One-Two Punch From the Skies Is a Massive Blow to Putin

Ukraine’s military has spent the last two years chronically short of planes. Its prewar stocks were already small in number and mostly dated from the Soviet era. When NATO and other countries sent help, they focused on either sending the same older models or keeping existing aircraft in the air through maintenance and spare parts. Russia, meanwhile, has a larger and often more advanced air force.

However, new planes are on the way to help Ukraine. For nearly a year, countries like the Netherlands have promised limited numbers of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets. Recently, Belgium also committed to sending 30 F-16s from its own stocks.

These aircraft can come in handy in a few ways. Firstly, they can engage Russia’s air force, balancing out its numerical advantage. Ukraine’s dynamic and improving air defense efforts have already made things challenging for the Russian air force, but they still maintain a large advantage. Their airpower lets them launch munitions at Ukraine’s forces and cities and force Ukrainian pilots to be extremely careful with their own operations. Degrading Russia’s air force relieves some pressure on Ukraine’s beleaguered ground forces, which are struggling to hold back intense Russian offensives supported by Russian bombing. F-16s can also help ground forces directly by dropping their own munitions and firing long-range missiles. Having F-16s opens the door for more and better Western weapons, which were designed to work on an F-16 but could not be adapted to Ukraine’s Soviet-era airframes. Ukraine will also get more out of Western systems already sent. Some partners have helped jerry-rig upgrades so that Ukraine’s air force could use weapons not designed for Soviet planes. In videos over the past year, Ukrainian pilots showed tablets in their cockpit which operated Western-provided missiles. While they already function in a limited capacity, these systems will be more effective when used in F-16s as intended.

Read more at The Daily Beast.