Ukraine Looking For Retired F-16 Pilots

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ukraine-looking-for-retired-f-16-pilots/

by MaryADraper

18 comments

  1. Whoever ends up doing this will be the worlds biggest badass for a while

  2. And several retired pilots on their way as we speak -I would bet.

  4. Don’t forget to provide all those promised f16

  5. For US pilots to do this Congress will have to sign off on it. If there’s an effort to do that then we US citizens should get behind it and call our reps.

  6. But, but… How can any of them be retired already? Didn’t they just finish their training?

    /S

  8. I just heard the sound of hundreds of fly boys creaming their flight suits

  9. Tom Cruise could have stepped up if Top Gun had been filmed in a F-16

  10. Fantastic. Hard to understand why this was not done a year ago. I presume West said not to. But if the West is finally getting it into our collective thick heads that the only way to defeat Russia is to beat their military …. then all the better. Putin will not stop until he has to. Beliefs otherwise are delusional. He only cares for power and has no empathy for those he kills in his quest — Ukrainians or Russians.

  11. I have several hours in Ace Combat and I’m willing to shoot down Russian Aircraft. Good enough?

  15. If true, this will take a lot of stress off Ukraines training pipeline. They have the jets, but not the pilots.
    Sort of the same is true for RuSSia: they are building more jets than they lose, but have not enough pilots for them (but in RuSSias case, the talent pool is much smaller).

  18. Recruiting international F-16 pilots was a given from the start. It’s one thing to train “new” recruit for 1 year, but it’s difficult to replace 1000h of flight time and training.

    Considering the “relative” low risk of those missions (F-16 will use BVR weapons away from the frontline, and are unlikely to get shutdown), combine with a good salary, and the chance to kick Russian ass, I can see a lot of ex-military F-16 pilot (40 to 50 years old) answering the call, similar to the [Flying Tigers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Tigers) of WW2. Flying Tigers pilots were active pilot who were discharged from the army to become volunteer in China, but this scenario is unlikely to happen in Ukraine (so just true ex-military).

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