Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Dan 'Two Dogs' Hampton
disagrees completely!
The video is about 4:23 long.
There's also this article, but it doesn't contain all the info that's in the Y-tube video.
Colonel Dan Hampton said he backs the idea of giving Ukraine Western jets, particularly the F-16.
www.forces.net
Identifying him as an "ace" is a misnomer. In the US and Britain an "ace" is someone who shoots down 5 enemy aircraft in air to air combat. The last time a western pilot did this was in 1972. US pilot Steve Ritchie flying an F-4 Phantom II in Vietnam.
There were stories about the Ghost of Kyiv who who down 40 Russians in this war, but that appears to be a myth.
As for the video, he said F-16s were a long term solution for Ukraine and that Ukraine should identify promising pilots going through basic training and send them to F-16 school. That's a timeline of at least a year. Transitioning from one western jet to another takes at least 4 months.
The point I made wasn't that the Ukrainians couldn't fly F-16s, but that they couldn't fly enough of them to do all the missions necessary to prevent losing a lot of planes and pilots. Ukraine might be able to scrape together 100 combat pilots, that's both fighter and ground attack specialists. It would involve bringing any healthy retired pilots back to active service.
The Ukrainian air force was much smaller than the Russian air force at the beginning of this war and they have suffered attrition of the combat aircraft they did have. they started the war with 26 Su-27, 28 Su-24 and Su-25 (ground attack), and around 40 MiG-29s. They have gotten more MiGs since the start of the war, but they probably have less than 40 operational now.
They can get western pilots to volunteer, but while there are a lot of enthusiastic volunteers on social media, the number of retired pilots who are still in good enough health to fly a plane capable of pulling 9 gs is limited. Even with a g-suit and in top health the g forces that a fighter like the F-16 can pull in a tight turn is hard on young bodies. Ironically on average the female body is more capable of handling the g stresses than the male body. Something they discovered when they started certifying women for combat roles.
The original AVG (American Volunteer Group) of Flying Tigers fame was three squadrons based in then Burma. They were able to recruit 82 pilots and the US allowed actively serving pilots in the various branches of the military to volunteer because the US knew it needed experienced pilots for the coming war. Nobody in active service is going to be released to fight in Ukraine.
The larger the air contingent the Ukrainians have, the more difficult it's going to be to protect them on the ground. That involves dedicating air defense assets to the bases where the F-16s are flying from. The air defense will have to be capable of taking out drones as well as more conventional weapons.
To operate successfully against the Russians, the Ukrainians need to simultaneously operate Wild Weasels (SEAD) to neutralize Russian air defense, CAP (combat air patrol) fighters to neutralize Russian aircraft, and ground attack aircraft.
The Russians have been flying CAP with MiG-31s and Su-35s equipped with massive air-to air missiles that have ranges much longer than anything the west has. The only defense the Ukrainians have with dealing with those is to try and evade the missiles. And to evade, them, they need to detect them first, which is already a difficult problem.
Russia’s MiG-31 Foxhounds Proving To Be A Threat To Ukrainian Aircraft
The Ukrainians will never get air superiority in this war. It just is not possible. They have thus far denied the Russians air superiority and their small air force has pulled off small penny packet attacks that in some cases have yielded good results. Their helicopter raids on places like Belgorod have given the Russians fits and both did real damage and forced the Russians to tie down air defense assets in Russia.
Western aircraft will give Ukraine more capability in the guerilla air war, but they are not going to be able to wipe Russian aircraft and Russian air defense off the map.
NATO could do it. The USAF alone has around 1500 fixed wing combat aircraft. That's not counting the Navy and the Marines who bring another 800 or so combat aircraft to the fight. All of NATO has 3398 fighters, 1439 combat helicopters, and 1108 ground attack aircraft. NATO's air power is built to take on the known Russian air and anti-air combat power and neutralize it.
NATO aircraft strength by type 2023 | Statista
Ukraine can win this war. Russia was weak on the ground to start the war, and they are weaker now. Ukraine's army started off better trained and has just gotten stronger. Russia's air power has proven to be a disappointment, like the rest of their military. They can't conduct large scale air ops because they never trained for them. Instead they are conducting small raids with one or two aircraft and almost never crossing into Ukrainian territory.
Russia's air failure is on them. Their poor training has resulted in their air arm only being a minor player. Ukrainian anti-air assets have kept the Russian air force at bay too, but the Russians should have had their forces trained to neutralize enemy anti-air assets early like NATO does.
www.theguardian.com
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/EH2MVH5GENLUZPECBZJFJIP4TQ.jpg)
