>>1837978Older Ukrainian Su-27 pilots have flown F-16s, but most of the were shot down earlier in the war, so what Ukraine is left with is the less experienced pilots who will not be able to become more than mediocre on these new aircraft. But frankly even if they had 5 years of training, it wouldn't matter. I posted this in
>>>/AKM/ a while back, but a few years back a very experienced Ukrainian Su-27 pilot (who later died in combat during the SMO), flew an F-16 and considered its capabilities largely inferior to the Soviet-era Su-27 he was already flying, with only the electronics being notably better. Given the F-16 model was a modern one, and his Su-27 was a 1990s model, that's a given. The point is, the F-16 is not going to solve issues, hell planes like the A-10, or Su-25 and Su-24 are more needed, since air-ground is more prevalent than air-air. The F-16 requires tons of maintenance, is by no means a close range strike-aircraft and it's single engine has always been the subject of criticism, as many suffered crashes from damage that would be negated simply by having a second engine like the F-18.
The ONLY advantage the F-16 has is that NATO supplied ground attack missiles won't need to be modified to interface with the F-16s systems, compared to the Soviet aircraft in Ukrainian use, but that's negligible.
TL;DR: F-16s offer little to no advantage over something like the Su-27 or Su-24 and are going to be SAM fodder.
>>1837974We've got a few weeks, the Leo-2 got fixed up enough for display in a week, and I reckon the same for the Abrams.