Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Ukraine shoots down multiple Russian jets" video.

That’s very low probability, but not impossible. I assume you mean retired pilots, not pilots currently flying for their respective air forces. There is zero chance of a pilot actively flying for his country’s armed forces to be detached to the Ukrainian Air Force to participate in hostilities. That would be escalatory and the same as a declaration of war. Even retired F-16 pilots would be an excuse for the Russians to escalate if it was discovered. This is why I think it is low probability we will see it happen. Using non-Ukrainian pilots is unnecessary. The Ukrainian AF does not have a pilot shortage. It has an aircraft shortage. Furthermore, if reports are to be believed, experienced Ukrainian pilots have been training on the F-16 over the past year. So there is very little benefit to taking the risk of escalation. However, there is a factor that raises the probability. These missions are being flown well behind the frontlines, so there would be very little chance of a foreign retired pilot being shot down over Russian held territory. If the Russians managed to shoot down an aircraft with such a pilot, the Russians wouldn’t be able to capture the pilot or recover their body. They wouldn’t have proof of this sort of foreign intervention. I think we can rule it out your suggestion, but we can’t completely rule it out. And we can’t rule it out going forward if the situation changes.
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These are intriguing alternative possibilities that Anders has outlined. I don’t think he devoted enough time to the possibility of Ukraine creating its own “homegrown” air defense missiles. Ukraine certainly has its own weapons engineering capacity. Ukraine has capable weapon designers and engineers. There could also be technology transfer. Lastly, such weapons needn’t be produced in Ukraine. Ukraine could set up companies with manufacturing facilities in Europe or the U.S. (or anywhere in the world, really). Ukraine could lease such facilities from established manufacturers or buy surplus capacity. Nothing prevents this in friendly countries that support Ukraine. I’ll go so far as to speculate it’s already going on for some of the material used in Ukraine.
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