Biden Says U.S. Won’t Send F-16 Fighter Jets to Ukraine

When President Joe Biden was asked whether the US would send F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine, he simply answered, “No,” Bloomberg Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter, reported Monday.

Following the decision of the administration to send Ukraine planes, there was a push for them to be sent. 31 M1 Abrams tanks to the war-torn European nation. According to an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister Reuters The country is trying actively to obtain the jets and calling it the “next big hurdle.” At a press briefing last Wednesday, Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s Deputy Press Secretay, said that she would not rule out sending one of the jets.

“This is a capability that would require training. It would require more people to come off the battlefield to learn an entirely new system. And again, the Ukrainians have proven that they can learn complicated, complex challenging systems. … In terms of like, the Abrams [tanks], it is more the sustainment, the maintenance when it’s on the battlefield. With the F-16s, again, another challenging system would require training.

Biden said In the past, sending jets to Ukraine was thought to be a way to cause “World War III.”” He said so after an offer from Poland to transfer 28 Soviet-designed MiG 29s. “This idea is that we’ll send in offensive equipment. We’ll also have planes, trains and tanks going in with American pilots. It’s not a joke, it’s World War III.