After artillery and tanks, western planes for Ukraine? If Washington refuses for the time being to send American fighters to kyiv, some European countries no longer rule out taking the plunge to strengthen Ukrainian air capabilities against the Russian aggressor.
US President Joe Biden on Monday categorically refused the idea of sending to Ukraine US F-16 fighter jets manufactured by Lockheed Martin, capable of long-range strikes that could raise tensions with Moscow.
Will his position change? The red lines set by the allies in terms of arms supplied to Ukraine, for fear of escalation, jumped one after the other over the course of the conflict: reluctant at first, Washington ended up promising kyiv its system Patriot air defense systems, and more recently heavy tanks, as have several European countries. Without arousing significant military outbidding on the part of Moscow.
Similarly, delivering fighter jets would not contribute to a possible escalation, said Olivier Schmitt, professor of political science at the Center for War Studies (SDU) in Denmark.
“Delivering heavy tanks to Ukraine is not in itself changing the strategic dynamics of the conflict: it is continuing to give it the means to resist Russian aggression”, he writes in the review The Great Continent.
Similarly, in his view, “the delivery of F-16 type combat aircraft, which would allow kyiv to conduct an even more efficient air-land campaign, would not constitute a symbolic break characterizing an escalation either, since this type of combat air-land is typical of modern military operations”.
“Very versatile”
The supply of combat aircraft to Ukraine thus promises to continue to be debated. Like Washington, Berlin has ruled out delivering devices to Ukraine. On Tuesday, Warsaw assured for its part that it would not conduct “any official discussion” on the transfer of some of its F-16s to Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron assures him that “nothing is excluded” on this type of transfer, but that the Ukrainians “are not making this request today” in Paris.
Others, on the other hand, say they are ready to do so, including Slovakia, which has Soviet Mig-29s, and the Netherlands, which has begun replacing its fleet of F-16s with F-35s, the plane fighter demanded by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Just like the German Leopard heavy tank, “the F-16 is one of the most produced fighters in the world, so there are many of them, many European countries have them”, underlines Olivier Fourt, journalist specializing in military aeronautics. “He’s an excellent hunter, very versatile. On paper, it carries almost the entire American and NATO panoply of air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons.
However, “in principle, in the United States, the rules for re-export are very strict,” he warns.
Vulnerabilities
In the opinion of experts, Western fighter jets would make it possible to strike Russian troops in depth and deter Russian bombers from pounding urban centers and energy infrastructures. But they alone would not be the miracle solution on the military level, and would come with their share of constraints and vulnerabilities.
“Western fighter jets would undoubtedly increase the survivability and air-to-air performance of Ukrainian forces against the Russians. However, they would still be exposed to Russian anti-aircraft defenses, which would limit their options for ground attacks, ”argues Justin Bronk, military expert at the British research center RUSI.
“In addition, they should be dispersed and their logistical footprint limited to avoid attracting Russian missile strikes on air bases,” he said.
Finally, there is the question of feasibility, explains retired General Jean-Paul Palomeros, former Allied Commander Transformation within NATO, to AFP. “We would have to find Ukrainian pilots to train. But how many are operational today? asks the former high-ranking officer, as the Ukrainian army has lost around fifty Soviet fighter planes in one year.
“It takes at least three months to train an already qualified pilot on a modern combat aircraft. An air force is not built overnight,” he points out, judging that “long-range missiles would be a critical capability to easily provide” to the Ukrainians to hit the Russians in depth.