On his visit to London on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky urged the UK to supply him with modern fighter jets, telling a Westminster Hall audience: ‘We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it.’
Boris Johnson has been the most voluble supporter of the idea of handing Britain’s fleet of more than 100 RAF Typhoons to Ukraine, but the idea has been greeted with scepticism from military experts.
JUSTIN BRONK, a research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, is among the many critics of the proposal.
Below, he explores its numerous drawbacks and explains why providing their pilots with ‘generic’ training could be a far better option.
He also examines how improving Ukraine’s air force could play a key role in helping the country see off Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion.
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has publicly announced a UK training programme for Ukrainian fighter pilots.
He also asked the Ministry of Defence to look into options for providing RAF aircraft to Ukraine.
This was a late addition, however, and the original aim of the announced programme was to lay the groundwork for faster retraining of Ukrainian fighter pilots onto other NATO types like the F-16 or Gripen rather than training them to operate UK aircraft like the Eurofighter Typhoon.
There is huge value to the UK’s offer to provide generic NATO training.
There are many conceptual and technical differences between the Soviet-made aircraft like the Mig-29 and Su-27 that Ukrainian pilots are used to flying, and Western fighters like the F-16.
They were designed to fill very different doctrinal roles, according to different tactics and using different weapons systems.
For example, in a Soviet-designed cockpit there tend to be more instruments, switches, buttons and dials but each one has a fairly straightforward function.
By contrast, most Western cockpits are much ‘cleaner’ in terms of having fewer switches and dials, and more area devoted to multifunction display screens.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has urged the UK to supply him with modern fighter jets, telling a Westminster Hall audience: ‘We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it’
However, most switches and buttons have a wide range of different potential functions depending on the mode that the aircraft is in, what weapon is selected, what sensor pods are equipped and so forth.
The Western cockpit layout therefore presents a steeper learning curve, but ultimately allows more tactical flexibility and a lower cockpit workload once mastered.
In addition, Soviet-made fighters require careful flying and monitoring of engines and systems to ensure safety and effectiveness.
Modern Western fighters, by contrast, are much simpler and easier to fly than legacy Soviet-made aircraft, with carefree systems management and flight control systems.
This means that it will be comparatively easy to train already qualified Ukrainian fighter pilots to fly Western jets but the main task will be training them to master the sensors, tactics and weapons to be effective in combat.
Most of these differences in ‘human-machine interface’, or in simple terms how information is presented to the pilot and they control the aircraft and weapons, can be taught without actually flying Western jets or using complex full-fidelity simulators.
Modern commercial military flight simulators such as Digital Combat Simulator can enable pilots to learn how the systems, sensors and weapons on an aircraft like the F-16C or F/A-18C work, despite retaining a level of abstraction on detailed sensor or weapon behaviour for security reasons.
Boris Johnson has been the most voluble supporter of the idea of handing Britain’s fleet of more than 100 RAF Typhoons to Ukraine, but the idea has been greeted with scepticism
When paired with representative hands-on-throttle-and-stick (HOTAS) controllers and high-resolution virtual reality headsets, which are also commercially available, Ukrainian pilots can be given a significant degree of familiarity with Western fighter cockpits and systems without using actual UK aircraft or full-fidelity simulator facilities.
When paired with RAF qualified flying instructors, these virtual training aids are likely to be a powerful tool in preparing Ukrainian fighter pilots not only to be familiar with Western fighter cockpits.
Even more crucially, they will allow them to learn and practice the tactics, techniques and procedures that the RAF uses for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat with Western weapons.
This approach should mean that conversion training should be much faster and more effective once an agreement is reached to supply a Western fighter from other NATO partners.
On the other hand, trying to supply some of the older RAF Tranche 1 Typhoons will require in-depth training for Ukrainian pilots through the official UK pilot training system, which is suffering from very public shortfalls at the moment.
It would also require the UK to send the Ukrainian Air Force significant quantities of spare parts kits, skilled technicians and air-to-air weapons which are all in short supply due to systemic underfunding and constant deployments of the RAF Typhoon force in combat operations and NATO missions for over a decade.
The Typhoon, pictured, could shift the balance in the war, but its design and advanced features make it difficult to maintain without proper equipment
The Typhoon is also complex to maintain and not designed to operate from the comparatively rough and short dispersed airbases that Ukraine needs to use to avoid being successfully targeted by Russian missile strikes on the ground.
In other words, while a potent air-to-air fighter and multirole attack aircraft in situations that don’t involve a major surface-to-air missile (SAM) and long range precision strike threat, the Typhoon is not an ideal aircraft for Ukraine at the moment. Other NATO types are better suited.
The most likely candidates are the American F-16 or Swedish Gripen; although significant practical and political challenges remain, most of which relate to how to set up the maintenance equipment and trained personnel, as well as logistics support chains to allow them to operate sustainably in Ukraine.
The Gripen is better suited to Ukraine’s operation requirements at present, since it is designed for low-altitude multirole operations against Russian fighters and surface-to-air missile systems, and has a potent internal electronic warfare system to help it in that role.
It is also much easier to support and maintain at the austere dispersed airbases that Ukraine will have to operate them from to avoid being targeted and destroyed by Russian missile strikes on the ground.
However, in the longer term there are far more potential F-16s in the world that could be suppled and a bigger logistics base.
Ultimately, the UK is right to offer training to Ukrainian fighter pilots that will enable them to more rapidly and effectively transition to Western types like F-16 or Gripen once they are supplied.
In the interim, those Ukrainian pilots may be able to get some benefits from employing RAF aerial tactics as part of their repertoire on their current jets.
The RAF will also undoubtedly benefit from learning from the combat experience of Ukrainian pilots during their first heroic year defending their country against Russia’s brutal aggression.