They have hundreds of Su’s and MiGs, although there definitely will be issues with flight stress to the airframes. I wrote about it ages ago, but F-16s are rated for thousands of hours extra flight time, compared to the Russian equivalents. Not counting losses, of the Su and MiG variety with numbers greater than 30, they have 600+ according to reports. They probably have another 500 of the older variety.
What they’re definitely thin on now are tanks and armoured vehicles.
They’re seemingly preferring smaller, more mobile units on motorcycles now.
Surprised we haven’t had a 144th Lada Division yet. Strap a coule of RPGs and a Machine gun to the roof and you have arguably the most indestructible fighting vehicle ever made.
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Also supposedly AWACS aircraft. That will make the Ukraine Saab safer and give them a little breathing space in the air war you’d think.
So Top Gun:Maverick was realistic?!
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I wonder if they shipped all the Toyota technicals back home when Assad fell…
He was flying an F-14 and granted, it’s even possible for an F-14 or older aircraft to shoot down a jet if it’s been fitted out to fire modern missiles and is being guided by a secondary system that extends it’s range. Individually, apart from stealth, agility and speed, the biggest differences between fighters are to the onboard targeting systems that change their operational engagement range. If you enhance the targeting system using a more sophisticated one, you can take out targets ridiculously far away, before they can detect you. It’s why the Russian’s having their A-50’s destroyed is really damaging to their capabilities. They’ll have to use aircraft with worse capabilities or ground based which is easy to destroy.
So confirmed, the F-16 did score a kill and it was assisted by a Swedish supplied surveillance aircraft.