Who Could Train Ukrainian Pilots To Fly Those F-16s They’re Not Supposed To Be Getting?

Last weekend, reports emerged affirming that a pair of Ukrainian pilots are in the United States for an evaluation of their ability to fly and fight using F-16s. While the President and Biden administration officials have repeatedly downplayed the idea of providing F-16s to Ukraine, the evaluation suggests it may not only be a possibility but a dry-run for who might train them and where.

The Ukrainian pilots are under assessment by the 162nd Wing of the Arizona Air National Guard, based next to Tucson International Airport in Tucson, Ariz. The Wing operates four squadrons with about 70-80 F-16s and is known for its extensive experience in training foreign military sales (FMS) customers to operate the F-16.

According to a report in Politico, the pilots will be in the U.S. for a couple weeks, during which they will be evaluated in F-16 simulators at the 162nd rather than flying its jets (however, the possibility that they may go aloft in the back seats of the 162nd’s two-place F-16Ds can’t be ruled out).

The evaluation may serve not only as a primer on how much training time Ukrainian Air Force pilots would need to become “good enough” to employ F-16s but possibly other western strike-fighters like the Saab Gripen. The possibility that Ukraine might receive non-U.S. fighters has been raised by several officials including Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown who mentioned the Gripen, France’s Rafale and the Eurofighter consortium’s Typhoon as possible candidates for Ukraine’s future fleet at the July 2022 Aspen Security Forum last summer.

Ukraine has specifically asked for F-16s and in a February letter to the President a bipartisan group of lawmakers urged the administration to provide them or other fighters to the Ukrainians. But skeptics like the under-secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, have asserted that F-16s are not as important to Ukraine’s battlefield success as ground-based air defense systems, drones, armor and mechanized systems.

The last includes the M1 Abrams tanks that President Biden recently promised to Ukraine. Their provision raises an interesting point. In the same late February meeting before the House Armed Services Committee in which Kahl claimed that other weapons are more important than the F-16, the Committee’s ranking Democrat Rep. Adam Smith, suggested the timeline for any possible F-16 transfer is impractical.

The best-case scenario he said is that “we could maybe get some operational F-16s into Ukraine within a year, maybe eight months if we really pushed it.” That logic doesn’t seem to matter for Abrams tanks which Army Secretary Christine Wormuth recently said may not be shipped to Ukraine by the end of the year or by the beginning of 2024.

While administration officials and some in Congress minimize the possibility of Ukraine-bound F-16s, other well-connected voices are striking a different note including Adm. (Ret) Mike Mullen, who served as Joint Chiefs Chairman under President Obama. Speaking on CNN on Monday, he said, “Many people are chasing the F-16 … and I think eventually we’ll get to F-16s.”

If the U.S. will, sooner or later, provide F-16s, how would Ukrainian pilots and ground crews train to operate them?

The Ukrainians’ visit to the 162nd Wing already shows us the most obvious route. As far back as the late 1980s, the Wing hosted and trained Dutch air force pilots to fly the F-16 and by the mid 1990s, it was the designated U.S. international training unit for the Viper. In the decades that have followed the 162nd has trained the majority of foreign F-16 aircrews from European to Asian operators.

The list includes Poland, which acquired F-16s in 2006. Polish Air Force aircrews and maintenance technicians began training with the 162nd starting in 2004. But the Wing does not simply host foreign students in Tucson. It also conducts training in individual client nations. The 162nd’s mobile training teams have conducted classes in numerous countries around the world including Poland.

The possibility of training Ukrainian pilots in neighboring Poland was raised early on in 2022, as was the possibility of training Ukrainian forces on other weapons systems. In all likelihood, Ukrainian forces members have already undergone training by American armed forces on a variety of undisclosed weapons systems in Poland though this has not been formally confirmed.

In late January, Ukraine claimed that the Polish government was receptive to supplying it with F-16s, acting as a conduit for airplanes from other sources or possibly older aircraft from its own fleet. As with a previous push to transfer Polish Mig-29s to Ukraine, NATO and the U.S. have poured cold water on the idea. That does not mean it can be ruled out, though the issue of training Ukrainian pilots remains.

There are other potential paths however. NATO-member Romania operates older F-16s and the U.S. Air Force is already operating F-16s in an air-policing role from Mihail Kogalniceanu military base in the eastern part of the country. Sending a 162nd mobile training team there to train Ukrainian pilots may also be logistically workable.

In addition, Romania agreed last year to purchase 32 used F-16s from Norway. In 2019, Lockheed MartinLMT
and Norway agreed to jointly form the first F-16 “Falcon Depot” center in the country to support the global F-16 fleet. F-16s bound for Romania from the depot center in Kjeller, Norway, could be diverted to USAF trainers there and potentially sent on to Ukraine with trained-up Ukrainian pilots.

One potentially overlooked (or at least not publicly discussed) option for training Ukrainian pilots that would at least provide (tenuous) semantic distance for U.S. officialdom would be to have them trained by one or more of the many private “Red Air” adversary companies now in business.

China has already set an uncomfortable precedent for this. Late last year, reports of Chinese recruitment of Western pilots to train with the PLA Air Force made headlines. The country basically shrugged off criticism of its use of for-hire private adversary pilots to gain insight into Western fighters, tactics and combined arms doctrine. Ukraine could arguably take the same route if necessary, suggesting Russia to complain to its Chinese friends.

Should the Ukrainians do so, they’d have a convenient option in contract adversary services company, Top Aces. Based in Mesa, Ariz., a little over 115 miles from the 162nd FW, Top Aces now operates a fleet of 29 ex-Israeli F-16A/Bs equipped with the company’s Advanced Aggressor Mission System which includes an AESA radar, Helmet-Mounted Cueing and Infrared Search and Track systems, advanced electronic attack pods and more.

While Ukraine would value F-16s as air defense assets, capable of shooting down Russian aircraft, drones and missiles, they’re really after the Vipers’ strike capability and the close air support they could offer Ukrainian ground forces. Top Aces does not typically train “Blue Air” strike students but its veteran F-16 pilots (some who come from the 162nd) are intimately familiar with F-16 air-to-surface systems/weapons.

They could thus stretch to train Ukrainian aircrews both in F-16 flight operations and weapons employment with some discreet help from the Pentagon. Like the Arizona Air Guard’s F-16 Wing, they could also theoretically go on the road, training Ukrainians in Europe in the places where the jets might be handed over to them.

A private adversary company would likely need clearance from DoD and the U.S. State Department to provide Ukraine with training services but that could be obtained if the political will was there. Other Red Air providers who employ ex-USAF F-16 pilots could work in the same way.

In 2021, Florida-based Draken International announced it had acquired a dozen former Netherlands Air Force F-16s and added another dozen ex-Norwegian Air Force Vipers late the same year. The Dutch sale was put on “stand-by” last July but the Norway purchase remains on-track. If Draken is far enough along with its receipt and refurbishment of Norwegian F-16s, they too could offer a training option.

Interestingly, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wopke Hoekstra, indicated in January that the Netherlands was looking into the possibility of supplying Ukraine with some of the 61 F-16s it’s retiring in favor the F-35. There’s been little further news but the Vipers are available as, potentially, are others.

Looked at through the Ukraine-lens, the unannounced visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, to Iraq on Tuesday called attention not only to continued American support for Iraq in the face of recent Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs but also to the F-16s now lying under-used by the Iraqi Air Force (IAF).

In 2021, the IAF stood-down its fleet of 36 Block 52 F-16s after U.S. (Lockheed Martin) maintenance/support personnel left Iraq’s Balad Air Base following threats and attacks by Iran-backed militias. With the IAF unable to provide organic maintenance for the jets, it’s not clear how much they’ve flown since then. If they’re incapable of sortieing, they potentially represent a fallow pool of advanced F-16s that could, with U.S. assurances and offsets to Iraq, be available to Ukraine.

While the likelihood of an F-16 transfer from the Middle Eastern country may be low, it’s a reminder of the increasing population of “surplus” F-16s in the global supply chain. This pairs with a bountiful supply of current and former F-16 pilots with western training resident in European and Asian air forces.

Private adversary air services companies from Textron’sTXT
Airborne Tactical Advantage (ATAC) Inc. to Florida-based Tactical Air Support number former F-16 pilots among their employees. The USAF also has another F-16 schoolhouse for FMS customers (including Singapore) at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The combination of Ukraine’s desperate strategic situation with readily available F-16 sources as well several timely military and private training options points to a real possibility that Ukraine will get the F-16s it’s not supposed to be getting. As the clock ticks, the pressure to provide both may be irresistible.