US senator urges NATO pilots to fight for Ukraine
US Senator Lindsey Graham has called on Western pilots to come and “fight for freedom” in Ukraine until Kiev can train its own airmen. While American-made F-16 fighters have begun to arrive in Ukraine, there are currently not enough pilots to fly them.
“If you’re a retired F-16 pilot and you’re looking to fight for freedom, they will hire you here,” Graham said at a press conference in Kiev on Monday. “They’re going to look throughout NATO nations for willing fighter pilots who retired to come help them, until they can get their pilots trained.”
“We’re going to get these jets into the theater sooner rather than later,” the Republican lawmaker added.
A host of Western nations, including Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, have pledged to provide Ukraine with more than 80 F-16 fighters. In service since 1978, the F-16 is currently flown by more than two dozen countries, although many are retiring these aging airframes in favor of the more modern F-35.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky confirmed earlier this month that the first batch of F-16s had arrived in the country, and were already being flown by Ukrainian pilots. Zelensky did not say how many jets had arrived, and the American-built fighters have yet to be spotted in combat.
Zelensky admitted that Ukraine does not have enough pilots to fly all of the jets pledged by the West, but said that “many guys are now training.” These pilots are currently being trained in the US and Denmark, while it is unclear whether a new training hub in Romania has begun accepting cadets. In June, a Pentagon official told Politico that a total of 20 Ukrainian F-16 pilots are expected to graduate by the end of this year, half of the 40 needed to make up a squadron.
Whether flown by Ukrainians or Westerners, F-16s require exceptionally clean and smooth runways to operate. With Ukraine’s airfields regularly damaged by Russian missile strikes, some Ukrainian officials have suggested stationing these high-maintenance fighters at airbases in neighboring NATO countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any base hosting Ukrainian F-16s would become a legitimate target for the Russian military, while the Kremlin has declared that no amount of Western hardware will win the conflict for Ukraine.
“These planes will appear, their number will gradually decrease, they will be shot down and destroyed. They will not be able to significantly influence the dynamics of events at the front,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier this month.
