Comments by "Anders Juel Jensen" (@andersjjensen) on "Ukraine shoots down multiple Russian jets" video.
-
5
-
The F-16 has three advantages over every other air multi role fighter jet on the planet:
1) It is THE most produced plane in terms of raw numbers.
2) It has multiple manufacturers for many of it's components (engines, landing gear consumables, etc) and large stock piles exist in various countries.
3) It is the plane that is compatible with the largest number of NATO ordnance catalogue items. Basically, "if it is air delivered the F-16 can deliver it".
The F-16 is not the best in any single category (except versatility, which isn't "a single category") but it is pretty much always in top 5 or top 3 in every contest. Any plane that beats the F-16 in one category also loses to it in 3-5 others (Like the F-22 and F-15 are beating it in agility, but losing in carry capacity, operational range, mission pod expansion capability and weapons choice).
So if you have unlimited budget to run completely different training and logistics tails in each category you'd chose the F-22 as your point air superiority fighter and have it backed up by F-15s "to finish the job", and you'd run the F-35 as your point strike fighter and have it backed up by F/A-18 Super Hornet as "flying bomb trucks".
If, on the other hand, your hamstrung for cash, resources and infrastructure, and reliant on friends to keep you afloat, the F-16 is exactly what you want. It was, right from it's inception, designed to be a low cost, low maintenance do-it-all-pretty-well plane for NATO allies that couldn't afford to have a dedicated plane for every specific role. It is basically "the Swiss army knife" of air craft. A dedicated tool is better, but an army knife can do them all.
In short, it was designed to fight Russia on all Russia's weak points: Raw numbers, logistics and flexibility. So it's kinda befitting that here, 40 years later, the F-16 was chosen for Ukraine for the exact same reasons as it was produced to begin with.
Hope that helped get an idea of what exactly "the F-16 mentality" is.
4
-
3
-
What? Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and all the former Yugoslavia countries are former Soviet block counties. And they're all NATO members now. We didn't "expand in to them"... they screamed "Heeelp! We're finally free, and we'd like it to STAY that way!" and joined NATO basically at any condition and any cost we demanded from them. So I think you should look into getting both your history and geography knowledge.. you know.. updated a little.
That former Soviet block countries didn't even blink before joining NATO, but Sweden and Finland needed an all out war in the middle of Europe to wake up, should tell you everything you need to know about the nature of Russia.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1