Serious question. Why does Ukraine need lots of jets?
According to the leaks. Russians have a shitload of SAMs. Ukraine has much less, but Russians are still scared to fly their planes.
What are Ukrainians going to do with the jets that they can't already do with HIMARS, drones, cruise missiles?
>they can't fly into Russian territory because of all the SAMs
>they aren't going to fight Russian jets because there aren't any flying
You don't hear any news stories about Ukrainian jets doing anything. Everything is about drones and long range missiles. They are scared to fly their jets. How will having more jets going to fix it?
>Why does Ukraine need lots of jets?
To fight Russia, duh
F-16 SEAD missions followed by F-16 CAS.
Shoot down incoming missiles and launch long range air-to-ground missiles.
NATO armies are heavily focused on air force
They have big stockpiles of air launched PGMs
Giving Ukraine western jets will enable them to partake and fire natively integrated vast stockpiles of western weapons
Clear?
No more moron rigging jdams to Soviet aircraft.
ARM
A2A
Glide bombs
Cruise missiles
All launched as they were designed to be
>No more moron rigging jdams to Soviet aircraft
It's kind of cool t.b.h. it's space ork tier.
You don't need a large number of jets to launch ground missiles.
You need lots of jets to launch air launch missiles though. Those are the kind NATO produces hand over fist
1. F-16s can bait out SAM launches and then another F16 can smash it with a HARM. Slowly degrading Russian air defenses. Russia has a lot of SAMs, but they're also a huge country witha lot of ground to cover, have lost a lot of systems, and will have difficulty replacing them due to sanctions. Russian manpads are not great, so if they lost a bunch of radar units for their missile trucks, it will not be great for them.
2. F-16 can use long range air to air missiles which can be used to take down the Russian planes launching glide bombs
3. F-16s can assist with shooting down cruise missiles, drones, and other Russian chimp out attacks.
4. F16 can, in certain circumstances, launch their own glide bombs and missiles without endangering themselves from Russian SAMs
ok
>3. F-16s can assist with shooting down cruise missiles
>So long term if the West wants to sustain Ukrainian air defenses, it likely needs to be in the form of aircraft.
How does that work? F-16s on patrol 24/7 ready to shoot down cruise missiles? Surely they can't be scrambled on the fly, they have to be up in the air.
Cruise missiles are slow and they're launched by Russian long range bombers, there's a fair bit of warning usually.
If twitter OSINT bros can consistently call out Tu-95s taking off and strategic radio chatter picking up 4 hours before they launch their missiles over the Caspian, so can Ukraine. That said, I've seen a bunch of MiG 29 combat air patrol clips, so they do seem to just keep some in the air chilling near Lviv ready to fly east to intercept.
Yes, they can fly them 24/7 if the situation calls for it, such as intel for a likely air strike of some kind being received.
Russians can't into opsec so everyone knows when there's a barrage of cruise missiles on the way before they're even over Ukraine.
>Russians have a shitload of SAMs. Ukraine has much less, but Russians are still scared to fly their planes.
It's worth considering that as a large post Soviet State, "much less" SAMs means absurd numbers of them compared to NATO countries. Ukraine started the war with 100 batteries of S-300. And it turns out that uncontested bombing of hospitals in Syria did not teach the Russian Airforce how to fight in airspace protected by hundreds of long range SAM launchers.
The issue is that Ukraine's long range Soviey SAMs are running low on ammo. NATO countries are trying to compensate by transferring some rather excellent SAM systems (see Patriot mogging Kinzhal), but the issue is nobody in NATO aside from the US really *has* hundreds of spare long range SAM batteries lying around. Our air defense strategy prioritized fighter aircraft more than the Soviets did. So long term if the West wants to sustain Ukrainian air defenses, it likely needs to be in the form of aircraft.
It makes sense to not have a bunch of SAM systems though:
1. Western doctrine pushes the west to build a shit ton of high quality planes, achieve air superiority and use it to beat the enemy senseless.
2. Russia has lots of SAMs because they can't compete with the west technologically, or economically.
3. The West can make better SAMs than Russia, but it would pull resources away from planes and the air superiority we want, building a ton of SAMs on top of a shit ton of planes is pointless and counterproductive. Most western SAMs exist to prevent missile attacks and protect high value targets
This would be a non-issue if NATO had given Ukraine enough planes to "fight like NATO" , but, until now, they seemed unwilling to give Ukraine the Airforce capability to push for air supremacy. In the meantime, NATO was jerry-rigging together old NATO missile systems into Ukraine's Soviet-era launchers to give them access to NATO's cold war missile stockpiles. That, alongside the Patriots, Manpads, existing Ukrainian stocks, foreign purchases, shorter range NATO systems like NASAMS, and donated planes should give Ukraine the short, medium, and long-term capability to close the skies.
They are gonna save them to invade Romania later. The classic Chiang Kai-sek ploy.
Cuz jets are cool. They makemy pp hard.
>Why does Ukraine need lots of jets?
Because it's imperative to bomb donetsk children with JDAMs.
if there's children left in donetsk then clearly they haven't been sufficiently mobilized. AK is simple enough for child to use, and they do. Maybe Timmyovich play flight simulator game, give him UAV, make productive*~~
luganda is forgotten?
Those children will soon be reinforcing positions in Bakhmut. Ukranians won't be able to bomb them by the time they get F-16s
Russia is about to learn about NATO Standard means
Because they are needed to shoot down Russki glide bombs during ground advances.
They also demoralize the enemy.
They don't because they're gonna lose anyway, the US is being sabotaged.
Low IQ question, but anti-air defence and gliding bombs.
Probably similar difficulty to cruise missiles
>shoot down enemy fighters trying to drop glide bombs
>drop glide bombs yourself
Also SEAD and SNEED.
Didn't russia lose yet another Pantsir this week?
Yes, maybe even two.
But why is that relevant!
>>they can't fly into Russian/Soviet territory because of all the SAMs
Russian SAMs have a history of not always working. It's a gamble but the Ukies previously managed to attack Russia by air.
Small arms doesnt allow for massive corruption, Send a few aircraft costing 100"s of millions of dollars and now were talking a little funny accounting! Get a meet with Hesh for next week!!
For morale, unironically. Also having new (or new-ish) F-16s could be a huge asset for SEAD.
>For morale
SO if the Russians lost 200k sofar and its a 10:1
Uki deaths to Russian, There isnt many left so fuck their moral.