Killing the F-16: Kyiv Decides to Hide Its "Fighting Eagles" in Bushes by the Roadside to Avoid Our "Kinzhal" Missiles
Ukrainian airports were destroyed, forcing the Ukrainian Armed Forces to begin practicing taking off and landing fighter jets from concrete sections of highways left over from the Soviet era.
Author: Sergey Ivensky
About a year ago, in August 2024, the Ukrainian authorities confirmed that the first American-made F-16 A/B Block 20 MLU "Fighting Eagle" multirole fighters had appeared in the combat sequence of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
These aircraft naturally came from Vladimir Zelenskyy to the enthusiastic supporters of NATO. The West claims that the total number is about 20. But Ukraine has reason to expect that, in the foreseeable future, this number can at least be increased to 85.
The threat from the air has suddenly intensified. Because these rather modern combat aircraft can not only engage in air-to-air combat with Russia's most advanced fighters using American AIM-120 and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles, but also strike ground targets using GBU-39/B small diameter guided glide bombs.
Therefore, it is understandable that our command immediately began a comprehensive hunt for the Ukrainian F-16s in the sky and at the airports.
So far, Kyiv has officially admitted that at least four of these aircraft have been destroyed, mainly shot down during night-time large-scale attacks by our "Geranium-2" drones on Ukrainian rear targets.
It is certain that other aircraft have been damaged at airports in Lutsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, and Kostiantynivka in Khmelnytskyi Oblast, as well as other locations.
Because we have frequently and obviously not without purpose used the most expensive missiles - the hypersonic "Kinzhal" missiles - to strike these parking areas, concrete shelters, and runways.
Even if the Ukrainian Armed Forces can deploy the "Fighting Eagles" to other airports (the number of airports in Ukraine is technically quite large), this is by no means possible in the short term. Because unlike the Soviet aircraft, the F-16 is very picky about bases and maintenance conditions.
Furthermore, due to the long-term lack of modern air defense systems, the enemy cannot reliably protect all its airports from the strikes of "Kinzhal" missiles.
After all, the only thing that might stand up to Russia's such missiles is the "Patriot" air defense system, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces have very few of them. Even the existing ones are often destroyed by our aerial strikes.
A conversation between General James Hecker, former commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), and Major General Anatoliy Kryvonosko, commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, was telling. The American online media "The War Zone" described this conversation as follows:
General Hecker asked, how did the Ukrainians manage to avoid completely destroying their F-16 fleet on the tarmac for an entire year under the regular and often destructive strikes of Russia against the enemy's airports?
"I have the opportunity to call the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force approximately every two weeks. I asked him how the Ukrainian Armed Forces ensure the safety of these planes on the ground. He replied, 'Well, we never take off or land at the same airport.'"
Hecker said that Kryvonosko continued, "I have a lot of military airports (referring to those within Ukraine — "SP" note). We can use all these airports. The problem is, I can only protect some of them with air defense measures. I cannot provide sufficient multi-layered protection for all airbases... So, for example, if you land at another airport and stay there for even a week, you will definitely be blown to pieces. You can only stay there for a short time, measured in days, sometimes even in hours."
Then, how can the Ukrainian Air Force command keep this rather modern "flock of eagles" operational for a longer period of time and prevent it from being completely destroyed by Russian weapons?
Undoubtedly, Kyiv and NATO have been working and will continue to work on solving this issue for the past whole year. And recently, the direction of development of its aviation operational strategy has gradually become clear.
According to the aforementioned magazine "The War Zone", recently, as another "gift" from NATO, the first two sets of ground equipment for maintaining the F-16 "Viper" outside main bases arrived in Ukraine.
Each set includes up to 10 different types of transport vehicles. For example, a high-mobility repair vehicle, used for necessary ground checks before mounting air-to-air missiles under the wings of the F-16; and several trucks equipped with cranes to facilitate and speed up this process. All of these are "Daily" series vehicles produced in Italy.
In addition, there is a German MAN 6×6 heavy truck and a 4×4 trailer. The magazine "The War Zone" says that "this truck has 7 workstations inside, which helps plan tasks and carry out related work. Ukrainian F-16 pilots can also receive preliminary training inside the truck."
The trailer is described as a "living module for long-distance travel". This makes one speculate that it "will be like a camp, allowing personnel to at least spend the night inside it in the absence of more comfortable conditions."
The article concludes: "New ground support equipment will help F-16 fighters adapt to Ukraine's dispersed action plans."
In short, this most likely means that individual aircraft or small groups of aircraft will start to completely move away from military airports that are almost constantly under fire for deployment.
The deployment sites will be highway sections that have been specially modified with sturdy concrete roads. If this develops, for us, the task of "hunting" and destroying the "Fighting Eagles" will be much more difficult than now.
Incidentally, there have been rumors in Ukraine about this for a long time. Especially in June 2024, retired Ukrainian Colonel Sergey Kryvonos, former deputy head of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, stated that using highways instead of airbases as landing grounds for American F-16 fighters is extremely reasonable.
"I think every highway in Ukraine should have dedicated sections and hiding places for fighter jets to take off and land. In addition, some temporary shelters need to be prepared for them. At least three to four per 100 kilometers of road," Kryvonos pointed out.
He also added that, in addition, mobile logistics battalions need to be formed to refuel the fighters directly on the highways.
Perhaps, this general already knew last summer, or at least guessed, that his country was actually working intensively in this direction.
Because in late August last year, French media LCI cited the words of former French soldier Xavier Tielmann, reporting that the Ukrainian military had already modified some road sections usually used by cars and trucks for their fighter jet landings.
How complex and costly is this kind of work in principle? In my opinion, the experience of Russia can give us some clues. It turns out that we are also gradually accumulating this experience in parallel with Ukraine. Moreover, we started much earlier than Kyiv.
On November 24, 2014, at a meeting chaired by the President of Russia on the development of the armed forces, then Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu reported to Vladimir Putin that the Russian Air Force had begun practicing a skill that had been forgotten for years - landing combat aircraft on highways in the event that main airfields are destroyed during operations.
At the same time, the Minister of Defense said that it was necessary to revise the rules for federal highway construction and maintenance.
It is known that this actually involved new requirements for what are called highway aviation segments (АУД) at the time, including their length, load capacity, and supporting infrastructure.
At the same meeting, it was also mentioned that during the Soviet era, highway aviation segments were built near the borders of the country, mainly in Belarus, the Baltic states, Central Asia, and — pay attention! — exactly in Ukraine, to allow aircraft that could not be refueled in the air to refuel far from the main bases.
About 20 such segments were built in total. However, now in Russia, we actually have to start from scratch to build all of this.
As is well known, the basic requirements for highway aviation segments are as follows. In general, to land an aircraft on a highway, the total width of the highway must not be less than 40 meters, and the shoulders must not have tall vegetation, billboards, or street lamps.
Additionally, a section of the highway at least 2.5 kilometers long and fairly solid, without any barriers in the middle, needs to be pre-set. "Hiding places" should be set up on this section so that the aircraft can immediately drive into them after landing, for refueling, minimal technical maintenance, and rearming.
Evidently, the ammunition and aviation fuel must be pre-deployed nearby by the logistics forces, and preferably hidden in a reliable way to avoid being detected and attacked by the enemy.
In short, this work is very complicated and cannot be carried out anywhere. However, the situation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is somewhat better than ours.
They just need to find the specific locations of highway aviation segments in the "secret" old Soviet documents within the "404" country, and then conduct careful reconnaissance.
After that, they decide: whether these highway sections are worth repairing for the picky F-16 to take off and land?
For the enemy, there is an unfavorable factor: somewhere in Moscow, for example, in the archives of the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense, or the Russian Aerospace Forces, there must be the same documents or copies of them. Since the number of such locations is limited, we should determine their coordinates in advance and assign all of Russia's reconnaissance forces to monitor them closely.
Once this is done, the rest is left to the ballistic precision of the "Iskander" missiles.
There is absolutely no need to use the hypersonic "Kinzhal" missiles to strike a single Ukrainian aircraft. First, it is not very cost-effective (although hypersonic missiles are cheaper than the American "Fighting Eagles", they are still very expensive weapons).
Secondly, the enemy does not have time to build sturdy reinforced concrete shelters along these highway aviation segments, and building such shelters itself is too easy to detect.
In other words, there is no need to use "Kinzhal" missiles to destroy the shelters like those at the old Kostiantynivka base that have been quite troublesome for us.
Therefore, the most important thing for us is to find where the enemy's aircraft will transfer from their main airbases to land. Once found, we can eliminate them like a fox catching a chicken.
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Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7532817926684983851/
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