a little bit smaller every couple of days.
As mentioned earlier this week, the U.S. Air Force has more than 1,000 F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft in its inventory, and while a portion of the branch’s F-16 Viper fighter-jet fleet will remain in service for the foreseeable future, the F-16 is gradually being replaced by the F-35.
President Biden could announce tomorrow that Ukraine was getting 100 F-16s, and it would have minimal impact on U.S. military readiness. Heck, he could announce 200 or 300 fighter jets were being transferred to Ukraine, and the Pentagon could spare it. (Contemplate the morale effect on both sides in the conflict, knowing that as soon as the Ukrainians had enough pilots, U.S.-made F-16s would be swarming in the skies over Ukraine like . . . I was going to say “hornets,” but that’s the nickname for the F-18 fighter jets.)
It has been a long, slow, frustrating, and plodding process to get F-16s to Ukraine.
Back in March 2022, the Ukrainian government stated that its greatest need was “fighter jets — F-15s and F-16s of the fourth generation or higher would be sufficient,” and contended that its pilots could learn to fly these planes with two to three weeks of training. In January, the Ukrainian government revised that assessment to six months of training. Then in March, an internal U.S. Air Force assessment concluded it would take only four months to train Ukrainian pilots to operate American-made F-16 fighter jets, based on the assessment of two Ukrainian pilots who had trained with U.S. airmen at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Ariz. As mentioned above, the Ukrainian government now recognizes that training to be good enough to consistently win at air-to-air combat in a new kind of fighter jet is going to take a considerable amount of time.
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 had been begging for them for a year. A May Politico article featured the absurd sentence, “The Biden team has suggested that discussions over sending F-16s should wait until after the war is concluded.”
A painfully revealing article by Dan Lamothe in the Washington Post in January reported that Pentagon officials had grown used to Biden making a decision and then changing his mind a few months later. While Biden had recently insisted that he would not send F-16s to Ukraine, most Pentagon officials believed Biden’s position came with an expiration date.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive has not gone as well as Western leaders had hoped.
One problem is numbers. It is easier to defend territory than to attack and acquire territory. There’s a rule of thumb in military strategy that contends an attacking force needs a three-to-one advantage in manpower to win the battle. (Yes, I know this rule is disputed, and the comments sections will be filled with military historians arguing about whether it is always true, generally true, or a misconception.) Ukraine just doesn’t have that kind of manpower in most circumstances along the front. All of the advantages that the Ukrainians had in stymieing the Russian advance throughout most of 2022 aren’t applicable to the challenges they face in retaking territory this summer, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month:
Ukraine successfully outmaneuvered Russia’s far larger invading forces last year, despite being outmanned, outgunned and vastly overpowered in the air. With a nimble approach, superior knowledge of the terrain and the efficient use of drones and digital technology, its units were able to repel a far larger army that often seemed lumbering and mired in bureaucracy.
That’s all over. Ukraine is now attempting to dislodge an entrenched enemy, one of the most daunting operations any military can undertake. Russian troops have spent months building physical defenses that include bunkers, tank traps and minefields — some more than 15 miles deep.
The other factor that is often described as decisive in retaking conquered territory is air superiority or air supremacy. If your air force can bomb the other guys, but their air force can’t bomb you, sooner or later they’re going to break and retreat or surrender. The sky over Ukraine is still contested, which means the Ukrainian ground forces don’t have consistent air support.
But the argument from the Ukrainian government is that it was never going to engage in large-scale battles against dug-in Russian forces, and that it’s fighting its own version of a war of attrition. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, said on Twitter/X a few days ago:
Any statements that Ukraine is not advancing fast enough on the battlefield or is not regaining enough territory are not only a manifestation of the authors’ strange moral state, but also a demonstration of an absolute lack of understanding of the war and its stages. The task of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is not to organize large-scale battles for every settlement on the way to the 1991 borders, but to systematically destroy the capabilities of the enemy army: its logistics, technical potential, officers and personnel. And today, Ukrainian defenders are coping with this task one hundred percent. And then everything will be as Ukraine needs.
ADDENDA: Over in the Washington Post, I sing the praises of Oliver Anthony’s country song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” concluding, “For anybody who feels like the world has spun off its axis and that in American society right is often treated as wrong and wrong is treated as right, the song strikes a chord.” Everybody who was spitting hot fire about my less enthusiastic response to Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” ought to check that out — and keep in mind that I offered my critique of Aldean to National Review readers and my praise for Anthony’s lyrics to Washington Post readers, continuing my streak of never telling anybody anything they want to hear.
In case you missed it yesterday, a bizarre memo from within Ron DeSantis’s camp contends he should spend some of his precious time on the debate stage defending Donald Trump from any attacks by Chris Christie. Apparently, this is a unique strategy that attempts to dethrone the frontrunner by helping him.