I think you will find the hooks on the rear of non-carrier aeroplanes (Eg F16, F15, Jaguar, Typhoon etc) are for emergency use with RAG (Runway Arrestor Gear) systems. Eg this 48TFW F15 :
skydriller wrote:
I think you will find the hooks on the rear of non-carrier aeroplanes (Eg F16, F15, Jaguar, Typhoon etc) are for emergency use with RAG (Runway Arrestor Gear) systems
Yes, I know. I used to work on a fighter squadron at Bodø. They are used for “emergency landings” and to stop aircraft if the take off is aborted. I have never been on a carrier, but by the looks of it the wires there are a notch or two tighter. They probably have a more substantial hook as well.
But anyway. These fighters are indeed built for hard and rough use. I can’t imagine the flatness of Ukraine being a worse place than rocky and icy Norway regarding landing gear for F-16s 
Funny thing. In all their ingenuity the past 10-20 years, the politicians have reduced the air force bases to one single base, well 1 and 1/2, + some token present (an office) at some other fields. Then came Putin, and now it’s all going to be dispersed, not with more bases, but something similar to the Swedish and Finnish structure (or what that structure used to be during the cold war), but more mobile. I can’t imagine any other way than to use the short field network that Widerøe is using, as straight patches of road longer than 2-300m is hard to find here This means down to 800m runways. It will be interesting to see how all that ends up. My guess is the war is long finished before they actually figure out what to do.
I think this has very little to do with the capability of aircaft. The real reason is that deploying a squadron of fighter aircraft is far, far beyond supplying the aircraft and spare parts.To keep a flighter squadron in the air, you also need maintenance personnell and pilots, and learning how to maintain and operate these thing takes YEARS. At the very least, this will be conversion training from other aircraft – which for engineers is probably plausible, military aircraft are not THAT different, but much harder for pilots. When a fighter pilot comes out of “basic training” after around four years, they then spend another year to get to operational readiness in a particular type.
This means that along with the aircraft, manpower needs to be supplied. And since so far direct involvement of NATO military in the conflict is off limits, you would have to take Ukrainian personnell, take them abroad to train them for months if not a year (which is unlikely to be unnoticed) before deploying them back to Ukraine.
I don’t know if Ukraine has sufficient combat pilots sitting around – they had around 100 combat aicraft before the conflict started, so around 100 pilots. Assuming they still are alive, and half of the fleet was destroyed, there will be 50 available for re-training. And maybe a couloe dozen which were going through the training ranks that might be close enough.
So in a nutshell – the aircraft are currently not provided because NATO countries do not want to deploy personnell. If they will be provided in the future, it will be after extensive training.
It would be interesting to know whether such training has already started. I read that it may be easier to train new pilots than to convert pilots trained on Soviet aircraft to Western models, which sounds plausible.
Cobalt wrote:
If they will be provided in the future, it will be after extensive training.
Yes, but the pilots in Ukraine now aren’t exactly fresh from the school today. There are a whole lot more pilots than planes. They will need planes rather soon IMO. How they manage to maintain those Migs is remarkable. There are several ways this can be done. The “front line” is in Ukraine, and when needed planes are simply shipped to Poland for instance for heavy maintenance. Line personnel doesn’t take years to train. A seasoned aircraft mechanic (used to Migs) is up and running in a couple of weeks. That’s how the system works. It’s all modular. If the engine is broken, it is removed and replaced with a working one. It takes a couple of hours. The broken engine is sent to another facility for repair.
War is different than peace. Those NASAMS batteries takes at least a year of training to operate independently (with the appropriate background knowledge). Ukrainians did it in a month or two? Rather amazing. I would believe the same for pilots.
Cobalt wrote:
I don’t know if Ukraine has sufficient combat pilots sitting around – they had around 100 combat aicraft before the conflict started, so around 100 pilots. Assuming they still are alive, and half of the fleet was destroyed, there will be 50 available for re-training. And maybe a couloe dozen which were going through the training ranks that might be close enough.
Military pilots retire early. There should be plenty of highly experienced 40-50-year-olds who would need much less time to master a new type than fresh academy graduates. In fact, some Ukrainian retirees promptly came back to active duty as soon as the war started. Same with mechanics, who don’t even need to be in perfect health to keep working.
LeSving wrote:
There are a whole lot more pilots than planes
Not normally – combat aircraft squadrons have pilot-to-aircraft ratios of roughly 1:1, however…. I have no doubts engineers can adapt rather quickly. Even capable mechanics from other fields can do a lot under proper supervision. The only thing that would take years of training is the paperwork, which In wartime surely is optional.
Ultranomad wrote:
Military pilots retire early. There should be plenty of highly experienced 40-50-year-olds who would need much less time to master a new type than fresh academy graduates
I did not consider that – that might make quite a difference.
Apparently Russia has now resorted to firing old stocks of cruise missiles originally designed to deliver nuclear warheads but obviously stripped of them and replaced by “ballast” (Source: UK MoD via The Guardian ).
So basically these are inert missiles which only do damage by the force of impact and otherwise serve as distraction for Ukrainian air defense. Quite pathetic.
I am sure Ukrainian pilots are more than able to fly an F16.
The problem is that an F16 is not stealthy or anything like that, so even an old S300 missile would get it almost every time if in range etc. In its combat lifetime it has been used mostly in areas where total air supremacy was already achieved. Against Russia you would need to do all the other stuff first.
What Ukraine would get with an F16 would be “fire and forget” air to air missiles, which Russia has already. I think they can’t be integrated easily with the Russian aircraft which Ukraine has. The anti radiation missiles can be thus integrated and already have been.
What Ukraine needs a lot more of is the existing air defence missiles. And a lot of replacement transformers and other substation parts. And big (megawatt sized) generators. The stuff I am reading from Ukraine says that there is a real threat that Russia could send the country into the Middle Ages if they maintain the missile hits on the electricity network. They can manufacture basic missiles from the money they get from gas and oil sales; you don’t need hi tech ITAR parts to make a missile which flies to a GPS location, with a basic inertial backup. And Russia would have been stockpiling chips, plus they can buy chinese chips without problems right now. They can get IR sensors from china right now. They are managing to send off ~100 missiles every 1-2 weeks and they can probably do that for ever. But Ukraine has no way to prevent them being launched. Ukraine will smash Russia on the battlefield eventually but what will happen to the population in the winter?
This article is really interesting and of a quality rarely seen in national media in Europe.
To shell Russian positions at Snake Island, for instance, the Ukrainians put Caesars, with a 40-kilometer range, on barges and towed them out 10 kilometers to hit the island, which was 50 kilometers away, astonishing the French. Ukraine also sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with its own adapted missiles, and has built drones that can attack ships at sea.
Germany published a list of kit supplied to Ukraine – here. This is impressive.
Peter wrote:
They are managing to send off ~100 missiles every 1-2 weeks and they can probably do that for ever
Yes, it really is hard to imagine this will stop in reasonable time without Ukraine attacking installations in Russia. Attacking Russia is mostly a psychological barrier. Russia has already attacked Ukraine, but it’s still a can of worms that nobody want to open just like that. Another option is that that something happens inside Russia. The chances that Russia will defeat Ukraine is long gone by now, and surely the Russian politicians and military must see this as well. Putin may not be criticized by his own people for the overall situation, but rather that he doesn’t deliver. If he is seen as toothless and weak, that’s the end of him.
