Ukrainian F-16 pilots successfully adapted tactics to realities of war with Russia - Turkish media

The Turkish news outlet Milliyet said this in an article based on an interview with an F-16 fighter pilot of the Ukrainian Air Force, Ukrinform reports.

"The pilots had to master new equipment, as well as understand different flight rules, including in civilian airspace. In addition, the instructors behind the cockpit were people who did not speak Ukrainian. Therefore, communication was quite difficult. For this, special aviation English was used, which was difficult to learn," the article reads.

The training of the first group of pilots who went abroad for training was completed in August 2024, a month before the announcement of the receipt of F-16 fighters.

"The tactics we were taught were not enough for the war in our country. These tactics were based on the past experience of those who trained us, but the war in our country was different. We had to independently develop new tactics for destroying cruise missiles and drone systems, how to fight the enemy on the contact line," one pilot said.

The article notes that even in the conditions of Russia's technological superiority, the Ukrainian Air Force is able to quickly adapt Western equipment to the realities of modern warfare.

The Ukrainian Air Force' F-16s destroyed more than 1,000 air targets, a significant part of which were kamikaze drones and cruise missiles, and also carried out more than 1,600 attacks on ground targets.

The article also discusses the ingenuity of the covert placement and redeployment of aircraft in Ukraine so that they are not hit by the enemy, as well as the pilot's appeal to Western partners not to stop assisting Ukraine and not to slow the pace of this process.

Ukraine received the first F-16 fighters from the Netherlands in October 2024.