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In the long term, Ukrainians have a defensive need for fighter jets. One of the major uses of a fighter jet is "interception". That is, to fly out and patrol t
by dragontamer 4y ago
In the long term, Ukrainians have a defensive need for fighter jets.
One of the major uses of a fighter jet is "interception". That is, to fly out and patrol the skys while you think the enemy might launch an attack on your cities. When an enemy attacker (formerly an enemy bomber, but today it could be a Missile or rocket) starts to attack your city, your fighter-jets fly out and try to shoot it down.
Its not always successful, but its better to leave the chance of successful interceptions open, rather than have nothing else. Of course, other defense measures (ie: missile defenses, like Patriot missiles) are useful. But Patriot missile batteries cannot fly or move. Once you place a Patriot Missile in one area, you cannot move it elsewhere (ex: If you expect the enemy to "focus fire" and try to overwhelm one area of your defenses, you can't move your Patriot missiles to guard that one area).
In contrast, you _can_ fly more airplanes from around the country to defend the area of focus fire. The base level of ground defenses are there to handle the average cases... but a proper "air force" is needed to handle exceptional cases.
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But all due when needed. I think its obvious that the first step is to build the cheaper ground defenses around Ukraine (ex: the current Patriot missile defenses going on right now). In the long term, the F16s will probably be needed.
- fwungy 4y agoPlanes are too valuable to risk. Modern interception occurs at 100+ miles, well before visual contact. Enemy air defenses are mapped and no one will fly a plane in range of them. Planes are used to fling things at the enemy from safe positions. Air defenses are too cheap and good to risk valuable planes on. What Ukraine really needs is a massive donation of air defenses so Russia doesn't have free reign over most of Ukrainian airspace. Problem is those air defense systems don't presently exist in anyone's inventory to make a substantial contribution to Ukraine.
- greedo 4y agoRussia doesn't have free reign over Ukraine. They are flying very limited mission sets due to the threat from Ukrainian SAMs. Ukraine already has a decent AD setup with SA2/S300/NASAMs etc, and then an excellent inventory of MANPADs that forces the VKS to use their aircraft as glorified flying Katyusha launchers.
- The_Colonel 4y agoYes, but the Ukrainian air defense gets attrited and missiles get used up. There's no production of missiles for these systems and the western made systems like NASAMS, IRIS, Patriot come too slowly and in small numbers. Air defense is certainly a big worry in the medium term.
- greedo 4y agoNASAM uses AIM-20 (Amraam) missiles, and there are plenty of these in stock worldwide. IRIS-T and Patriot are trickling in, but the big threat currently is the lame Iranian Shaheed drones. Those are better handled by NASAM and even gun based AA then with multi-million dollar Patriot missiles.
- dragontamer 4y agoI have a feeling that the 30mm Bushmaster chaingun with air-burst rounds is being severely underutilized. Not only is it clearly an effective anti-drone weapon, I have to imagine that its an effective anti-trench weapon as well. Small enough to transport in an F150 standard pickup truck, it seems like a gun that will solve a lot of these problems in Ukraine. I know that gun exists because I like browsing weapon systems on Youtube :-). I hope we're giving it to Ukraine.
- greedo 4y agoTargeting is the main issue. At least on the Bradley there's no A2A mode as far as I know. Rheinmetall has some pretty nice kit in the Skyranger/Skyshield systems, but since they're Swiss, they're going to have trouble selling them.
- The_Colonel 4y agoUkraine currently has 2 NASAMS batteries, 1 IRIS-T and no Patriots yet. Even the promised numbers are not enough to cover the Ukrainian territory. I was talking about Soviet made AA missiles for e.g. S-300 and Buks which still represent most of Ukrainian long/medium range AA. > but the big threat currently is the lame Iranian Shaheed drones. The actual big threat is that Ukrainian long/medium range AA gets attrited too much and Russia will be able to use their bombers.