F-16 to Ukraine? It will not turn the tide of the conflict. General Tricarico speaks

23 May 202311 months ago babelfish

“The F-16 is not a game changer for Ukraine. It's an extra step, but it won't turn the tide of the conflict. However, it will change the balance. That's why,” says General Leonardo Tricarico, president of the ICSA Foundation, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, in a conversation with Start Magazine.

Ukraine next to get Western F-16 fighters.

Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden gave his support for sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Washington's go-ahead comes days after Britain and the Netherlands said they were building an "international coalition" to help Ukraine procure F-16s as it seeks to improve its defenses against Russian airstrikes.

"For the Ukrainian defence, the F-16 is not a game changer, it is an extra step, but it will not overturn the tide of the conflict" observed to Startmag , General Leonardo Tricarico, president of the ICSA Foundation, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

All the details.

Zelensky has secured the green light from Washington to send F-16s. What do you predict will happen now?

Within a few months, the Ukrainians will have in their hands another modern, effective and very useful tool for the type of war in progress. This will be a significant enhancement of Ukraine's military capability.

Which countries are most likely to send their F-16s?

It is a very propitious moment for this: more countries are decommissioning the F-16s to buy the F-35s, they already have a weapons system rotation program, so it will be sufficient to base the deliveries of F-35s to these countries on so they can make their F-16s available quickly. And there are more than one. Holland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece and also Norway and Portugal.

Then there is the time factor associated with pilot and maintenance training, many experts speak of the "four months" necessary.

I know very well that some experts are very cautious , others like me are less so. However, the machine of generosity and collaboration must be triggered in unison: that is, a path must be drawn, a timetable to give the Ukrainians operational capacity and the stages must be maintained by everyone, imagining that there are more countries, without exceptions. Otherwise times get longer.

The roadmap must be designed to understand what exactly needs to be done and how long it takes and who has to do them. We need a program manager, I saw that the Danes have already offered, there may be others too but the important thing is that there is someone who checks compliance, everyone's fulfillment of the goals set together. to start everything, there must be one or more meetings where this path is written, tasks are assigned and it is verified that there are no misalignments. The activities concern the operational, technical, doctrinal, maintenance and infrastructure fields. In all of this we need to consider what the necessary times are.

What could Italy's role be in this international consultation, given that, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni underlined in Hiroshima , our country does not have F-16s but is evaluating "pilot training".

It would make little sense to attribute responsibilities of this type to the Italians, but President Meloni was right to say that "we are available" because if we want, we have the possibility of training. However there are other countries that have them in operation and I think it is more efficient to activate personnel for whom the F-16 represents everyday life. It being understood that we would have this opportunity to lend a hand and the president was right to say so.

Will sending F-16 fighters to Ukraine actually be a game changer in the conflict?

No, the F-16 is not a game changer. It's an extra step, it won't turn the tide of the conflict. It will change the balance. There will be a notable extra military capability on the scales, which, if used well, will be able to change the tide of the conflict quite a bit, but not overturn it.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/f-16-ucraina-non-sara-un-game-changer-parla-tricarico/ on Tue, 23 May 2023 03:47:13 +0000.