The United States Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference touched on Russia’s War on Ukraine , discussing Ukraine’s employment of handed-down F-16 Vipers and an entire session called “Ukraine-Russia War: A Prelude to Future Conflict.” In that session, caution was urged in taking too many lessons from the conflict, but some conclusions about the conflict – such as the lack of integration – were enlightening, F-16s mostly used in air-to-air..
. for now Although the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon (better known as “Viper”) has strong multi-role capability, Ukraine has decided to use the Viper first primarily for air-to-air. One can read more about how the US Air Force has employed the F-16 Viper in both air-to-air and air-to-ground below: The US Air Force wasn't the first entity to use the F-16 in combat.
But the USAF more than made up for lost time. However, in a September 17 report by Air & Space Forces Magazine report, Gen. James B.
Hecker, the head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe shared, “The pilots are new to it, so they’re not going to put them at the riskiest missions.
Ultimately, that’s a Ukrainian decision. But I think that’s the approach that they’re taking.” However, soon the Ukrainian F-16s will get access to advanced long-range weapons also like the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs) previously profiled by Simple Flying plus according to Politico on September 20 access to the Joint Stand-Off We.