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Can Ukraine sustain its F-16 fleet if Trump halts US aid?
(kyivindependent.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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I'm say that if NATO goes to war we will want 150 f35s per month there fore the debate should be how many f35s to send ukrane up to 150 per month with the ability to supply that many already existing.
similar for most everything else we are sending - we would want a lot more if there was war so we should be able to make them.
That's unrealistic, it would be nice, but it's impossible.
Do you think it's because the Russians are lazy they can only make a handful of their gen 5 planes per year?
https://simpleflying.com/russian-combat-aircraft-production-rates/
It's estimated they can make about 5 SU-30 and 10 SU-34 per year. Their new jets combined they can make about 2 per month. You are speculating about supplying 150 F-35 to Ukraine per month! But they neither have the pilots or the ground teams for that. And training them from scratch would take many years. There are not enough trainers on the planet to train that many F-35 pilots. There have only been 1000 F-35 built since initial production in 2006!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II
With the F-16 we had trainers available to train both pilots and ground teams, and the planes were available too. But even then we had to draw back trainers that were transfered to F-35, which means our own defense is delayed to help Ukraine. It would be best if more countries donated more F-16 and training and maintenance, because it's better regarding logistics, armament, pilots, ground crews and maintenance wise to maintain similar planes instead of different types. And we had an arrangement with Norway and Netherlands to supply enough F-16 to make a difference. Unfortunately it hasn't been followed up by more countries AFAIK.
Go look at wwii aircraft production. If another world war breaks out we will need that much again.
now it may be that ukrain doesn't need that many airplanes. that is a different argument, but it is one we should be having. We can also have the arguement of if we should give them any. How ever that we cannot is not this we can't if we want to is not an argument we should have since there is a chance we will need them.
russia has a different battle plan and doesn't need that many airplanes. Though their inability to produce the artilery they need says they are not able to run their battle plans.
Oh my god, you are doubling down!?
Well we are NOT in WW3 are we?
If we were in WW3, we would transform to a war economy, but newsflash we are NOT.
Russia has transformed to a war economy, and still they can only make 2 advanced planes per month.
Apart from that you cannot compare the complexity of making a modern Jet fighter and a WW2 propeller plane.
We are not today, but you never know when we will be. We need to be prepared or we will lose because we cannot gear up in time - just ask france about that.
France spend a lot of effort an resources to prepare, but they did it the wrong way.
What you are proposing is also the wrong way, because we have learned from Ukraine that we need to prioritize differently.
It doesn't help to have a shitload of the wrong weapons. Also you complain that last gen weapons are obsolete, so what you propose would be an insane level of production to constantly keep everything at the newest standard.
Do you understand what I'm saying? What you are proposing is insane!!!
Just because you can produce doesn't mean you have to. I agree building more than you need this year is wrong. However you need the ability to build it