Posted on 05/18/2023 6:54:35 AM PDT by hardspunned
The United States does not allow Ukrainian pilots to begin training on F-16 fighter jets in Europe, despite the readiness of several countries to conduct such training.
Source: The New York Times with reference to an unnamed Ukrainian official.
Details: The official noted that without US permission Ukrainian pilots can only be familiarised with the technical language and conduct tactical lessons. Test flights on the F-16 are not possible.
According to The New York Times, President Joe Biden's administration, which must approve the transfer of any American-made aircraft, is still not convinced that Ukraine needs expensive fighter jets.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Imagine a F-16 winding up in Russian hands.
Of course not.
They are training them here....................
It does keep escalating, that’s for sure. At this point I’d be halfway surprised if NATO doesn’t start flying missions over Ukraine. Seems like the Russians using glide bombs has changed some of the calculus. Air defense was good enough last year, but now that the Russians have a standoff capability, need some air power.
We sold them to Pakistan. You don't think that both the Russians and the Chinese haven't been over every square inch of an F-16, as well as having full documentation?
“We sold them to Pakistan”
And Venezuela, Indonesia, and Egypt and etc and etc.
Lots of opportunities for leakage. A bit of bribery is all it would take.
All of NATO is on board training the Ukes fully except the US. I think I’m probably close to the truth in this being a Biden Administration ruse to get NATO personnel shooting down and bombing Russians. There can’t be many escalatory rungs left before the proxy gloves come off and we have full blown war, NATO, toe to toe with the Ruskies.
You assume that US policy decisions are rational and accord to some grand plan. I don’t. The US has an extremely weak executive, effectively it is run by committee. There are conflicts obvious under the surface. This is visible in all policy areas. This has been evident in the tentative and incoherent progress of US support of Ukraine.
Lower level operations and implementation is evidently in the hands of military professionals, and this has gone much better, within that level.
we have full blown war, NATO, toe to toe with the Ruskies.
—
You know as well as anyone that the Russians have virtually nothing left to go toe-to-toe with anyone. There are no gloves to come off.
The Russians aren’t fighting a proxy war, NATO is. When the NATO proxy gloves come off. The Russians have been fought to a standstill by NATO with NATO holding 9 9/10 fingers behind its back. A toe to toe fight means NATO complete air dominance day one, conventional decimation of the Russians week one and the nuclear threshold crossed by day ten. Conventionally, the Russians have no more chance than Saddam had if NATO goes total conventional commitment along the 3500 mile front. As they have promised, they will go nuclear before they are overrun and their regime forcibly changed. Only a fools, like the maniacs in DC running this $hitshow, think otherwise.
“Lower level operations and implementation is evidently in the hands of military professionals, and this has gone much better, within that level.“
Funniest thing I’ve read in a month. They guys you seem to think are there have been totally purged starting back in Barry’s first term. The best of the rainbow warriors left is that drooling idiot, Milley.
Sounds like you are getting more panicked than usual. Keep up the good work.
From experience - in large industrial enterprises (as the US military actially is) it is very likely that upper management can be incompetent, while the professional ranks and middle management keep things going just fine. Pipelines are maintained, SCADA works, nothing blows up (much), contracts are fulfilled.
Who the supposed boss is (usually) matters less at the coalface than many would suppose. The big issues are funding - who gets the budget.
As we see in re Ukraine. Armored brigades are moved across the Atlantic without mishap. Weapons supplied to Ukraine work. The worker bees keep doing their thing.
Since, as you point out, Nato, once riled up, is overwhelmingly stronger than Russia (one of my points from the beginning), it has absolutely no reason to intervene directly.
All it has to do is prop up Ukraine until Russia quits. There is no reason to present Russia with an existential threat. All Russia needs to do is leave Ukraine. Everyone has left Russia a wide open road to retreat, as Sunzi recommends.
“Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.”
“All of NATO is on board training the Ukes fully except the US.”
Everybody knows that the limited stocks of old Warsaw Pact Sukhois and MIGs are running out, and that Ukraine will have to transition to Western jets. Will they be Typhoons, or Eurofighters, or F-16s?
By training the Ukrainians on American F-16s instead of their own aircraft, they may be seeking to lock them in to the F-16, so the Americans get stuck with the big bill to provide most of the aircraft and the Operations & Maintenance tail.
Europe has large surplus stocks of F16s developing as F35s are replacing them. There are @60 units of surplus Euro F16s at this point, IIRC, and more coming. Those are the units everyone is thinking of for immediate transfer to Ukraine.
“The Russians have been fought to a standstill by NATO with NATO holding 9 9/10 fingers behind its back.”
Well said.
Most of what Russia has engaged so far has been the old Warsaw Pact leftover stocks. NATO gear started mainly with shoulder fired missiles like Javelins, NLAWs and Stingers, graduated slowly to Artillery, and is just about to go full throttle with Armored vehicles and deep strike precision weapons (JDAMs, GLSDBs, Storm Shadow cruise missiles). Russian conventional Ground Forces have been heavily attritted already, and the bite into the Aerospace Forces looks to be on track to intensify in this next phase of the war.
They have been successfully suckered into a slow bleed, under the nuclear threshold, where the old Soviet stocks are destroyed in detail. The Post-war world will no longer have the threat of those huge Soviet stockpiles hanging over their heads, and Russia will have significantly less coercive power in diplomacy. Poland alone will be armed to take them on conventionally, a few years from now.
“There are @60 units of surplus Euro F16s at this point, IIRC”
I believe that is right in the ballpark with how many are envisioned initially for the Ukrainian Air Force - probably a few more than they will get at first.
A few dozen sorties per day launching Storm Shadows and dropping JDAMs would make it a very different war for the Russians.
The only way the huge stockpiles of Russian nukes go away is when they use them. NATO’s client/proxy is costing it hundreds of billions a year and IT’S stockpiles are being rapidly depleted. China’s new client state (thank you NATO) is making it billions so far. In a long conventional war of attrition, when Russia has nearly exhausted all of its stockpiles of arms and money (they are better economic state than the US) China will begin supplying its client. The very best scenario for the US is a multi trillion dollar generational Cold War half a world away from our only existential enemy, China (DONE). More likely the dip $hits and traitors in DC stupidly escalate to the point the Russians go nuclear.
There is no compliant western stooge in the Kremlin who somehow will deliver Russia to the globalists. It won’t be as easy for them as it was when they took over the US and NATO. The Russians will not allow NATO to bleed them out by proxy. When the idiots in DC stupidly escalate this to the point Russia is beginning to fall, they have made it abundantly clear what they will do. They will go nuclear. My guess all along is an attack on the NATO staging areas in Poland with theater nukes. Those staging areas are providing the weapons that are killing tens of thousands of Russians. They will not go quietly into the woke pervo globalist night. Are those four insignificant oblasts really worth it?
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