October 3, 2024:
The Ukrainian Air Force currently has about 90 warplanes, including 45 MiG-29s, 25 Su-27s, twelve Su-24s and sixteen Su-25s. A few NATO nations that were occupied by Russian forces before 1991, still had some Russian warplanes as well as spare parts and weapons used by those aircraft. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, most of this Russian equipment was sent to Ukraine to maintain the strength of the Ukrainian Air Force. With no more replacement aircraft or parts available for the Ukrainian Air Force, it was imperative that Ukraine receive new warplanes from a more reliable source.
NATO nations volunteered to send many of their F-16 fighters, in part because those were surplus as those countries were receiving new American F-35 strike aircraft. Ukraine appreciated this but pointed out that they needed a force of at least 128 F-16s to be effective against the Russian aerial threat. Ukrainian air defenses, especially the Patriot batteries and missiles supplied by NATO nations, had kept most of the Russian aerial threats out. But Ukraine was running out of Patriot missiles and only seven NATO nations use Patriot. Some of those nations are near the Russian border and want to retain some of their Patriot systems for their own defense against a potential Russian attack.
The United States and Germany agreed to produce a thousand Patriot missiles but the German factory has not been built yet. This means that only a few hundred new missiles will be available in the next year and the rest of the thousand missile orders will take several years to complete. Meanwhile, the NATO missile maintenance and production facilities in Europe are also continuing to maintain and upgrade existing Patriot missiles.
Another limitation is the number of maintenance personnel Ukraine has to maintain F-16s and air defense systems. Training of additional maintenance personnel is underway but the shortage of these technicians will continue to limit the number of F-16s and Patriot systems Ukraine can use. This is another example of the old adage, “amateurs study tactics while professionals study logistics”. In the end, what really matters is how many trained pilots, air defense crews and maintenance personnel you have. Despite increased training efforts for Ukrainians in NATO countries and Ukraine it will take over a year for these efforts to provide the number of personnel needed.
Russia has similar supply problems because of economic sanctions but is still able to produce some long range missiles to fire into Ukraine. Russian combat aircraft are more difficult to replace and Russia rarely operates these aircraft in Ukrainian air space. Instead, Russian aircraft launch air-to-ground missiles, including ballistic missiles and supersonic cruise missiles, on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border at targets inside Ukraine. Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian targets have been underway for over two years. Patriot batteries were the only systems capable of stopping ballistic and supersonic cruise missiles. Less capable systems, mainly one produced in Europe, were capable of stopping drones and subsonic cruise missiles.