Pentagon Asked About F-16 Training: Will Ukrainian Pilots Be Able To Fly F-16s In Combat This Year?

Pentagon Asked About F-16 Training: Will Ukrainian Pilots Be Able To Fly F-16s In Combat This Year?

you give us an update on the F-16 training for the ukrainians um where that stands at this point how many have graduated if any um and whether there’s going to be another trunch going in for training and then on the question of American contractors going into Ukraine has a decision been made yet on whether that’s going to be uh facilitated or Allowed by the Biden Administration in terms of DOD contracts for American firms that want to go in and help yeah on on your latter question Natasha again you know where the the Press reporting out there um and I’m I’m just not going to comment on internal discussions or proposals that may or may not be under consideration um as it relates to the uh f-16s uh I’m tracking that there’s currently over a dozen Pilots training uh on the F-16 in both Denmark and the United States for operational security reasons I’m not going to be able to get into the specific numbers of Pilots uh at those locations and the training timelines um but as you’ll recall you know uh the training is tailored to the pilots uh and it will continue to depend on student experience uh their English language skills their um you know flying experience whether they go through basic flying training or to Advanced you know F-16 fighter training and so the the uh the um air power Coalition capability Coalition that has been put together by the UDC continues to look at that at this holistically and take into account Ukraine’s needs that’s the alarm sorry guys that’s all the time I have um takes into account uh you know uh holistically not only the training aspect but the logistics sustainment and maintenance aspects of this so making sure that when the capability is provided to Ukraine it’s something that they are going to be trained and ready to execute in a safe uh effective manner so uh a lot of work continues to go into that effort uh and I’m I’m sure we’ll have much more to provide in the near future on track to finish and be completed for at least some of the pilots and have some of the capabilities actually move to Ukraine this year so as I understand I mean some of the pilots have already graduated um and you know have gone on to to follow on training um in Europe uh but again you know I’ll let Ukraine talk to the specifics of of where their pilots are and what their status is um but again right now uh the initial deliveries of f-16s uh as your tracking are are set to take place sometime this summer uh so again we’ll have more to provide in the future on that yes sir

Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder was asked about the F-16 training program for Ukrainian pilots.

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