Delivery of F-16 Fighter Jets to Ukraine from Denmark to Be Delayed by Up to Half a Year

Ukraine will reportedly need to wait up to an additional half year before receiving the F-16 fighter jets promised to the war-torn country from the Kingdom of Denmark, according to the Danish defence ministry.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has long lobbied Western powers for American-made F-16 warplanes, will apparently need to wait longer until the first jets are handed over, with the Danish Ministry of Defense announcing on Saturday that the first delivery F-16 jets will be delayed by at least six months.

Denmark became the first power in August to announce its intentions to donate some of its stock of the advanced war planes, promising Kyiv to commit 19 of its own F-16s to help Ukraine with its war with Russia.

The first delivery of around six F-16s was intended to have reached Ukraine “around New Year,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in August, with the remaining planes to be delivered throughout 2024 and 2025.

However, this timeline appears to have been too optimistic, with Ministry of Defence officials telling the Danish newspaper Berlingske that the initial donation will be delayed by up to six months.

While it has not been revealed exactly why the delay will occur, it widely understood that the training of pilots to operate the F-16 is a long and laborious process, and therefore the training of Ukrainian pilots is likely a contributing factor for the delay.

Military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen of the Norwegian Defence Academy told Danish broadcaster TV2: “It is one thing to train the pilots to fly the F-16 aircraft… another thing is that the pilots must also be trained in using the weapons, just as all the technicians on the ground must be trained in maintaining the planes. Just being trained on the engines is a huge task.”

Nielsen said that the transformation of the Ukrainian Air Force into a fully modern fleet will likely be a project that takes “several years” and that — despite the constant demands from President Zelensky — Kyiv most likely expected delays for the delivery of the fighter jets.

The defence expert said that once delivered, the F-16 jets could make a significant difference, including giving Ukraine the ability to shoot down Russian aircraft as well as cruise missiles being used by Moscow to target Ukrainian cities as winter conditions have made ground fighting more difficult.

“It would give the Ukrainian soldiers some more security that they are in Ukrainian airspace, and it would force the Russians not to come so close to Ukrainian cities,” Nielsen said of the F-16.

The delay, therefore, will be a big blow for Zelensky, who vowed to the Ukrainian public during his New Year’s address that Russia would soon feel the “wrath” of Western donated F-16 fighters. In addition to Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway have all pledged to deliver some of their F-16s, however, there is not currently a clear timeline as to when this will happen.

It comes as Germany revealed this week that only a “very small number” of modern Leopard 2 battle tanks that it provided to Ukraine are still operational, with a
Green Party parliamentarian and defence expert Sebastian Schäfer citing a lack of spare parts and an inability among the Ukrainian military to carry out repairs without further damaging the machines as reason why the advanced tanks have been essentially neutralised on the battlefield.

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