F-16 training for Ukrainian pilots successful: U.S. makes course “much shorter”
technology.org
technology.org
A classic example is the studies which found if we suddenly needed to do many thousands more respirator intubations of chronically ill patients, veterinarians can be cross-trained to replace doctors in a week to perform around 90% of normal intubations, leaving the specially-trained doctors to handle the remaining difficult cases. Note: Vets were notably better than other seemingly more related disciplines like e-room and surgical nurses because vets do intubations on animals quite often. That direct experience has a lot of elements which transfer quite well to intubating humans. Apparently, much better than the experiences of nurses who often assist doctors in intubating humans.
https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vin...
In contrast, these Ukrainian pilots are very experienced in flying fast jets. They don't require lowered standards, or exceptions at all. They just need to be fed the syllabus as fast as possible, and get them time in the cockpit.
That's exactly it, and it almost makes it an unfair example. Veterinarinans are trained to work with a fairly wide variety of animals, and most small-animal vets will have extensive experience intubating cats and dogs for surgery. Adding one more species to their repertoire isn't hard.
The normal training process is optimized for different things than training time, and different trade-offs can be made in costs, safety, depth and breadth of knowledge/capability etc.
For example, if you want to clean the feet of horses you need a bachelors degree in horse feet cleaning. Why? It’s literally just scraping their foot with a scraper. That’s the extent of what you do. But society says you need to spend 3 years in order to do it.
We basically just invent these arbitrary time requirements in order to restrict the supply of people and allow morons to do these careers. Without the time requirements, anyone could do it. That’s bad for the people who currently do it.
Take doctors for example. Multiple years of medical school and then 10 years of GP training… for what? They don’t invent treatments or do surgery. They basically don’t do anything. So why does it take 15 years? To stop people competing with them.
The market is starting to price in that extra regulation and protectionism with the rise of alternate providers such as nurse practitioners.
It's unclear to me, as a consumer, why I should prefer a general practitioner to a nurse practitioner considering the number of relevant years of schooling are roughly the same.
It’s probably largely outmoded now though, given the access to information that everyone enjoys.
Same for pretty much every safety rules. Why do you even wear a seat belt ? statically you'll never be in an accident
One of the major uses of a fighter jet is "interception". That is, to fly out and patrol the skys while you think the enemy might launch an attack on your cities. When an enemy attacker (formerly an enemy bomber, but today it could be a Missile or rocket) starts to attack your city, your fighter-jets fly out and try to shoot it down.
Its not always successful, but its better to leave the chance of successful interceptions open, rather than have nothing else. Of course, other defense measures (ie: missile defenses, like Patriot missiles) are useful. But Patriot missile batteries cannot fly or move. Once you place a Patriot Missile in one area, you cannot move it elsewhere (ex: If you expect the enemy to "focus fire" and try to overwhelm one area of your defenses, you can't move your Patriot missiles to guard that one area).
In contrast, you _can_ fly more airplanes from around the country to defend the area of focus fire. The base level of ground defenses are there to handle the average cases... but a proper "air force" is needed to handle exceptional cases.
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But all due when needed. I think its obvious that the first step is to build the cheaper ground defenses around Ukraine (ex: the current Patriot missile defenses going on right now). In the long term, the F16s will probably be needed.
Enemy air defenses are mapped and no one will fly a plane in range of them. Planes are used to fling things at the enemy from safe positions. Air defenses are too cheap and good to risk valuable planes on. What Ukraine really needs is a massive donation of air defenses so Russia doesn't have free reign over most of Ukrainian airspace. Problem is those air defense systems don't presently exist in anyone's inventory to make a substantial contribution to Ukraine.
Not only is it clearly an effective anti-drone weapon, I have to imagine that its an effective anti-trench weapon as well. Small enough to transport in an F150 standard pickup truck, it seems like a gun that will solve a lot of these problems in Ukraine.
I know that gun exists because I like browsing weapon systems on Youtube :-). I hope we're giving it to Ukraine.
Rheinmetall has some pretty nice kit in the Skyranger/Skyshield systems, but since they're Swiss, they're going to have trouble selling them.
I was talking about Soviet made AA missiles for e.g. S-300 and Buks which still represent most of Ukrainian long/medium range AA.
> but the big threat currently is the lame Iranian Shaheed drones.
The actual big threat is that Ukrainian long/medium range AA gets attrited too much and Russia will be able to use their bombers.
But the issue isn't reloads so much as TELs. Ukraine has pretty deep missile inventories, but not enough TOR/BUK/S300V launchers and radars. Eventually they'll run out of spares and need to rely completely on Western SAMs.
I can't see the VKS risking any bombers over Ukraine. They'll continue to use them for launching missiles from Belgograd Oblast, but the PR damage if a Backfire or Blackjack was shot down would be unbearable to the Russians.
Ukraine can barely even fly because Russian air defenses are so tight.
When Patriot comes on line, that will be largely a static deployment around Kiev, but the VKS doesn't have much that can counter Patriot.
UAF AD is completely mapped. They have to run their radars in pop up mode because Russia will lock and destroy them in minutes.
If Russian ISR was so excellent, they'd be able to target the launchers and other components.
There is no diplomatic talent in that country politicians.
"Polskie MiG-i nie trafią na Ukrainę. Ponadto Polska nie ma żadnych Mig-ów. Nie wiemy, skąd Ukraina ma MiG-i. Pragniemy zauważyć, że MiG-ów jest bardzo wiele i można je kupić w dowolnym sklepie z MiG-ami, na przykład na terenie Federacji Rosyjskiej."
"Polish MiGs will not go to Ukraine. Moreover, Poland does not own any Migs. We do not know where Ukraine got the MiGs from. We would like to emphasize that MiGs are plentiful and can be bought in any MiG shop, for example, in the Russian Federation."
and just yesterday pledged 4 more right away with another 6 being prepared, 14 total.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/duda-poland-transfers-mig-29... rofl at yahoo publishing this in lifestyle section, 'sending fighter jets to help kill russians is just a lifestyle choice in Poland yo'
Yes, a fighter pilot can quickly enough learn to fly another fighter in terms of basic flying functions, but a fighter is an advanced weapons system built to interact with a constellation of advanced weapons systems.
Not only does a fighter pilot need to learn the particular performance features of the plane, but also the weapons systems, and then combine them in real time to have a reasonable chance of returning the plane whole in a combat environment.
I don't think so. Some of the most difficult training missions are "Wild Weasel" roles for example... IE: The F16 being used as anti-antiair. Its dangerous mission and difficult training.
But if the Ukrainians never plan to use the F16 as anti-antiair / Wild Weasel, then the training can be cut out of the routine entirely. Maybe the Ukrainians just wanna focus on missile interception, for example (IE: forming a missile shield to block out Russian rocket attacks on their cities).
And the cost of the airframe is moot during a war. Ukraine needs them, has pilots capable of handling it, and can learn to maintain them as needed. But the US is holding back for fears that Ukraine would use them to attack Russian territory.
This is the same thinking that held back tanks for so long (and continues to hold back ATACMs). We're scared of the Russians.
M2 Bradley is an excellent vehicle. No, its not a tank, but its the vehicle the Ukrainians need today. With over 100+ M2 Bradley donations, and 90+ Strykers (a lighter vehicle that serves a similar troop-transport / mechanized infantry role), its clear to me that the USA cares more about practical battlefield issues rather than the somewhat political "Tank" question.
Based on the reports of Trench-warfare, masses of Russian infantry, and satellite photographs... we can see that the 25mm autocannon on an M2 Bradley with 900 rounds stored is going to be more useful than the 120mm cannon of an M1 Abrams with only 40 shots.
Furthermore: the Stryker vehicles with Mk 19 machine-grenade launchers are obviously better for clearing enemy trenches at long range than any other vehicle.
Yeah, tank blasts are ferocious, but not the best weapon against the huge network of trenches Russia has setup. Grenades, heavy Mortars, self-propelled artillery, and IFVs / M2 Bradleys are whats needed.
Its the IFV department where Ukraine was severely lacking in... and where we can get the best improvement to Ukrainian strength per ton-of-weapons shipped over.
I think that the Bradley will be a big help in comparison to the performance of a BMP-3, but the delta between a Challenger or Leopard (especially Leo 2A46) to any T series tank is huge.
Combat flight missions are too dangerous to risk on a rush trained pilot.
How is that complicated?
Once you pull up through the ravine two SU-35 are approaching from the northeast.
You have to ready for anything. A drone could do the mission you described.
A plane originally built in the 70's that's fly-by-wire and requires computer control since it's unlikely any human can fly the inherently unstable design. 1 engine so there's that SPoF.
As but another PC joystick jockey, I played Falcon A.T. (2.0), Falcon 3.0 Gold, and Falcon 4. If I had been 4" / 10 cm shorter, I probably would've been a USAF fighter pilot rather than a startup flunkie and "engineer".
F-35's intending to replace Vipers are a moneypit boondoggle. At some point, even with investment bias, that program will need to be killed because it's a POS.
Plus most Western governments (other than Poland and UK) went "wobbly" as Margaret Thatcher was reported to have said. Biden's security advisors didn't want to have the conflict escalate, and much of the EU felt the same way. This led to hesitancy on providing anything that could be "offensive." Providing Stingers and Javelin were fine, but ATACMS, tanks, F-16? Nope.
Only once Ukraine demonstrated both a chance of surviving and even winning did this mindset begin to change. Every Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat encouraged the West to provide more equipment and munitions. But we're still providing too little.
Both Poland and the UK really deserve huge amounts of credit for their stalwart support of Ukraine (as well as the Baltic states). The US may be providing the most in terms of raw dollars, but without Poland and Ukraine pushing as hard as they have, Ukraine would be in a much tougher situation.