• PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      They seems average. They do have at least one significant flaw, that large air intake apparently suck up things from runway during take off, which is why the plane need clean airstrip and it could be hard to get when Russians can just strike wherever they want with missiles. And of course the enemy air superiority also make them abot as useful as every other plane, that is not very much after getting bombed while on land.

      • olgas_husband@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        plus, another thing to put on the table is how well it operates with the other hardware, the country’s tactics and war discipline.

        all modern armies work with the combined arms concept, meaning the air force for example it is not a separated entity, it needs the ground forces and the ground need them and so on, not as simples as 1 + 1 = 2.

        this is one of the major flaws in ukrainian army, they received a bunch of hardware from different countries and different times, nato and warsaw, nothing combines with each other

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I was going to say that F-16s have been steadily upgraded since then but then realized that they’ll probably be given the oldest, shittiest, machines that could charitably fit a loose definition of “airworthy”.