White House comments on prospects F-16 training for Ukrainian pilots

In order for American F-16 aircraft to appear in service with the Ukrainian Defense Forces, it is necessary to train war pilots, deploy infrastructure, and establish maintenance, all of which will take some time, but the United States is helping allies to speed up the process.

Such a comment was made on Friday during an online briefing by the White House national security coordinator, John Kirby, Ukrinform's own correspondent reports.

" It's going to be a while before jets can show up in Ukraine and for them to be integrated into the air fleet. And it's not just a function of the transfer of actual airframes, but, as you mentioned, the appropriate training for pilots as well as setting up all the maintenance, logistics and sustainment efforts," the White House official noted.

He said that this implies longer-term effort.

"But the President is committed to delivering on that promise to Ukraine. And as part of that, we have been working with our European partners," Kirby emphasized.

According to the official, close cooperation is currently continuing, in particular, with Denmark, the Netherlands and other countries on developing a training program for Ukrainian pilots. In addition, he continued, the need for language training of Ukrainian specialists, which will be provided by the UK, cannot be ignored.

"All the tech manuals are in English and all the controls inside the aircraft are in English. And so a pilot is going to have to have at least some basic proficiency in the language," said the representative of the White House.

"All that we can say is that there's a multi-step process. And we're committed to helping our allies move that process along as quickly as it possibly can," concluded the representative of the U.S. administration.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, last week, some media reported the readiness of the first group of eight Ukrainian pilots for training on American F-16s.