Russia-Ukraine war | Reports: F-16 crashed repelling Russian aerial assault | WION Pulse

all right so let's start with some breaking inputs that have of course come in the much-wanted F-16 fighter jets reportedly may have failed in the very first test in the Ukrainian War Theater now one of the American manufactured F-16 fighter jets according to reports has crashed in Ukraine now it was earlier being reported that the jet may have crashed due to a technical error but now reports are quoting Ukrainian sources that revealed that pilot error is not was not behind the incident that the F-16 crashed while it was trying to repel one of the biggest ever aial attacks by Russia against Ukraine and according to reports the pilot died tragically in this crash the crash is now being investigated and international experts will be invited to take part in this Probe on Tuesday the Ukrainian president V zinsky had said that Russian missiles were shot down by the Western supplied F-16 fight Jets before they reach their targets but this new revelation is now put a big question mark on vadir zelinsky's claims zalinsky has been asking for at least over 100 F-16 fight Jets to counter the Russian air power the deployment of the F-16 figh Jets marks a crucial enhancement in Ukraine's air defense capabilities since Ukraine took delivery of the first batch of the six American manufactured F-16 figh Jets it was pretty clear that these aircraft will play a crucial role in Ukraine's air defense strategy but the question of course is how effective will this strategy be in the wake of this report that one of the F-16 fighter jets has indeed crashed because remember these F-16 fighter jets um will of course be deployed along the front lines and how vulnerable are they going to be to enemy fire the analysts have raised serious doubts that Ukrainian Pilots have been trained adequately enough to fly these fight Jets now much before the arrival of the f18s to Ukraine there were troubled f-16s to Ukraine there were troubled with the training of its pilot with the Jets the training program was not only bed down by logistical challenges but the United States and its allies had maintained that the Ukrainian Pilots were not able to follow the program well enough because of the language barrier now Ukraine has argued that the $64 million fire jets missile and targeting system will enable Ukraine to identify enemy ground Radars and to destroy them now the F-16 fighter jets are one of the top jet fighter jets in the world they're pretty fast and are extremely agile the powerful engine can generate excellent thrust to weight ratio due to the overall lightness of the aircraft propelling the F-16 to twice the speed of sound at pretty high altitudes all right now to help make sense what's in fact happening at this per in the battlefield in the wake of these latest developments we're being joined by Colonel Daniel Davis who is a military expert and also the host of Daniel Davis Deep dive on YouTube and he's joining us on this broadcast now col Davis this this is going to be a serious development that has happened where one of the fighter jets the F-16 fighter jets that had been supplied by the West appears to have crushed and the circumstances leading to its crash at this moment are still not very clear what's your take on this uh well I'm not in the least surprised uh I've been arguing that this is a false hope from the beginning the idea that you can take uh fighter pilots who were trained in the Soviet system especially on Mig 29s or the like and then quickly transition them over to a completely different type of airframe not just the language barrier that you mentioned is a big issue but also the way the aircraft fights the method with which it's supposed to be employed the way it was design designed to integrate with Western systems and air defense systems radar systems Etc none of which the Ukraine side would have and then do it in a very very compacted amount of time and think it was going to have success was never a realistic situation I I actually had a a retired Air Force General former F-16 fighter pilot on my show uh some number of months back when this was first announced and he had the same comment as someone who knew what it was like to sit in the cockpit of those what we hear in this first report here probably indicates that the higher probability despite by what is being claimed is that the the aircraft was shot down because this was one of Ukraine's uh apparently from the reports one of their best Pilots that they had a guy called sign MoonFish uh and and the the thing came in the middle of this Russian attempt to attack the the Ukraine side on I think it was on Monday and you know if it was just pilot error or if it was some mechanical problem then the pilot would simply have ejected and live but since the pilot was killed it makes it appear that the probability is that it was shot down uh because it a very difficult task especially in a new airframe under under Fire to be able to get out of that so we'll see we haven't don't have conclusive information yet but regardless of what actually happened uh we should not expect any more you know better results from this than what we've seen so far you know it's it's important the point that you brought out that if it was some some kind of a pilot error then the pilot would have ejected and survived and it looks like possibly we still do not know that this aircraft may have been shot down but it is deeply embarrassing to the United States of America because the F-16 F jets are some of the best F jets that the United States produces and this is an American manufactured F jet which has gone down Ukraine says that needs at least 100 F-16 figh Jets to turn things around on the battlefield do you think the Americans will reassess this strategy of transferring F-16 F Jets to Ukraine in the wake of this incident well I I think it's important to to understand which models of this F-16 were given over they were definitely not some of the most modern ones we had but some of the older versions that we had uh some of the most modern ones with all the upgrades whatever have not been given by the United States or our partners and uh I just do not see even uh the platforms themselves being given over in that number but who's going to fly them I mean you see you had Lindsey Graham in Kiev uh a week or so ago openly campaigning to have Western NATO pilots who were F-16 trained to volunteer here uh to fly these airframes quote until we get the Ukrainian Pilots trained up so he was admitting even then that they were not yet adequately trained in the numbers even for the handful of airframes that they've had and by the way there are also some credible reports that at least two of the f-16s have been destroyed on the ground so it's not clear at all how many are even still airworthy you know that's that's interesting and also how do you think the Russians would be looking at this development everyone knew that this was not going to be a silver bullet but Ukraine was saying that this is something that could turn things around in the battlefield how do you think the Russians view this yeah you know you say everyone says that they knew it wasn't a silver bullet but did they because there were lots of claims that this was going to change the Dynamics of the war Lindsey Graham echoed that again just the other day that this is going to be a big change and once we get all these aircraft in the air it's going to make a difference but it never was going to because Russia has significant air defenses that are a legitimate threat to America's Topline aircraft there's a reason why the Ukraine Air Force has hasn't hardly flown any sorties at all from the start of this war because the Russian Tactical Air Defense systems and the ability to shoot them down is considerably higher than anything the Ukraine side has is evidenced by the fact that Russian missiles fly almost unimpeded throughout their country but it doesn't happen on the other side because of the ability of Russia to reach out farther than the Ukraine side can so it's not going to matter whether there's f-16s whether there's six of them 100 of them E mc 29s it's just not going to matter because they don't have enough and the Russians do have enough air defense capacity all right we'll have leave that thank you very much indeed K D Davis for joining us and getting us that perspective then always my play for all the latest news download the Von app And subscribe to our YouTube channel