Summary and Key Points: America's continued support for Ukraine, now including plans to send $150 million more and allow U.S. private military contractors to operate there, risks escalating conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. The decision to provide outdated F-16 warplanes, which are unlikely to impact the war's outcome, highlights a lack of strategic thinking among Western leaders.

-This move is seen as more of a symbolic gesture than a practical solution, with the real need being a negotiated peace to prevent further loss and potential escalation.

-America’s obsession with defending Ukraine even at the risk of igniting a third world war with nuclear-armed Russia enters its new phase of absurdity.

Symbolic Gestures: Will America's F-16s Make a Difference in Ukraine?

An additional $150 million (on top of the $60 billion that Congress approved for Ukraine a few months back) has been sent over to Ukraine, and the Biden administration is on the verge of granting US private military contractors (PMC) the right to operate officially in Ukraine and to use American weapons against Russian targets. 

Although, let’s get real, Americans have been fighting in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the start of the war as “volunteers” whose status as representatives of the U.S. defense-intelligence-industrial complex remained ambiguous but obvious.

Anyway, there is still much caterwauling about the arrival of around 30 antique F-16 warbirds from the United States to Ukraine. These antiques are being requestioned from the boneyard, modestly upgraded, and given to Ukrainian pilots 

Wasted Tanks, Wasted Time Only in the Air!

Just as with the much-ballyhooed main battle tank handoff, consisting of a handful of British Challenger-2, German Leopard-2, and older American M1 Abrams tanks), this small picket of ancient warplanes will not turn the tide of the Ukraine War.

Let’s consider some of the finer points of these mildly refurbished planes whose better days are well behind them.

Age may be in the eye of the beholder but in terms of wear-and-tear on a warplane, it’s a killer. These older F-16s have been in service for decades. This means they lack the advanced capabilities and technologies of the newer F-16 variants. That’s okay, we are assured, Ukrainian pluck will make all the difference. (Tell that to the Ukrainian kids who are about to be orphaned.) 

Because of the lack of upgrades on these very old F-16s, they’ll likely struggle to effectively counter the battle-hardened Russian warplanes, which have more updated and advanced systems and weaponry, and their experienced pilots.

The limitations of the F-16s when squaring off against Russian air defense systems are great—making the Ukrainian pilots of these birds less brave and more suicidal. The presence of Russian air defense systems such as the S-400, which can track even advanced stealth planes in certain cases, should bring home the suicidal nature of relying on these old, easy-to-track F-16s. 

Thus, the F-16s are entering devastating combat with a grizzled Russian war machine insisting on a conflict of attrition (that Ukraine has been losing for some time) in a limited fashion. They will not be able to create the kind of free range that the proponents of handing F-16s over to Ukraine’s dying force seem to believe they will have. 

Honestly, it’s like we’re experiencing collective amnesia. We just went through this with those tanks—most of which have been blown to smithereens at the outset of battle.

Such is the nature of this particular war: everything old is new again. And then it is destroyed before it can even make a difference. Not only is this a lost cause defined by waste, graft, and depletion, but it should also prove just how empty the Western cause is. 

An Utterly Un-Self-Aware Western Elite

At no point in this conflict has our leaders seriously asked themselves what they want to achieve. 

It’s just raw emotion, Churchillian cosplaying, and a further degradation of the NATO alliance’s overall strategic positioning vis-à-vis Russia—the great bogeyman who haunts the collective psyches of Western elites.

And the paltry number of F-16 warplanes that Washington intends to give Kyiv’s forces is another example of the absurdity of this entire exercise. It’s just more virtue-signaling in lieu of actual strategy. We dare not hand the systems that might make a difference for Ukraine’s defense over in any meaningful number because we fear actual retaliation from Moscow. 

At the same time, we want to feel good—as though we are Churchill during the Blitz—by sending a couple dozen of America’s oldest variants of a warplane that is soon to be retired due to obsolescence.

Well, most of those MBTs are destroyed, and the F-16s have yet to materialize. Yet another Western best-laid plan decimated by direct contact with reality in the Ukraine War. It’s incredible that no one in leadership has stopped to reassess.

By the way, the timing is completely off, not just because these platforms can no longer be used in conjunction with the tanks, but because the upgrading of the systems and the rushed training of the pilots has a certain amount of time that cannot be fudged. Reports suggest this meager number of ancient F-16s will not be available until late 2024 (the earliest) or, more likely, 2025. By then, the war will likely be over (or, more frighteningly, a larger conflict between NATO and Russia will have erupted).

The F-16s America provides to Ukraine will be most unhelpful to the failing war effort there. Especially if hurriedly trained Ukrainian pilots are flying these few, technologically older systems into combat. 

Fools Rushing In to Lose

The limits of the F-16s in question far outstrip whatever capabilities they may provide to the failing Ukrainian war effort. What’s more, it is yet another needless escalation in a war in which NATO-backed forces are completely checkmated by the Russians. 

The West needs to negotiate now before it’s too late and Ukraine is totally lost. Of course, the Ukraine War is the embodiment of the old saying, “only fools rush in.” 

Here's to hoping we stop being foolish after November.

Author Experience and Expertise: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock. 

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