Even 20 to 30 F-16 aircraft would give Ukraine air superiority - military analyst Hetman

He shared his opinions with Espreso TV.

"The F-16 is much better than modern Russian aircraft. However, Russians are developing comparative tables on a possible battle between the MiG-29 and the F-16 to show that these are aircraft of approximately the same class. But they are not. There is a big difference between all Russian aircraft and the F-16, which is that the F-16 is less visible to enemy radar and airborne radars because it has an effective reflective surface of only 1 m2, while the MiG-29 has 29 m2. That is, the F-16 is less visible. It also has an on-board radar that can see a hundred kilometers further than the enemy. And the missiles used by the F-16 are more long-range, flying 50 to 70 km further than the missiles of the MiG-29," the military analyst commented.

Oleksiy Hetman noted that a possible air battle between the MiG-29 and the F-16 would simply not have started because the F-16 would have detected the enemy aircraft earlier and destroyed it.

"Even 20 to 30, let alone 100, F-16s would have given us complete air superiority. And if we had 500 or 1000 MiG-29s, we would still achieve, at best, approximate parity with the enemy's aircraft, but not superiority. First of all, the F-16 is a multifunctional aircraft that can be used as a fighter jet, an attack aircraft, and a light bomber, and it can also be considered as part of air defense. Our airfields are ready for F-16s, our ground staff is also generally ready, the pilots see no difficulties in training, so there are no technical obstacles to using these aircraft, rather there is a political obstacle," Hetman said.

• On March 5, NBC reported that 2 Ukrainian pilots arrived in the US to train on F-16 fighter jet simulators.

• On March 21, Brigadier General Serhiy Holubtsov of the Ukrainian Air Force said that Ukrainian pilots could learn to operate Western fighters in less than 6 months.