2024-07-11 F-16s: Game Changer

F-16s are a game changer. The speed of the change relates to scale, so here I don't mean the phrase as in a sudden or overnight shift. I mean it's the beginning of the end for Russia.

1) Fighting NATO Style

The shell game is Russian style. It’s Russia’s war that Ukraine is starting to win Russia’s way. It was the way Ukraine started fighting, the way it knew and more lately it is because the West had a shortage in supply, and that includes NATO is air power.

The shell shortage existed because NATO doesn’t fight that way. It was because Europe and US built for air power. F16s are a game changer because they are the last Ukrainian piece in the mix to make Ukraine a Western military.

Europe has learned from Ukraine that if we lose air power we need to fall back on artillery to save the day and artillery sweat saves infantry blood. Europe will scale up shell production for its own sake and so the shell supply won't stop. In fact it will eventually outstrip Russia.

However, Ukraine now gets air power. F16s don't have the best radar but that doesn’t matter any more. It’s kind of old technology to have it in the fighter. Russian’s pointing to their planes as more powerful are like PC users measuring chips on MHz and not nm. What makes F16s beasts of the air is the integration platform. All they need is an enemy data feed from say, one of two super advanced Swedish radar planes that's going to be always in the air and the F16s can hide low and target the high Russian planes. These Russian planes have very powerful radar and what that now means to the West is that they are very noisy and easy to spot.

NATO style means Ukraine now has access to radar killing missiles. Jammers work by flooding the EW spectrum so you can't push a pattern through… a signal. That makes them the loudest things out there. Ukraine now has access to jammer killers. With these two, Ukraine gets air superiority.

2) End of Jamming

F16s can program the AGM-88 HARM missile on the fly, literally. The Soviet planes can fire them but they have to programmed with a known target before take-off. The F16s can go hunting until every Russian thing with radar or jammers is destroyed or off for fear of destruction.

This unlocks the GPS guided shells and bombs and drones open up even more. Ukraine’s sight will increase significantly while at the same time Russia will go blind.

Russia literally won't known what hit it.

3) Air Superiority

With air superiority, Ukraine can fly anything. All the old planes can fly again so F16s bring back the whole airforce.

4) Focus Shift

At present there is minimal air and Ukraine ground units are spending fire on defending airspace, killing AAA. Ground forces are choosing to not hit ground forces to clear the air to allow F-16s to move in. Once they are in they can maintain the space, and generate a swing in deployed power. The ground forces can once again hit ground forces and air can also hit ground forces.

Air brings a double punch.

5) Unbottled Offence

If air cover was imminent, you would wait for it if you could. You would hold a defensive posture even if there was something to be gained in offence, because you will gain more and lose less with air cover.

When the waiting is over the offence starts.