Media: US transfers unserviceable F-16s to Ukraine for spare parts

Washington is removing faulty F-16s from storage and sending them to Ukraine so that the state can maintain its growing fleet of fighter jets.

This was reported by the American military media outlet The War Zone.

This information was confirmed to TWZ by representatives of the US Air Force. Earlier, photos appeared on the Internet of partially disassembled F-16s, wrapped in film: without wings, tails, engines and nose radars. They were loaded onto a Ukrainian charter plane An-124 at Tucson International Airport, Arizona.

According to trackers, the An-124 was heading to Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in Poland. This airport is an important transit hub for military aid to Ukraine from the West, the media reports.

The fighters were delivered from a decommissioned aircraft depot, the 309th Aviation Maintenance and Recovery Group (AMARG), located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson. Due to the packaging, it is impossible to determine exactly which versions of the F-16s were transferred. However, some indications suggest that they may be older Block 15 Air Defense Fighter (ADF) variants from the US National Guard arsenal.

In total, Kyiv has already been promised about 85 airworthy F-16s. In particular, 24 from the Netherlands, 19 from Denmark, 12 from Norway (and another 10 for spare parts), and 30 from Belgium. Some of the aircraft will not be sent directly to Ukraine — they will be used to train Ukrainian pilots at the European F-16 Training Center in Romania.

The operation of any modern fighter requires serious logistical support. Kyiv faces a double challenge: to quickly introduce a fundamentally new Western combat aircraft, which is significantly different from its Soviet counterparts, and at the same time maintain it. Therefore, the supply of spare parts from decommissioned American F-16s will come in handy, writes TWZ.

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