Ukrainian pilots arrive in the U.S. to assess combat aircraft piloting skills – NBC
Two Ukrainian pilots are currently in the United States, where they are being evaluated to determine how long it might take to train them to fly attack aircraft, including F-16 fighter jets, two congressmen and a senior U.S. official said, according to NBCNEWS.
According to the officials, the Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, and more of their fellow pilots may soon join them.
U.S. authorities have approved the arrival of up to 10 more Ukrainian pilots to the United States for further evaluation this month, officials said. The arrival of the two Ukrainian pilots marks the beginning of the evaluation and training of Ukrainian pilots in the United States. Another goal is to determine the timing of the Ukrainian pilots’ training based on their previous experience piloting Soviet fighter jets.
“The program is to evaluate their abilities as pilots so that we can better advise them on how to use the capabilities that they have and that we have provided them,” the administration official said.
Two administration officials emphasized that this is not a training program and said that the Ukrainians will not be flying any aircraft while in the United States.
The officials said the pilots would use a simulator that can simulate flying different types of aircraft and emphasized that there was no update on the U.S. decision to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, other than what a senior Pentagon official told Congress last week.
Colin Kahl told the House Armed Services Committee that the United States has not made a decision to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, nor have U.S. allies and partners made such a decision.
He also said that the United States “has not started training on the F-16” and that the F-16 delivery timeframe is “essentially the same” as the training timeframe – about 18 months.
“So, you’re not really saving yourself any time by starting training early in our assessment,” said Kahl, who is the US undersecretary of defense for policy. “And since we haven’t made a decision to provide the F-16 yet, and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn’t make sense to start training them on a system that they may never get.”
Other U.S. defense officials said the training could be reduced to six to nine months, depending on the pilots’ prior training and knowledge of the fighter jets.
Ukrainian officials have told the U.S. and other allies that they have at least 20 pilots ready to travel to the U.S. for F-16 training and about 30 more pilots who, according to U.S. and Western officials, could be trained in the near future.
When asked about the evaluation of the two Ukrainian pilots, a defense official called it a “familiarization exercise.”
