Ukraine will likely receive it first shipment of advanced F-16s in the next few days, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call as Kyiv seeks to disrupt Russia’s air superiority over Ukrainian skies.
KYIV -- Ukraine will likely receive it first shipment of advanced F-16s in the next few days, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call as Kyiv seeks to disrupt Russia’s air superiority over Ukrainian skies amid continued battles on December 23 in the east and south of the country.
"Today, I informed President Zelenskiy of our government's decision to prepare an initial 18 F-16 fighter aircraft for delivery to Ukraine," Rutte said late on December 22 in a post on social media platform X.
What SMillerNL said. Also: he didn't gain an absolute majority, and as the Netherlands doesn't use a first past the post system like the US or UK, he'll need to form a coalition government to be able to rule the country.
The F35 was ordered a decade ago. The decision to replace the ageing F16 was basically already made twenty years ago, IRC one of the Balkenende governments:
The Netherlands is part of the nuclear sharing agreement with the US. The F16 is nuclear capable but over 30 years old. The F35 is also nuclear capable and replaced it. The Dutch government would have had to withdraw from nuclear sharing and seriously damaged its relationship with the US.
and make Europe more like America without Healthcare.
The US spends almost twice as much on healthcare as the Netherlands. Saying that the Netherlands or the US must choose between healthcare and defense, is a false dichotomy. One often pushed by Russian and Chinese propagandists.
Last time I checked, the Netherlands spends less than 1.5% of GDP on defense. That's still less than the 2% agreed upon by Balkenende in 2014.
You invest in defense, or you get pushed around by countries like China or Russia. That means more expensive fuel, imports, less ability to export, etc. It means less jobs and everyone's poorer. If they think you're weak, they're also more likely to make stupid mistakes, like blow up another civilian airliner or use a toxic nerve agent that could have killed thousands near a UK military base in a show of force. If you're strong, they're more careful, and we can all live in peace for a while longer.
Honestly, this reminds me a lot of climate change. People burying their heads in the sand, rather than admit the reality. Even after countless warnings and half a million casulties in a European war, people are still trying to pretend nothing's changed.
Sounds like a bad idea to announce when the hardware will be moving. We’ve seen past weapons transfers announced to be happening “soon” though they’ve already occurred. They may well already be in Ukraine.
Does anyone know what kind of timeline there might be before the pilots are trained to fly them? Is it something that might have an impact within days/weeks or is it going to be months before they can be used effectively?