COPENHAGEN, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States will spearhead a new international coalition to help Ukraine establish a future air force based on F-16 fighter jets, the Danish ministry of defence said on Wednesday.
The new coalition intends to build infrastructure around F-16s, including maintenance facilities to support the operation of the planes, the ministry said in a statement.
Denmark and the Netherlands were the first two countries to commit to donating F-16 jets to Ukraine, whose current air force has a fleet of ageing Soviet-era fighter jets, in its war with Russia.
“This is a natural move following the leading role Denmark already has in relation to the military support for Ukraine and especially in relation to the donation of F-16 fighter jets,” Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said.
Denmark expects to deliver the first six of out of a total of 19 F-16s to Ukraine in March or April next year, he told broadcaster TV2 on Wednesday.
Where do the Gripens Sweden’s sending over fit in?
They do basically the same thing. The Gripen is better suited to Ukraine’s needs; it’s cheaper to fly, able to operate with less infrastructure, and able to fly farther out from home. However, there just aren’t that many of them in the world compared to the F-16. The F-16 has been produced way more, and there are countries like Norway that just replaced all of their F-16s anyway. There are other differences in each one obviously, but I’m no expert on it. Both are designed to do largely the same job, and the specifics of performance for each will depend heavily on exactly which version of each plane is handed over seeing as both have had literally decades of development and upgrades.
I imagine that, much like the situation with tanks, you’ll just see that different Ukrainian units will operate different equipment depending on what is available. Whoever is running their logistics must have an unbelievable coffee budget, but if that means more tanks and jets operating then they’ll make it work
I’m not sure that has been finally decided yet. Sweden say they will send Gripen fighter jets if Turkey allow them into NATO.
This sounds very sensible to me, because as a NATO country Sweden will be better protected, and can more easily free some of their ressources.
Shame on Turkey for blocking Sweden’s entry into NATO.
Turkey has been a poor NATO partner under Erdogan.