It could take up to 18 months for U.S. F-16 fighter jets to become battlefield-ready for Ukraine — should President Joe Biden approve its deployment, a Pentagon official told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
To date, Biden has ruled against sending F-16s to help Ukraine in its war against Russia, but he had similar stances regarding M1 Abrams tanks, for which the U.S. has now promised to provide.
Lawmakers from both parties are reportedly encouraging Biden to send the fighter jets to Ukraine.
Although the U.S. has been training Ukraine soldiers on how to operate Patriot air defense systems, as well as combined arms and joint-maneuver training, Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that "we have not started training on F-16s."
For his testimony from an oversight hearing on military support to Ukraine, Kahl conveyed that "our assessment is a delivery timeline for F-16s, even on the most expeditious timeline, and the training timelines are essentially the same, that is they are about 18 months. You don't actually save yourself time by training early in our assessment.
Kahl continued: "Since we haven't made the decision to supply F-16s, and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn't make sense to train them on a system they may never get."
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously said that F-16s are crucial to helping his country defeat Russia. As a counter, though, Kahl testified it would not rank in his top three military priorities.
Kahl's priorities would be air defense systems, artillery, and armored and mechanized systems — all of which the U.S. and its European allies have supplied or promised to supply.
Also, Kahl revealed that Ukraine has asked for 128 fighter jets — F-15s, F-18s and F-16s.
Kahl then said the U.S. Air Force estimated Ukraine needs 50 to 80 F-16s to replace its existing air force.
"If you did that with new F-16s, say [model] 70 to 72s, that would cost $10 [billion] or $11 billion," said Kahl. "If you did it with older [models], say [model] 30 or 32 aircraft, and let's imagine you only need half, 36 of those, it would still cost $2 [billion] to $3 billion. That would consume a huge portion of the remaining security assistance that we have for this fiscal year.
"Would it make sense to spend $3 billion on a capability that will arrive a year and a half from now, when that $3 billion is needed for Patriot interceptors, or more Bradley fighting vehicles or more 155mm ammunition or more [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems], etc? That's the tradeoffs we are making at the moment," added Kahl.
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