12 Ukrainian pilots will be ready to fly F-16s by summer - NYT
Kyiv • UNN
By the summer, 12 Ukrainian pilots will have completed training to fly the F-16 fighters, but by that time only 6 of the 45 promised F-16s will have been delivered to Ukraine.
By this summer, 12 Ukrainian pilots will be ready to fly F-16 fighters after 10 months of training in Denmark, the UK and the US. But by the time the pilots return to Ukraine, only six F-16s out of about 45 fighters will have been delivered.
This is stated in material The New York Times, reports UNN.
According to the NYT, the planes are ready and flight instructors are waiting for them at a new training center in Romania set up to train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 military aircraft.
But there's a catch: the Ukrainian pilots have yet to arrive, despite claims last summer that the center would play a crucial role in getting them in the air to defend their country from increasingly deadly Russian strikes
It is noted that it is still unclear when Ukrainian pilots will start training at the center at the Feteşti airbase in southeastern Romania, which NATO allies also use for training to fly fighter jets.
That's not to say that Ukrainian pilots aren't being trained. At the moment, twelve pilots - fewer than a full squadron - are expected to be ready to fly F-16s in combat by this summer after 10 months of training in Denmark, Britain and the United States. But by the time the pilots return, only six F-16s will have been delivered to Ukraine out of the roughly 45 fighters promised by European allies
Supplement
The Arizona National Guard reported that the first four Ukrainian pilots plan to complete training on F-16 fighters by summer. Yuriy Ignat, speaker of the AFU Air Force, stated that Ukraine is training and adapting airfields to receive F-16s.
