Reasons Biden Administration Resists Sending US$63 Million F-16 Fighter Aircraft For Ukraine: Fear Russian Federation MiG/Su Aircraft Shoot One Down Or Worse Capture One Intact. And All Is Televised.
Reasons Biden-Harris Administration (2021- ) Continues To Resist Authorizing F-16 Aircraft For Use By The Armed Forces Of Ukraine:
Reaction Of United States Congress If The Armed Forces Of The Russian Federation Destroy A US$63 Million F-16 Fighter Jet Provided To Armed Forces Of Ukraine?
Concern About A Loss Of US$63 Million Per Aircraft For United States Taxpayers.
Televised Dogfight Where Russian Federation MiG/Su Aircraft Targets, Launches, Impacts F-16 Aircraft, Would Be Massive Propaganda Value For The Government Of The Russian Federation.
If An F-16 Fighter Aircraft Is Captured By The Armed Forces Of The Russian Federation, The Technological Value Would Be Immense.
Concern Armed Forces Of Ukraine Would Use F-16 Fighter Aircraft To Strike At Targets And To Chase MiG/Su Aircraft Within The Territory Of The Russian Federation. From The Perspective Of The Government Of Ukraine, They Would Ask Who Would Blame Them For Taking Such A Decision? Most NATO Members Would Publicly Or Privately Encourage Them.
The government of Ukraine continues to advocate for delivery into the country of F-16 fighter aircraft manufactured in the United States.
Officials within the armed forces of Ukraine maintain they require not the least expensive F-16 fighter aircraft variant or even a mid-priced F-16 fighter aircraft variant, they want the most expensive F-16 fighter aircraft variant (Block 70 and Block 72) which cost approximately US$63 million per aircraft.
Any F-16 fighter aircraft delivered to the armed forces of Ukraine might be equipped with a Raytheon-built AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air heat-seeking missile which uses infrared sensors to search for contrasts in the sky to hunt for targets. The AIM-9X Sidewinder, with a range up to twenty-two miles, was used in 2023 to disable a low-powered stratospheric balloon owned by the government of the People’s Republic of China that transited the continental United States. An AIM-9X Sidewinder costs US$439,000.00. How many of these missiles would be provided to the armed forces of Ukraine?
Whenever the government of Ukraine is not provided with the latest military equipment technology, its default position is absent the most robust equipment from the thirty-one members of the Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Russian Federation-Ukraine war will continue. Whenever the government of Ukraine is disappointed the refrain is the same- is not Ukraine worth the fullest support of NATO?
NATO members (31): United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Albania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Turkiye, Latvia, and North Macedonia. The Kingdom of Sweden awaits approval from the governments of the Republic of Hungary and the Republic of Turkiye.
With respect to the delivery of F-16 fighter aircraft, there are legitimate issues from NATO members (specifically the Biden-Harris Administration (2021- )) as to training of pilots- to which the armed forces of Ukraine respond that training could have commenced in 2022 or in 2021 or anytime since 2014.
However, the primary concern remains the optics of an F-16 fighter aircraft under command of a member of the armed forces of Ukraine, engages with a fighter aircraft under command of a member of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. If the F-16 fighter aircraft is disabled, destroyed, the pilot killed and with the encounter available from a live video feed or a taped video feed, that would have two consequences: 1) Politically enormously valuable for the government of the Russian Federation as it will promote its superiority on the battlefield and 2) Politically enormously costly to NATO, but more importantly to the Biden-Harris Administration and its relationship with an already challenging 435-member United States House of Representatives which is controlled by the Republican Party until 3 January 2025. The refrain will generally reflect- “had the Biden-Harris Administration commenced training in 2022, then likely the talented pilot would not have perished and the United States taxpayers out US$63 million.”
The nightmare scenario for the NATO and for the Biden-Harris Administration is if an F-16 fighter aircraft had a malfunction- not attributable to the pilot, and the aircraft landed, intact or near so, within the territory of the Russian Federation or in territory of Ukraine occupied by the armed forces of the Russian Federation. The result would be a technological windfall for the armed forces of the Russian Federation.
On 24 February 2022, the armed forces of the Russian Federation invaded and further invaded the territory of Ukraine in what Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation (2000-2008 and 2012- ), defined as a Special Military Operation [SMO] then on 22 December 2022 he redefined as a war. The initial invasion by the armed forces of the Russian Federation was in part from the territory of the Republic of Belarus.
The war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine did not commence on 24 February 2022. The roots began their trajectories on 20 February 2014 when the armed forces of the Russian Federation invaded the Crimean Peninsula and the area known as the Donbas Region (Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast).