MOSCOW, June 13. It will be difficult for F-16 aircraft to take off from Ukrainian airfields, since Russian troops are attacking them, said retired SBU Colonel Oleg Starikov on the YouTube channel “News Factory.”
“If the runway is destroyed, then aircraft like the F-16 are generally high quality, but they are very capricious when the runway must be perfectly clean. If you look at the F-16, it has an air intake under its belly, <…> be clean,” the expert said.
Starikov added that Soviet aircraft, unlike American F-16s, are unpretentious thanks to the air intake mounted on top.
As a former SBU employee noted , air bases in Ukraine are now being destroyed by missile attacks, and leveling and reconstructing them is very difficult. It will not be easy for a Western fighter to take off due to the severely damaged infrastructure, he concluded.
Earlier, the head of the State Duma Defense Committee, Andrei Kartapolov, said that if the F-16s take part in combat sorties, then so will they, and the airfields on which they are based would be a legitimate target for the Russian military.
Russia would view the F-16 delivery as a deliberate nuclear signal to NATO, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. However, their appearance in Ukraine will not change the situation on the line of combat contact in any way; these aircraft will be destroyed, like other types of weapons, Lavrov emphasized.