Ukraine has managed to reasonably preserve its airfleet of old soviet planes.
When f-16s are shipped they will also get training on how to use them to avoid unnecessary losses and in the frame of combined arms. They are not gonna blindly fly them over russian S-300 cover.
These capable platforms also come with a whole arsenal of weapons of great use.
Jdam, harm, glrms (longer range then fired from artillery). It will boost ukranian options and fire support, and slowly tilt the air balance.
Finally, unlike soviet planes where nato has only some old leftovers of. F-16 and its weapons and ammo are widely available. So support will be a constant stream.
Again. They will receive more capable tanks and even if they use it as indirect artillery role, it has plenty of ammo stocks to go around.
They will also get training how to use these in combined arms doctrine.
They will be used as tip of the spear in counterattack breakthroughs. Being able to shoot on the move also helps a lot in that respect. The ukranians lacked this armored punch to break lines.
Together with nato intel and wargaming analysis/sessions (kharkiv counter offensive)…they will use it at beneficial times. Not just blindly send them in 1 by 1 like the russians do.
The ukie air force only exists as an assymetric force. Ukraine is a massive country, and all her neighbours are fully helping it against Russia
Thats why they still have random planes they have hidden that make a propaganda appearance once a month
That is universe away from an actual functioning air force. If the ukies park their planes in any airbase… they would be instantly destroyed
F16s would not fare much better. It would be more of the same.
These same F-16s have been going all over Syria at will over the last twenty years who has Russian supplied air defences, with not one shot down. So I think the nato cheerleaders may have some reason behind it.
This point i will agree with you in terms of masking true intentions under moral justification. The same countries are glad to see Israel and Indian step over their own helpless population and looked silently by as Yemen got bombarded for 5 years. I want food prices to come down and oil prices to come down for third world countries and want this to end and I want NATO to win. But I am not coming at it from a morality standpoint Of freedom/democracy. Those were the same justifications used to go into Iraq to give IRaqis freedom
Russians dont want to shoot zionist planes down. At least not at this time.