US not sending contractors to service Ukrainian F-16s – WSJ

Washington is concerned the Americans could be targeted by Russian forces, a US official has told the outlet

The administration of US President Joe Biden has rejected a Pentagon plan to send American contractors to Ukraine to maintain Western hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, the Wall Street journal has reported, citing officials in Washington.

The longstanding debate about deploying US civilians to Ukraine to service the hardware supplied to Kiev by its foreign backers has intensified since the delivery of the first batch of six F-16s to Ukraine in late July, the outlet said in an article on Friday.

The White House National Security Council looked into the proposal coming from the military, but deemed it to be too risky, officials familiar with the discussion told the WSJ.

"The intelligence community raised concerns over the prospect of Russia targeting American contractors in Ukraine,” one of the sources told the outlet.

The Biden administration has not ruled out sending US contractors to Ukraine completely, but it is not going to happen any time soon, the report read.

For now, Washington expects its NATO allies in Europe to take responsibility for servicing the US-designed jets, it added.

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The Netherlands, which together with Norway, Denmark and Belgium promised to supply Kiev with more than 80 F-16s, has already announced that it will fund a private contract between a civilian maintenance company and the Ukrainian Air Force.

"We support the Ukrainian government financially to make those contracts with private partners to see if they can hold the aircraft up and running in the future,” General Onno Eichelsheim, the Dutch chief of defense, said on Wednesday.

The WSJ noted that Ukraine had previously struggled to maintain other US-supplied weapons, such as the Abrams M1 tank, which had to be shipped outside the country for repairs. The outlet pointed out that an F-16 requires “hours of service for every hour of flight time,” with dozens of support personnel usually working on each plane.

Earlier this week, Kiev confirmed the loss of its first F-16, which reportedly crashed on Monday, killing its pilot. The Ukrainian media said the investigators were looking into technical problems and pilot error as the possible reasons for the accident. However, MP Mariana Bezuglaya claimed that the jet was shot down as a result of “friendly fire” from one of Ukraine’s US-donated Patriot air defense systems. Russian reports said that the F-16 could have been destroyed on the ground by an Iskander missile during a strike on an airfield in western Ukraine.

READ MORE: Ukraine confirms loss of first F-16

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the use of F-16s in the conflict will make them “a legitimate target” for Russian forces, warning that the planes will be struck even at airfields inside NATO countries if they operate from there.