Ukrainian F-16 pilot: The Russians have changed their tactics
Several NATO countries, including Norway and Denmark, have sent F-16 flights to Ukraine. The West has also contributed training to the pilots, which have been trained in both the US and Europe.
One of them is the Ukrainian combat pilot « Rocket », which has talked to the Norwegian World Gang. According to the newspaper, it is probably the first interview ever that one of the newly trained combat pilots gives to foreign media.
The pilots notice that the Russians have changed their tactics in the air since the F-16 began to be used.
– Now the Russian fighter plan flies more passively when they discover us in the air, « Rocket » tells VG.
According to Johan Huovinen, which is Lieutenant Colonel and teacher at the Swedish Defense College, the F-16 plan has had a more defensive role so far in the war.
– They are primarily used in an air defense role, rather than for attack. For that, the Ukrainians have instead used their own older Russian -made plan for attacks with sliding bombs, he says.
According to « Rocket », the Squadron’s main mission is to « protect the Ukrainian defense operations on the ground » by shooting down incoming Russian drones and robots. They can fly all the way to the front to defend the soil forces and can reportedly shoot down both Shaheddröre and cruise robots, which are fired from both the ground and the air.
– At night we carry out defensive operations. In daylight we fly more offensively, « Rocket » tells VG.
Johan Huovinen holds With about the pilot’s description that the Russians seem to have withdrawn from Ukrainian airspace.
– Now you see almost no Russian flight over Ukraine. It has to do with the air defense and partly with the fact that the F-16 is such a good plan.
Since last summer, Ukraine has lost two of the F-16 planes. Last Saturday, the Ukrainian air defense assumed that a 26-year-old Ukrainian combat pilot had died after an F-16 plane was shot down in battle, writes Kyiv Post.
« Rocket » First received their basic pilot training at a military academy in Ukraine before the war. There, « Rocket » learned how to fly Russian-built SU-27 planes, which is described by Huovinen as a significantly older plan with a lower, technical level.
-If you are going to compare them to the F-16, it’s like driving a tractor compared to a passenger car. F-16 also has a communicating system, which means that you can transfer data on military targets more qualified air defense systems, such as Patriot.
It was in the summer of 2023 that US then President Joe Biden gave green light for Ukraine to use fighter flights in the fighting against Russia. The first F-16 plan was delivered last summer. The Ukrainian aircraft fleet is estimated to consist of around 80 fighter aircraft sent from the West.
Read more:
Ukrainian pilots have started flying F16 plan: « We did it »
