{"id":54329,"date":"2024-07-11T15:15:43","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T05:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abnews.com.au\/?p=54329"},"modified":"2024-07-11T15:15:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T05:15:43","slug":"f-16s-will-boost-ukraine-defenses-but-not-a-silver-bullet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/?p=54329","title":{"rendered":"F-16s will boost Ukraine defenses, but not a &#8216;silver bullet&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>F-16 warplanes being sent to Ukraine is a victory for President Volodymyr Zelensky and will help protect against Russian strikes, but they are not a one-stop solution for gaps in the country&#8217;s air defenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The United States, the Netherlands and Denmark announced Wednesday that the transfer of the planes had begun, saying Ukraine &#8220;will be flying operational F-16s this summer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zelensky had repeatedly pushed for the US-made warplanes to help counter Russia&#8217;s invasion, with the United States eventually acceding last year after initially insisting that focusing on ground-based air defenses was a better use of resources.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As a symbolic effort, it&#8217;s tremendously important&#8230; This was really the last item that Zelensky had highlighted as important for Ukrainian defense,&#8221; said Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n<p>He noted that there has been a series of weapons systems &#8212; HIMARS rocket launchers, Patriot air defense batteries, Abrams tanks, ATACMS missiles &#8212; that Washington was reluctant to provide but eventually agreed to donate to Kyiv.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>F-16 warplanes being sent to Ukraine is a victory for President Volodymyr Zelensky and will help protect against Russian strikes, but they are not a one-stop solution for gaps in the country&#8217;s air defenses. The United States, the Netherlands and Denmark announced Wednesday that the transfer of the planes had begun, saying Ukraine &#8220;will be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1947,1948],"class_list":["post-54329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","tag-but-not-a-silver-bullet","tag-f-16s-will-boost-ukraine-defenses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}