I regret not posting the entire article, thought the objections I posted were sufficient. Some more salient points and the link are below.
The article is comprehensive. Why do you think every consideration in the article has not been raised in the Pentagon with the apparent conclusion, no dice?
Weigh your notion and your belief against the entire article.
In fact, getting the aircraft into Ukraine would probably be the easy part.
The Air Force uses 25 maintainers for every one tactical aircraft
While all fighter jets are not created equal, there is one universal truth when it comes to operating them: it takes a ton of maintenance, even for aircraft like the F-16 that is renowned for being fairly inexpensive to operate. In fact, as a general rule of thumb, each F-16 requires about 16 hours of maintenance for every one hour spent flying.
It’s not a simple matter of having a few well-trained aircraft mechanics standing by to fix whatever ails a jet either—these are highly specialized pieces of equipment that require equally specialized training to maintain, let alone repair.
According to the U.S. Air Force’s 332d Air Expeditionary Wing, which operates both the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16C Fighting Falcon (among other aircraft), it takes a ratio of 25 maintainers to every one aircraft to keep their equipment in good working order. Of course, it could be done with fewer techs, but hard combat flying will undoubtedly require more maintenance and repairs than standard training flights might.
“It’s a constant double and triple checking,” said Senior Airman Griffin Langiano, maintenance crew chief. “There are so many moving parts, and if you don’t take your time it’s easy to miss something. We have to be 100 percent positive the plane is mission capable.”
This includes individuals conducting pre-flight, thru-flight, and post-flight safety checks (thru-flight means landing to re-arm before departing to continue a mission), as well as several more specialized groups called “back shops.”
These “back shop” maintainers specialize in more specific skill sets like maintaining or repairing weapons, guidance or propulsion systems. These jobs aren’t just essential to continuing air combat operations, they’re serious business. A single misplaced socket or poorly secured panel could result in a deadly crash.
“(Maintainers) have more responsibility than the majority of Airmen in the Air Force,” explained 1st Lt. Tate Ashton, 391st Fighter Squadron Sortie Generation Flight commander.
“Nobody else is held to a higher level of accountability than they are.”
Flying a fighter in combat means continuously pushing it to the limits of capability, and that means placing the airframe and other components under a huge amount of stress. Keeping these jets in flying condition takes a great deal of training.
In order to become an Air Force tactical aircraft maintenance technician, Airmen must complete five advanced training courses at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas.
It takes each technician about 18 months to complete their job-specific training (on top of things like basic training) before they’re sent to their fleet units where they’ll continue to undergo on-the-job training until they’re fully proficient at their jobs.
These highly-trained maintenance techs then rely on specialized equipment and a massive logistical enterprise to keep them supplied with the materials they need to maintain their aircraft.
This would require new infrastructure Ukraine doesn’t already have, from a place to put specialized equipment to a means to get regular shipments of Western parts to Ukrainian airstrips. Again, the goal would be to accomplish all of this without sending NATO troops into Ukraine.
Even if Ukraine could train its pilots to be competent in the F-16 and F-15 cockpits in just a matter of weeks (which, in itself, is extremely unlikely), they could never train enough airframe maintainers in that time. But let’s pretend they could do that too… then they’d still be facing another serious hurdle when it comes to ordnance.
You may not realize it if you’ve never spent much time on the flight line, but the weapons employed by fighter jets like America’s F-15 and F-16 are entirely different than those employed by the Soviet-era fighters in service for Ukraine. You can’t simply strap a Russian R-27 air-to-air missile to an F-16 and assume it’ll work when you pull the trigger.
Modern air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles and even many modern bombs are complex pieces of technology that require specific mounting hardware and specially trained technicians to be employed successfully.
Air Force Aircraft Armament Systems Specialists are tasked with arming America’s F-15 and F-16 fleets, and Ukraine would need similarly trained personnel on their own airstrips. This too requires a great deal of in-depth training (somewhere between 45 and 86 days’ worth, according to the Air Force).
Of course, Ukraine already has weapons technicians, so it may not take the same amount of time to spin them up regarding how to properly arm these aircraft, but it certainly isn’t something that could be done overnight.
But just as importantly, Ukraine would need a steady supply of munitions specific to each of these aircraft in order for them to provide any real value in the fight. Ukraine is already receiving weapons from external sources, so while some of this infrastructure work has already been done, it would require a significant effort to keep the flow of weapons and parts coming to Ukraine’s airstrips as Russian forces target the supply line in an effort to get these jets out of the fight.
As we’ve already discussed regarding the establishment of a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine, advanced Russian air defense systems like the S-400 Triumpf have an operational range of around 250 miles. That means Ukrainian fighters would need to engage air defense systems inside Russia and potentially even Belarus in order to take control of their airspace (as multiple Ukrainian officials and pilots have championed as part of the request for these fighters). Otherwise, these air defense platforms could continue to shoot down Ukrainian jets that strayed too close to Russian territory.
But Russian air defense systems aren’t the biggest reason Ukraine would need to send its newly-gained F-15 and F-16 fleets into Russia—the biggest reason is that most Russian airstrikes are launched by aircraft that never leave Russian airspace.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
