Aviation breakthrough: Ukraine plans to create a fleet of 250 aircraft
28 October 11:08
During a meeting with journalists, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is working on a large-scale upgrade of combat aircraft and is negotiating with several partners at once – the United States, Sweden, and France.
This was reported by "Komersant Ukrainian".
“In general, we have various partners in the F-16 Coalition, who, of course, have not only F-16s but also other combat aircraft. Therefore, from the very beginning of this dialogue with our partners, we have raised the issue of Gripen as well,” Zelensky said.
He explained that this platform requires the approval of the Swedish government and the support of the United States, but Ukraine has repeatedly raised this issue.
“I have raised this issue in different formats, probably 8 or 10 times,” the president said.
Zelenskyy emphasized that the future of Ukrainian aviation will be developed in three areas: F-16, Gripen and Rafale.
“The Gripen, for example, is one of the favorites of these platforms. Why? The Gripen is the cheapest to maintain because the least number of people needs to be involved. For our pilot with a specialty and experience, it is not a year and a half of training, as, for example, we had with the F-16, but 6 months,” he emphasized.
The President also noted the advantages of the aircraft:
“All the flight and landing technical capabilities of the Gripen are also favorable, you know – they can take off and land on the roads. It is also important that the Gripen is convenient in terms of using weapons. When we didn’t have F-16s, we had already started to find tools to use Western weapons on our Ukrainian Soviet-made aircraft. It took us months, we could not use the existing missiles because there were no such mounts. And it was difficult. But our engineers worked together with the engineers of the countries whose weapons we were using. So, as for the Gripen, everything is attached to it. Probably, almost everything that Ukraine uses – missiles and other weapons – can be hooked up to it.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had agreed with Sweden to supply 150 new Gripen aircraft.
“We have agreed with Sweden that we will sign an agreement and Ukraine will have 150 new Gripen aircraft. Of course, this is a long way to go. But it is a very good option. “The Gripen will be fully armed. The main issue is that we have agreed on the localization of the Gripen. I believe this is a historic agreement,” he said.
Overall, Ukraine plans to build a fleet of 250 new combat aircraft.
