The War in the Ukraine

Temstar said:

Damn look at all those planes all rushing to Warsaw:
View attachment 135255
Russian must have hit some really high value targets.

Meanwhile:

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Tam said:

Stryker abandoned in the Kursk region.

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Stealthflanker said:

Tanks, APC, ARV.. Kubinka's collection is going to get a massive boost during and after this war.

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Accelerated Training in the Spotlight After Ukrainian F-16 Crash - WSJ​

A fatal crash of a Ukrainian F-16 on the first day the jet fighters were used in combat last week has raised questions about the rush to train pilots and deploy them into combat only weeks after they had arrived in Ukraine, according to U.S. and Western officials.

Ukraine’s air force still hasn’t determined the cause of the crash, which occurred during what Kyiv later described as the largest Russian missile and drone barrage of the war. U.S. officials say Ukraine has yet to find evidence the jet was shot down, either by friendly or enemy fire, or that a mechanical failure led to the crash.

The incident, which killed a top Ukrainian pilot and destroyed one of Ukraine’s few F-16s, comes at a precarious moment in the conflict. Russia has stepped up drone and missile attacks across the country, and is closing in on the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky is shaking up his government, after firing the air force commander days after the barrage.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is scheduled on Friday to lead the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Germany, where Ukraine’s air defense capabilities are supposed to be among the leading topics among allies, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Flying a jet fighter in combat is a dangerous, complicated mission, and even some of the best U.S. pilots have crashed in F-16s. That includes Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, who was forced to eject after his jet was struck by lightning over the Everglades in 1991, earning him the call sign “Swamp Thang,” and former Air Force chief of staff Gen. David Goldfein, who was hit by a surface-to-air missile while flying over Serbia in 1999.

Flying a jet fighter in combat is a dangerous, complicated mission.
Western pilots, even after completing their training, often fly for many months with their units and in exercises before attempting complex missions in combat zones. The Ukrainian pilots, on the other hand, went quickly from training to the battlefield.

Now, Western officials are debating the wisdom of Ukraine’s decision to deploy the new jets in combat just weeks after they first arrived in the country, and sending up pilots who had limited flying hours on the advanced American jet.

There aren’t plans yet to adjust the current training program for Ukrainian pilots, but “the crash shows what happens when you try to rush things,” said one senior defense official.

The training of Ukrainian pilots was delayed by months while the Biden administration was considering whether to allow allies to transfer the jets. By the time the jets arrived, Ukraine was facing growing barrages of missiles and explosive drones that had knocked out several power stations and other energy infrastructure, forcing rolling blackouts across the country.

A Russian missile exploded near the F-16 shortly before it disappeared off the radar, a U.S. official said, leading to one theory that the explosion either damaged the aircraft or led the pilot to maneuver too low to the ground, contributing to the crash, according to the U.S. official. While Ukraine is leading the investigation, U.S. advisers based in other parts of Europe are advising, defense officials said.

Investigators are looking at satellite images, flight data recorders and other information to make a final determination, U.S. officials said.

Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Maj. Gen Pat Ryder on Tuesday referred reporters to Ukraine for specific questions about the investigation, but said that “you’re always going to learn from various incidents or engagements that get applied back into lessons learned.”

The pilot who died, Oleksiy Mes, was one of a small group of Ukrainians to begin training on the F-16 in Denmark in August 2023. A few months later, another cadre started training under the U.S. Air National Guard pilots at Morris Air National Guard Base, Ariz. The first pilots to graduate from those programs finished up their training in Europe before arriving in Ukraine this summer along with the jets.

Before the crash, representatives from the Danish government had expressed concern about the ability of some of the pilots to fly solo, the senior defense official said.

The Ukrainian pilots had years of combat experience in their older Soviet jets, but some struggled to learn how to operate the advanced F-16—particularly because the training manuals were in English and not all of the pilots had sufficient English language skills. Some pilots who began the course in Denmark failed the program, a Western official said.

Mes, known as Moonfish, wasn’t one of the pilots that sparked concern. He was among the small cadre of pilots who completed an accelerated training course at the Danish military air base in Skrydstrup that was tailored to the scenarios they would face on the battlefield. The pilots focused on air defense, rather than learning all of the missions the multirole aircraft is capable of performing, according to a senior U.S. official.

Ukraine’s air force said Mes shot down three cruise missiles and one drone before he crashed.

“Oleksiy saved Ukrainians from deadly Russian missiles,” the air force said in a statement. “Sadly, at the cost of his own life.”

Typically, rookie F-16 pilots complete a more comprehensive course and then train with their unit for up to a year before they ever see combat. But the Ukrainian pilots, who had been flying the F-16 for a year at most, deployed straight into a dangerous, complex battlefield.

“Cruise missiles, it’s a very challenging problem set to acquire them on radar, to get into the weapons engagement zone, to have the right weapon on your aircraft,” said one former U.S. fighter pilot.

Ukraine has long sought F-16s as part of its air defense, saying they help defend Ukraine from the onslaught of Russian missiles. It received its

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this summer.
“The initial role for this type of aircraft is conservative, focused on air and missile defense,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has frequently visited Ukrainian front-line units “There was inevitably going to be growing pains as they adopt and learn to operate the aircraft.”

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly thanked the U.S. and its allies for deliveries of advanced weapons like the F-16. At the same time, they have become increasingly vocal in saying that deliveries have been too little, too late.

Zelensky has said Ukraine has only a fraction of the air-defense systems it needs to defend its cities and troops. A Russian ballistic-missile strike that hit a military institute and surrounding buildings in the central city of Poltava on Tuesday killed 55 and injured more than 300. Seven died in a missile-and-drone attack on the western city of Lviv early Wednesday, including a mother and her three daughters.

Ukraine acknowledged publicly for the first time that it deployed F-16s on Aug. 27 against what it described as Russia’s largest bombardment of the war of 127 missiles and 109 drones.

Today, a small number of Ukrainian pilots are still going through the training programs in Arizona, Denmark and a newly opened facility in Romania. The Danish facility will shutter at the end of the year as the Danish Air Force transitions from the F-16 to the new F-35.

Ukrainian and Western officials have declined to provide exact numbers, but they acknowledge that it will be months before Ukraine has enough trained pilots to fly a full squadron of F-16s.

Ukraine may have rushed its F-16s and their pilots through the training program and into combat, but Kyiv was forced into that decision by the war, the former pilot said.

And that doesn’t mean Mes wasn’t ready for combat.

“These guys are former fighter pilots, it’s not like we accelerated a greenhorn—a lot of them had talent,” the person said. “I would hazard to say that the West hasn’t faced anything like what Moonfish was facing.”

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A Russian missile exploded near the F-16 shortly before it disappeared off the radar, a U.S. official said

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