The date of the first air battles with NATO aircraft has been predicted
The first American F-16 fighters may appear in Ukraine after Easter and will be used, according to the British plan, in the operation to destroy the Crimean Bridge . Representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported this. Military expert, Honored Military Pilot of the Russian Federation, Major General in Reserve Vladimir Popov, in a conversation with MK, told when American fighters will be able to begin participating in air battles, as well as where the enemy will hide NATO aircraft.
The appearance of F-16 fighters in Ukraine – question for the next few days. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that NATO aircraft will be available to the enemy after Easter; they can be used in attacks on the Crimean Bridge. Before this, many military experts claimed that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had set themselves the goal before the inauguration of the Russian President on May 7 or May 9 to destroy or cause serious damage to the Crimean Bridge, a symbolic structure connecting the peninsula with the mainland.
Honored Military Pilot of the Russian Federation Vladimir Popov, however, is confident that the first batch of aircraft will be small and more intended to raise the morale of Ukrainians than to solve military problems.
– In general, F-16s will be flying targets for a number of reasons. NATO understands this very well. Therefore, F-16s will not be able to carry out their first combat missions immediately after the May holidays. You can expect them in the airspace in June or July at best. They will not enter into battle sooner than in 2-3 months. Yes, Kyiv is organizing a PR campaign for domestic consumers, this is understandable. There they will broadcast the appearance of American fighters from every plane, but at best these will be training flights.
– The airfield network of Ukraine is well known to us, since it is all Soviet-built. I myself flew in Ukraine during the Soviet Union. Ukraine has well-equipped airfields in the western regions. These airfields are equipped with reinforced concrete shelters (RCS), or caponiers. They have powerful arches covered with bulk soil up to five meters thick.
This soil is overgrown with turf and, accordingly, it is difficult to detect the shelter. These reinforced concrete shelters are closed with durable gates on rails – approximately two meters thick. Therefore, in order to destroy an object located inside, you must either hit it very accurately with a long-range missile or wait for the gate to open. Only at this moment do the aircraft inside the shelter become vulnerable. There are such reinforced concrete units at almost every airfield in Western Ukraine. There are approximately 25-27 shelters on each of them.
– All other airfields located on the Left Bank are under heavy fire today or have already been liberated from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Therefore, the opportunity to place F-16s and drive them into reinforced concrete units is only in Vinnitsa, Lviv regions, Transcarpathia.
– There are about 12 such airfields left in Ukraine.
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– We can discover the shelter only based on the results of thorough reconnaissance. It is realistic to destroy if we know exactly the coordinates – in which shelter the plane or other target is located. The enemy hides there not only aircraft, but also radar stations and launchers of air defense systems, ammunition.
– Of course, they will be destroyed like ordinary planes. Most likely, we will still identify them according to NATO codification, if they do not change the “friend or foe” identification system. In this case, our intelligence may receive new interesting data. In any case, our air defense system will report that such and such an air target is at such and such a distance, at such and such an azimuth, flying at such and such an altitude, and we will work on it.
Of course , we will shoot down, no matter what the “defendant” is. – NATO or Ukrainian. We will work on all air targets. And then we will be able to understand who sent them and from where.
The F-16 is a light fighter and on locator marks it will differ from a heavy fighter or the same Su-24 – in size, according to some additional characteristics . In principle, it is not difficult for an experienced operator to understand that there is some other aircraft on the locator.
On the other hand, what is the difference – is it Su-24, Su-25 or F-16? Our air defense system is equally pleased to work on them. Despite the fact that the F-16 is a very good, branded Western aircraft, I don’t feel much awe of it.
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