More F-16s on the Way, US General Says, But Not From US

More F-16 fighter jets are set to be gifted to Kyiv as Ukrainian pilots continue their training, said Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, during a US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was set to meet with European allies on Thursday, in part to press NATO members to keep up arms purchases from the US.

“There are more F-16s prepared to be deployed in there [Ukraine],” Gen. Cavoli said, declining to provide exact figures or provenance.

“None of the F-16s has been from the US though. They’ve mainly been from northern European countries: Netherlands, Denmark,” he said.

Incidentally, Rubio met with Denmark’s foreign minister on Thursday, as tensions in Copenhagen ran high over the US administration’s announced intentions to annex Greenland, a Danish territory.

“Secretary Rubio reaffirmed the strong relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark,” a US statement said after a meeting on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels.

The statement did not say if there had been any discussion on Greenland. Rather, it said Rubio’s talks with Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen focused on “shared priorities including increasing NATO defense spending and burden sharing, and addressing the threats to the alliance, including those posed by Russia and China.”

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“They also reviewed ongoing coordination to enhance stability and security in Europe and to secure an enduring peace in Ukraine,” it said. 

Back in Washington, the four-star US Army general reiterated that Ukraine already has a certain number of F-16 fighter jets in operation. “They fly every day,” he said.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) last week published what they billed as the first interview with a Western-trained Ukrainian F-16 pilot, who said that he and his F-16-pilot colleagues were impressed with the accuracy of the Western systems, hitting “80 percent” of their targets. The only real drawback to the missions, he said, was that the aircraft could not get close enough to their main targets, Russian guided bombs, because of enemy’s air defenses.

Late last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky reported at a press conference that US President Donald Trump had promised him that more F-16s were on the way, likely from European partners.

As Trump has called for fellow NATO members to boost their defense spending, sources told Reuters that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio relayed that message to foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on March 25 during a meeting, with two sources telling Reuters that Rubio said exclusion of US arms makers would be perceived negatively by the US. 

“Transatlantic defense industrial cooperation makes the Alliance stronger,” a State-Department spokesperson said.