On August 4, the first Sunday of August, Ukraine celebrates the Day of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On this day, all the defenders of the Ukrainian sky are honored, in particular the pilots of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Ukraine has been celebrating this holiday for the 18th year. On June 27, 2007, the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, by decree instructed to annually celebrate the first Sunday of August as the Day of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The head of state motivated such a decision by the important importance of this type of troops “in ensuring the state’s defense capability”, writes NV.
At the same time, Yushchenko canceled the decree of his predecessor Leonid Kuchma from 1997, according to which Ukraine celebrated Air Defense Forces Day every year on the first Sunday of July. After all, in 2004, the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was formed as a union of the Air Defense Forces and the Air Force.
Structurally, the Ukrainian Air Force consists of the command, air commands, the Kharkiv National University of the Air Force, military units and directly subordinate institutions.
The commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine since August 2021 is Lieutenant General, Hero of Ukraine Mykola Oleschuk.
The Air Force includes:
– bomber aircraft,
– fighter aircraft,
– attack aircraft,
– reconnaissance aviation,
– transport aviation
– anti-aircraft missile troops, which are the main air shield of Ukraine — the key forces of air defense;
– radio engineering troops.
The Air Force also includes separate military units and units of special forces (reconnaissance, engineering, radiation, chemical and bacteriological protection, communications, automated control systems and radio technical support, electronic warfare, meteorological support, parts of logistical and medical support and others).
Among the models of equipment that are in service with the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine:
– aircraft MiG-29, Su-27, Su-25, Su-24, L-39, Il-76, An-26, An-24, An-30,
– Western F-16 fighter jets, the first units of which probably arrived in Ukraine in the last days of July, a few days before the holiday of the Air Force of the Armed Forces;
– Mi-8, Mi-9 helicopters,
– Soviet anti-aircraft missile complexes S-300, S-125, Buk air defense system, Osa air defense system;
– modern air defense systems of the Nasams air defense system, the IRIS-T air defense system, the Patriot air defense system, the SAMP/T air defense system
Since Soviet times, Ukraine also “inherited” strategic aviation, but voluntarily gave it up in the early 2000s as part of the agreement between Ukraine and the United States on the elimination of strategic nuclear weapons and the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
In January 2006, the last Ukrainian Tu-22M3 long-range bomber was destroyed at the Poltava air base – it is from such aircraft that the Russian Federation is now launching long-range missile strikes on Ukraine. In total, over four years, 60 strategic bombers were purposefully destroyed in Ukraine: 17 Tu-22M2 and 43 Tu-22M3, and 423 Kh-22 missiles were disposed of. Thus, long-range bomber aviation ceased to exist in Ukraine.
However, the invasion of Russia in 2014 and its full-scale phase, which continues from 2022, brought the Air Force of the Armed Forces to a new level. Currently, the experience of Ukrainian pilots and air defense specialists is unique for the whole world, because no country in the world in recent decades has had to confront a state with such power of enemy aviation and missile forces as the Russian Federation has.
Unique air battles
From the first hours of the full-scale invasion of Russia, Ukrainian pilots – both more experienced and very young – had to defend the skies of Ukraine from Russian aviation in air battles. After all, according to the tradition of its aggressive campaigns, in particular the war in Syria, the Russian Federation hoped to quickly establish total dominance in the air, which would significantly complicate the work of the Defense Forces of Ukraine.
Unique aerial duels became, for example, part of the battle for Kyiv and the north of Ukraine, where the military and pilots of the Air Force, together with other defenders of Ukraine, completely broke the plans of the enemy. The details of some of such historical missions, unfortunately, sometimes become known only after the death of Ukrainian pilots.
Thus, Colonel Valentyn Korenchuk, one of the “ghosts of Kyiv”, wrote his name in the history of Ukrainian aviation, a pilot of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade of the Air Command Center of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the call sign “Bee” – Kyiv said goodbye to him in June 2024. He was one of those who, together with lieutenant colonel Vyacheslav Yerk, who also died, saved the center of Kyiv from the attacks of Russian attack aircraft.
“On February 24-25, 2022, he and Vyacheslav Yerko carried out very important interception flights. In particular, the destruction of Russian attack aircraft, which with full BC went to destroy Bankova, to destroy Maidan Nezalezhnosti, was recorded and confirmed,” Andriy Snizhko, Korenchuk’s brother, told NV. According to him, Korenchuk had a unique fight, “because it was a fight without the use of weapons.” The pilot tried to use the maneuverability of his MiG-29 aircraft to lure the enemy out of the territory of the Maidan and the center of Kyiv – “they twisted, twisted, maneuvered, finally twisted in the Vyshgorod area,” Snizhko recalled. “Kats*p couldn’t resist, caught on something and was crushed, crushed himself. And this is a unique battle in the history of Ukrainian aviation, and in the history of the world. Because the last such cases we know only from the history of the Second World War. In modern aviation , this does not happen with modern aircraft,” explained the inconsistency of this air battle to Korenchuk’s brother, who died in the spring of 2024.
In June 2022, a military pilot, 61-year-old Colonel of the ZSU Mykhailo Matyushenko with the callsign Did, who led the 40th tactical aviation brigade of the ZSU Air Force, died in the sky over the Black Sea while performing a mission in an air battle with the Russian occupiers. Its pilots became the prototypes of the “Ghosts of Kyiv” image.
In March 2023, one of the most experienced Ukrainian pilots, Denys Kyrylyuk, who flew 70 sorties to destroy the enemy during the full-scale invasion, died.
However, other Ukrainian pilots continue to defend the skies of Ukraine despite extreme threats, constant attacks by the Russian Federation on military airfields and numerous statements by Russian propaganda about the destruction of almost all of Ukraine’s aviation.
The record holder among them is Uman pilot Rostyslav Lazarenko, who as of the end of 2023 had flown almost 440 sorties. He set a record among pilots, surpassing the legendary pilot Ivan Kozhedub. Lazarenko broke his record back in June 2023, having completed 336 sorties at that time.
High-speed training on F-16 and advocacy for their provision to Ukraine
“Another impossible thing has turned out to be quite possible” – this is how the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielus Landsbergis commented on the probable appearance of the first F-16s in Ukraine on July 31. According to information The Times, it is about six fighters that were delivered to Ukraine from the Netherlands. Several more F-16s are due to arrive from Denmark soon, sources told The Times. Earlier, the American The New York Times wrote that by the end of 2024, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be able to use about ten F-16 aircraft in combat missions.
To make this possible, the titanic efforts of Ukrainian diplomats and the military were needed, but not only them. An overriding factor in the complex process of transferring F-16 aircraft to Ukraine was the ability of Ukrainian pilots and auxiliary technicians to quickly learn to work with fighters. And if the full training course for American pilots takes about two years, the first Ukrainian pilots mastered fighter jets in less than a year. After all, only a year ago, in August 2023, the USA first approved the sending of F-16s to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands, as soon as pilot training was completed. While this training began much later.
“I know how much work has been done to get this opportunity. The biggest incentive here is the motivation to come back and continue to fight on new aircraft,” the pilot with the call sign Moonfish, one of the first to learn to fly the F-16, emphasized in May 2024 .
Ukrainian pilots were also among those who directly proved to Western countries the importance of providing Ukraine with F-16s and told how difficult it is to protect the skies under the conditions of total superiority of the Russian Federation in aviation. One of the most famous “lawyers” in this process was the deceased Andrii Pilshchikov, a pilot with the call sign “Jus”. In particular, in June 2022, he joined the Ukrainian delegation in Washington, which held negotiations with US congressmen and senators. One of the results of many months of efforts, in which Pilshchikov and other Ukrainian pilots participated, was a positive vote in Congress for the request to fund the Ukrainian pilot training program.
Historical experience of air defense in destroying Russian Zircons, Daggers and other missiles
It was thanks to the skill of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that the hypothetical ability of the Patriot to shoot down the allegedly “invincible” Russian Kinzhal (X-47) missiles, and later hypersonic Zircons, was proven in practice for the first time.
“Given that the Kinzhal moves in the sky at a huge speed, more than 7 thousand kilometers per hour, there is not much time to eliminate it,” Yuriy Ignat, the spokesman of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reminded of the difficulty of shooting down such missiles. Fly-offs of Russian MiG-31K aircraft carrying such missiles still cause aerial alarm throughout Ukraine.
Until Ukraine managed to shoot down the Dagger, the ability to counter ballistic missiles was considered only a theoretical advantage of the Patriot air defense system. Therefore, it was the Ukrainian military who managed not only to master these complexes in an extremely short period of time, but also to prove their effectiveness in destroying ballistics in practice.
Air ambushes on Russian aviation and the destruction of A-50 aircraft
Ukrainian calculations of Patriot and other air defense systems brilliantly demonstrated the ability to shoot down enemy planes and helicopters. On May 13, 2023, five units of Russian aviation were destroyed over the Bryansk region of the Russian Federation: Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft, two rare REB Mi-8MTPR-1 helicopters and a Mi-8 helicopter. Only later, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed that these were the shots of the Patriot air defense system and the “air ambush” arranged by Ukraine. “Litakopad” continued in December 2023 and in January-February 2024, when Ukrainian forces shot down Russian planes at a super-fast pace.
In addition, Ukraine has such unique downed targets as two Russian A-50 long-range radar detection and control aircraft. At least one of them, as later confirmed in the USA, was shot down in January 2024 from the Patriot air defense system, which is in service with the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“Now it is in Ukraine’s service, probably with the Patriot battalion. Some of them are used to protect stationary objects, others are mobile and do really historical things. I have not seen anything like this in 22 years of work in air defense,” the American recognized the unique experience of Ukrainian specialists Col. Rosanna Clemente, deputy chief of staff for the US Army’s 10th Air and Missile Defense Command, recounting the details of the A-50 downing.
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4-08-2024, 11:00
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