re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

It’s one thing to give Ukraine artillery, tanks and weapons from all sorts of countries but it just can’t work like that with aircraft. The training that both the pilot and the maintenance crews go through to learn their aircraft inside and out. If you had 3 fighters you’d have to have guy getting trained in the U.S., France and either the UK or Sweden. That’s just a bridge too far. The F-16 is the only true option. They can come from European stocks like the Dutch or from ours that our transitioning to F-35s. Like you said the real solution is to acquire all the Mig-29s and Su-27s that you can source. The Slovakian Mig-29s still haven’t been sent I believe I read somewhere and that’s a squadron worth of aircraft and the Slovak Migs have been upgraded with all glass cockpits and a new radar. Poland has 23 Mig-29s still. That could be solved just by going to the boneyard and pulling out a few f-16s for Poland or giving them aircraft from units that are transitioning to new aircraft. They don’t have time to learn on western systems anymore. They will have to win or lose this war flying the aircraft they already know back and forth.