Ukraine Gets F-16 Fighter Jet Boost From NATO Ally

Belgium will send 30 of its F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine in the coming years, the country's foreign minister has said, as Kyiv's wait to get Western-made jets airborne drags on.

Brussels will deliver the F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine by 2028, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib told domestic broadcaster RTL on Tuesday. The first batch of aircraft will be delivered "by the end of the year," she added.

Belgium, along with Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, pledged to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets last year. Brussels would provide an unspecified number of the Lockheed Martin-made jets from 2025, the government said in October 2023.

Kyiv has long requested the advanced, more modern jets to upgrade and replenish its air force, battered by more than two years of war against Russia's superior and more numerous aircraft. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month that Kyiv needed between 120 and 130 F-16s to fend off Russia's fleet. The number of promised jets falls far short of this.

But uncertainty has persisted about just when Kyiv will get hold of F-16s and have the aircraft operational against Russian forces, the timelines vague and prone to delays.

In late April, Belgium's Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, said the country would send "the entire F-16 fleet to Ukraine in the medium term," but did not specify when exactly the jets would arrive. Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder said late last month that Belgium would "do everything possible" to deliver F-16s to Ukraine by the end of 2024.

Kyiv's Western backers have stipulated that Ukrainian personnel must complete their training programs, and have all the necessary infrastructure and facilities up and running in the country, before the jets can be operational. Several countries are training Ukrainian pilots, and those assigned to the U.S. military at Tucson, Arizona, have started to graduate, U.S. officials said earlier this month.

The first F-16s were slated to arrive in the first part of 2024, but the Dutch government announced in January that Ukraine would receive an initial batch in the "second quarter" of the year. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Ukraine expected to receive the first of the F-16s between June and July, citing a Kyiv military source. It is not clear which of the donor countries will be the first to provide the jets.

The slow pace of getting F-16s to Ukraine, and then in the air, has worked against Kyiv, officials and analysts have said. In April, an anonymous Ukrainian senior military officer told Politico that "F-16s were needed in 2023; they won't be right for 2024."

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