Aug 22 (Reuters) - British military intelligence said on Tuesday that a weekend drone attack on an airfield deep inside Russia which Moscow blamed on Ukraine is highly likely to have destroyed a nuclear-capable TU-22M3 supersonic long-range bomber.
Kyiv, which on Monday claimed to have attacked another Russian military airfield, says Russia has used the TU-22M3 to bomb targets across Ukraine with conventional munitions. Western military experts believe Russia has around 60 of the aircraft.
It’s not just the planes that are the issue. It’s that apparently they launched the attack from within Russia and managed to attack what should be a highly secure airfield unimpeded.
An astonishing failure in security.
Ouch
I don’t see how the same thing won’t happen to all of these F-16s that are eventually being donated to Ukraine. Planes are sitting ducks out there.
If what you were saying was true about future F-16 aircraft, why does Ukraine still have an air force of Mig-29 fighters, SU-27 multirole, Mig-25 close air support, Mig-24 bombers, and all of their helicopters still in operation?
MigSu-24 bombersThere’s no such thing as a MiG-24. (MiG has only ever used odd-numbered model designations, though I don’t know why. But it’s one of the reasons why it was a safe bet for Top Gun to use “MiG-28”, being sure not to refer to any real aircraft, past, present or (probably) future.
There haven’t been any noteworthy aircraft losses on Russian side confirmed by Ukraine for a while except a couple helicopter.
So by your argumentation you should come to the conclusion that Ukraine will suffer very little plane losses at the current situation on the front.