Ukraine Awaits Delivery Of First F-16 Jets In Coming Days As Kyiv Seeks To Counter Russian Air Superiority
Ukraine Awaits Delivery Of First F-16 Jets In Coming Days As Kyiv Seeks To Counter Russian Air Superiority
Ukraine will likely receive it first shipment of advanced F-16s in the next few days, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call as Kyiv seeks to disrupt Russia’s air superiority over Ukrainian skies.
KYIV -- Ukraine will likely receive it first shipment of advanced F-16s in the next few days, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call as Kyiv seeks to disrupt Russia’s air superiority over Ukrainian skies amid continued battles on December 23 in the east and south of the country.
"Today, I informed President Zelenskiy of our government's decision to prepare an initial 18 F-16 fighter aircraft for delivery to Ukraine," Rutte said late on December 22 in a post on social media platform X.
The reason Rutte is pushing this through ASAP is because Wilders 'won' the last election, and might become the next PM. He's widely seen as pro-Putin.
Scuse my ignorance, but why put 'won' in quotes? Did he not actually win?
He’s the head of the biggest party. He didn’t personally win since NL doesn’t vote for heads of state on a personal basis.
What SMillerNL said. Also: he didn't gain an absolute majority, and as the Netherlands doesn't use a first past the post system like the US or UK, he'll need to form a coalition government to be able to rule the country.
Rutte wants to become the next head of NATO which is why he randomly ditched his spot as Dutch PM and let the entire cabinet fall.
He's just trying to give the military industrial complex an insane amount of taxpayer money and make Europe more like America without Healthcare.
Rutte is a twat.
The F35 was ordered a decade ago. The decision to replace the ageing F16 was basically already made twenty years ago, IRC one of the Balkenende governments:
The Netherlands is part of the nuclear sharing agreement with the US. The F16 is nuclear capable but over 30 years old. The F35 is also nuclear capable and replaced it. The Dutch government would have had to withdraw from nuclear sharing and seriously damaged its relationship with the US.
and make Europe more like America without Healthcare.
The US spends almost twice as much on healthcare as the Netherlands. Saying that the Netherlands or the US must choose between healthcare and defense, is a false dichotomy. One often pushed by Russian and Chinese propagandists.
Last time I checked, the Netherlands spends less than 1.5% of GDP on defense. That's still less than the 2% agreed upon by Balkenende in 2014.
You invest in defense, or you get pushed around by countries like China or Russia. That means more expensive fuel, imports, less ability to export, etc. It means less jobs and everyone's poorer. If they think you're weak, they're also more likely to make stupid mistakes, like blow up another civilian airliner or use a toxic nerve agent that could have killed thousands near a UK military base in a show of force. If you're strong, they're more careful, and we can all live in peace for a while longer.
If Trump gets re-elected, which isn't unlikely, he will continue to undermine NATO. If Ukraine falls, Putin will become emboldened. Russia has lost a lot of troops in Ukraine, but they have increased conscription. According to the experts, they've moved their economy to a war footing. If they win in Ukraine, they will be stronger, more experienced, and more dangerous than they've been in decades. When that happens, that 1.5% will likely have to be double or even tripled to ensure things stay stable and mistakes aren't made.
Honestly, this reminds me a lot of climate change. People burying their heads in the sand, rather than admit the reality. Even after countless warnings and half a million casulties in a European war, people are still trying to pretend nothing's changed.
Sounds like a bad idea to announce when the hardware will be moving. We’ve seen past weapons transfers announced to be happening “soon” though they’ve already occurred. They may well already be in Ukraine.
Could people not hype the F-16 deliveries? The media hyping NATO wunderwaffes and Ukrainian counteroffensive, which failed to deliver expected outcomes, just played into Russian propaganda. Kremlin foresaw the axis of advance to be southern Ukraine because the Western freaking hype that that is where the likely axis for UAF. It lost the element of surprise! Compare this to 2022's Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensive operation. Before, the media had been saying the war could become a long war, until they changed their script when Ukraine thunder run Kharkiv oblast and kicked out the Russians. Everyone then said Putin will be ousted by the end of 2022! That did not happen although Putin's rule became delicately precarious.
Ukraine does better when their operational security is kept intact and when no one expects them to win. Okay there was the leak of counteroffensive plan but Western media hyping things up doesn't help! Just stop with sensationalism!
I wouldn't drive hype either but those F-16s are some serious capability. Not really so much because they would be that much better airframes as what Ukrainians are already flying but because they can carry a metric fuckton of different NATO armaments that are currently sitting in warehouses that can't be shipped to Ukraine because Ukraine wouldn't be able to throw them at Russia, or only with questionable effectiveness -- say, those air-to-air IRIS-T that Germany is sending over: They integrate into IRIS-T air defence but launched from the ground they're very short-range1. Having F16 means that Ukrainians can also strap them to planes, with system integration close to that of an Eurofighter.
1 they don't care about launch orientation at all, that's their point you can launch them in the opposite direction upside down while spinning heavily and they'll still find their target. But the air-to-air variants just carry less fuel
According to MBFC, RFERL frequently publishes pro-US government propaganda. Why is this source allowed?
Do you have any actual issues with the article or do you just want to sow doubt and discord?
Is Reuters fine as a source? How about the Dutch PM himself?
Even worse, it's owned by the us government
Does anyone know what kind of timeline there might be before the pilots are trained to fly them? Is it something that might have an impact within days/weeks or is it going to be months before they can be used effectively?
I'm pretty sure ukrainian pilots have already been trained. So they should be ready to use as soon as they're delivered.
They've been training since at least August from what I've read. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/20/world/ukrainian-fighters-training-f-16-intl-hnk/index.html
Fuck YES