Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
What's the logic in not giving Ukraine more aircraft? Is it just cost or are we worried that if our actual plans, albeit piloted by Ukrainian pilots, shoot down Russians it's too close to us being involved?
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There has to be a risk of the Russians making plausible claims that there are actually nato pilots in the planes. Frankly, there might have to be - these are extremely complex machines. It’s not like parking a Golf and getting behind the wheel of a Focus. If they did turn them over to Ukrainian pilots, there’s still the problem that an F16 is a very visible symbol of American military technology. It’s not a commodity item like a rocket launcher. And with pilots unused to the hardware, there might be significant losses of extremely expensive equipment for relatively little gain. It probably makes more sense to spend that sort of money on 1,000s of SAMs and deal with the Russian Air Force from the ground.