Aviation sector development expert Bohdan Dolintse draws attention to the fact that the supply of Western F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine led to the fact that the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defense increased to 90-95%.
Points of attention
- The effectiveness of Ukrainian air defense increased by approximately 10-15% thanks to Western fighters.
- Ukrainian air defense shows some of the best indicators in the world.
- Measures to modernize electronic warfare systems on Ukrainian F-16s will increase their effectiveness.
F-16 significantly strengthened the defenses of the Ukrainian sky
According to the specialist, these western fighters are designed to destroy subsonic aerial targets. This means they cannot destroy ballistics.
Despite this, aviation takes an active part in the destruction of Russian attack kamikaze drones of the Shahed type and cruise missiles that fly at a speed of 350-500 km per hour.
We can compare the effectiveness of destroying these types of targets compared to, for example, two months ago. We can see from the attacks, for example, on August 26 (when there was a powerful massive, well-thought-out combined attack by the enemy), the percentage of destruction of Shahed-type attack drones was 90%, and for the destruction of cruise missiles, mainly Kh101, it was almost 95%. This is a very high indicator.
As Bohdan Dolintse points out, the de facto effectiveness of Ukrainian air defense has increased by approximately 10-15% thanks to Western fighters.
What is important to understand is that dozens of lives of peaceful Ukrainians are saved every day.
The Ukrainian Air Defense Forces demonstrates impressive work results
According to the expert, as of today, Ukrainian air defense has been able to achieve the highest indicators in the world, which, in principle, none of the air defense systems is ready to guarantee on its territory.
What is also important to understand is that the F-16 is equipped with a large-caliber on-board cannon that can be used to destroy drones.
Bohdan Dolintse draws attention to the fact that it is not very appropriate to use an air-to-air missile to destroy a drone, because the cost of a missile can be about 100-150 thousand dollars, which is 2-3 times more expensive than a drone.
In addition, the specialist voiced his assumption about how exactly the Americans could have modernized the EW systems for the Ukrainian F-16s.
It is quite possible that the software was updated to take into account the new weapons of the enemy.
In order to increase the effectiveness of radio electronic warfare systems, it is necessary to adjust them by updating the corresponding software, taking into account the collected information about real Russian weapons, the operation of the "home-foreign" system, — said Dolintse.
