Ukraine's Air Force must ditch its Soviet-style approach to get the most out of F-16s
Ukraine will need drastic changes to unlock the full potential of its new F-16s.
Ukraine's senior officers began careers in the Soviet military and are steeped in its mindset.
Facing larger Russian forces, Ukraine's military must adopt a coordinated style of warfare.
Ukraine will finally be getting F-16 fighters later this year.
Now it just needs a good plan on how to use them against Russia, which has a larger air force, newer planes, and plenty of anti-aircraft missiles.
However, those F-16s could enable Ukraine to actually defeat Russia and reclaim lost territory, according to two American experts. But only if the battered Ukrainian Air Force is capable and willing to drastically change the way it fights in the middle of the war.
"Senior Ukrainian Armed Forces leaders must rid themselves of the Soviet/Russian doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures in which they have been trained," wrote David Deptula and Christopher Bowie in a report for the Mitchell Institute think tank.
"Old habits die hard. They must be willing to embrace new concepts and training — as well as a willingness to 'rewrite the books' on military employment. Finally, Ukrainian Air Force leadership must be incorporated into the Ukrainian General Staff to foster and facilitate integrated, all-domain concepts, planning, and employment."
"The bottom line is that it will not be easy," Deptula, a retired US Air Force lieutenant general, told Business Insider. "It will take years for the Ukrainian military culture to shift from the model based on their Soviet military history, to Western military doctrine."
Soviet doctrine tended to be rigid and top-down, with commanders expected to stick to the plan rather than take initiative in response to opportunities or setbacks on the battlefield. Joint operations were lacking: when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Air Force failed to provide significant close air support and fighter cover to the ground troops. The Russian air force has shown itself capable of devastating area bombardment but not the more precise strikes needed to defeat a moving enemy or take out its strongpoints.
The problem for Ukraine is that many of its senior officers began their careers in the Soviet military, were trained in Soviet military academies, and created the nation's armed forces in the Soviet image. They tend to revert to this background when they struggle with advice from Western militaries, as happened amid the 2023 counter-offensive. This is changing as younger officers rise, but embracing a radically different military culture and mindset — especially during wartime — is extremely difficult.
The US military has struggled with its own bureaucratic problems that hindered effective operations. For example, Deptula pointed to the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which aimed to eliminate rivalry between the US armed services that hampered joint operations (such as incompatible radios, which prevented Army troops from communicating with Navy ships during the 1982 invasion of Grenada). To spur jointness, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was given more power at the expense of the service chiefs, who also lost operational control over their forces in favor of regional combatant commands. Promotion to general or admiral also required prior experience in joint operations.
Nearly 40 years after Goldwater-Nichols, interservice rivalry — from football to funding — has hardly disappeared from the American military. But at least the US armed services have become accustomed to joint warfare.
This is something that Ukraine must do to win, or even just to survive. Facing superior Russian numbers and resources, the Ukrainian military must extract maximum efficiency from its forces. This means a flexible, coordinated style of warfare. For example, ground-based artillery and rockets can destroy Russian air defense systems, which enables Ukraine's air force to operate over the battlefield, and thus provide close air support to the army. Missions like close air support have a major impact on the battlefield, but Ukraine must shift to more coordination between its air controllers and air defense crews or risk shooting down its own jets, the Mitchell paper emphasizes.
Many others have warned that F-16s are very vulnerable in Ukraine's contested airspace and that the country may not be getting enough to sustain the losses that missions to push back Russian forces could entail.
These reforms won't be easy. "It took the US military decades to adopt to the tenets of joint force operations and the joint structure ensconced in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986," said Deptula. "Some would say that some services, like the Army and Marines, never fully adopted. That said, this does not mean that the Ukrainian military can't adopt for certain operations immediately. They will have to if they are to achieve advantage over the disproportionate size advantage that Russia holds."
Deptula believes the desire to reform Ukraine's military is there, at least at the lower levels. "It will take a combination of leadership push, new generation officer pull, and a collective desire to reform to accept and institute a Western way of war relative to the Soviet model," he said. "The platoon and squadron levels are already willing and eager to adopt new ways. It's the leadership at the general military staff level — and individual service levels — that require reform."
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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