Pentagon: it will take many years and money to strengthen the Ukrainian Air Force to the level of Russia

It will take years and billions of dollars for the Ukrainian army to achieve parity with Russia in the air. This was stated by the head of the chiefs of staff of the US Army, General Mark Milley.

“If we try to bring it to parity with Russia, one to one, two to one, we are talking about a large number of aircraft, years of pilot training, years of maintenance, to achieve the required level of financial support,” said the general (quote according to RIA Novosti). According to Milley, Russia has “hundreds of fourth and fifth generation fighters,” while the supply of, for example, 10 American F-16 fighters is $ 2 billion.

July 16 National Security Adviser to the US President Jake Sullivan declaredthat the training program for Ukrainian pilots in the EU countries to fly F-16 fighters could begin in two weeks. The decision to supply American-made aircraft was made at the G7 summit (G7 – includes the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan) in May.

At the same time, earlier the director of operations of the joint headquarters of the Pentagon, Douglas Sims named the conditions for deploying the F-16 are still “non-ideal”. Then he also noted that this is due, in particular, to the vast capabilities in the field of air defense that the Russian army has.

The Russian authorities noted that the supply of fighter jets to Kyiv would not change the situation on the line of contact, but Russia would give a military-technical response if an F-16 appeared in the sky of Ukraine. June 16 at the plenary session SPIEF Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that the fighters that came to Ukraine would burn in the same way as Leopard tanks. According to him, the Russian army successfully destroys this equipment when repelling attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.