Should Ukraine ever receive F-16 fighters from the US, the jets might not last very long.
The F-16 is so fragile that it requires specially prepared airbases — and those bases can be identified and targeted by Russia, one expert says.
The F-16 has a large air intake under the nose that “sucks everything from the ground directly into it,” Justin Bronk, an air-warfare analyst for Britain’s Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) think tank said during a recent episode of the Geopolitics Decanted podcast. “So F-16s typically require very clean, very well-maintained air bases.”
The F-16 has “fairly lightweight” landing gear because it is designed to have a good thrust-to-weight ratio and “there is no more weight on the jet than there needs to be,” Bronk said.
Russian fighters are built to operate on more primitive airfields, while Western carrier-based jets like the F/A-18 are designed to absorb the shock of hard landings on a floating runway.
Read more: yahoo
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