In a virtuoso display of air-defense prowess unimaginable for any European member of NATO, Ukrainian forces shot down 34 out of 35 cruise missiles on December 22. It was even more notable given Ukraine’s defenders were also warding off another 638 Russian rockets and drones that same midwinter’s night.
Col. Yurii Ihnat, head of communications for the Ukrainian air force, told Ukrainian Pravda the cruise missiles were “mainly” shot down by F-16 fighters transferred by European allies.
Against all odds, the tiny Ukrainian air force hasn’t just survived its clashes with a Russian air arm 10 times its size, it has managed to modernize under fire, upgrading old ex-Soviet MiGs and Sukhois while inducting F-16s and ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000s, and integrating all the diverse airframes with some of the latest Western-made precision munitions.
But that success belies a worrying trend as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fifth year.
Ukraine’s leaders are wasting this potent force. Supersonic F-16s compatible with Sniper targeting pods, armed with GPS-guided Small Diameter Bomb glide munitions, and protected from Russian missiles by underwing electronic countermeasures shouldn’t be circling Kyiv, shooting down cruise missiles. Instead, they should be taking the fight to Russian forces along the forward edge of battle in eastern Ukraine.
It’s obvious why they aren’t. They lack enough precision bombs. And that’s a problem Ukraine and its allies should address with haste.
The 87 1980s-vintage — but heavily upgraded — F-16s that Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway have pledged to Ukraine, dozens of which have arrived since the first landed in August 2024, are Ukraine’s best battlefield interdiction assets.
More than any other Ukrainian weapon system, the nimble F-16s can strike at Russian troops (and their supporting artillery, drone teams, and logistics) at the moment that matters most: right before the troops march into battle against outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainian troops.
With rigid state control of the media, generous enlistment bonuses, and brutal coercive recruitment tactics, the Russians continue to generate more fresh manpower every month than they need to replace combat losses.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s own mobilization system is in a state of slow collapse owing to Ukraine’s much smaller population, a widespread sense that the system is unfair, and the tendency of Ukraine’s worst commanders to squander fresh troops on pointless, politically motivated counterattacks — a habit that has deeply undermined Ukrainian morale.
The upshot is that, in the most important sectors of the 1,200 km (about 800-mile) front line, the Russians have a five-to-one manpower advantage. And they’ve adapted their battlefield doctrine around this edge, parking armored vehicles in favor of costly but effective infantry infiltration.
In every one of the front-line towns and cities Ukraine lost or came close to losing in 2025 — Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, Siversk, and Huliaipole, among others — Russian success came not in the form of swift, carefully calculated mechanized assault, but through large numbers of infantry rushing forward in small groups, day after day, despite horrific losses.
Unless and until Kyiv can reform its failing mobilization system, the Ukrainian armed forces must find some way to blunt Russia’s manpower advantage, and must do so where that manpower is most vulnerable to attack. F-16s lobbing glide bombs would be just the thing.
Russian infantry favor urban assaults because the bomb- and artillery-blasted ruins of towns and cities offer them ample shelter from the small explosive drones Ukrainian forces possess in abundance. To work best, the drones must strike the Russians out in the open, before they reach the outermost rubble of some front-line settlement.
But the Russians have learned the hard way not to concentrate forces within 25 km or so of the porous front line, in the zone where Ukrainian drones and artillery are most dangerous. Tactical assaults often begin tens of kilometers from the front. Russian soldiers have taken to social media to complain about the long, arduous marches — in small groups and under heavy loads — that have become the standard prelude to a clash with dug-in Ukrainian soldiers.
The Ukrainian air force must strike the Russians deeper behind the front line, in the zones the Russians now consider relatively safe havens — and where Russian infantry can be attrited before they come into contact with Ukrainian infantry. Drones and artillery generally can’t reach that zone; F-16s can.
The prescription is for a standard NATO operation, the kind the alliance once planned for on the assumption that Soviet armies would bring to bear far more troops and vehicles than NATO divisions could defeat in a direct fight. It’s called battlefield air interdiction, or BAI.
Responsibility for air defense duties would be handed to ground-based defenses like the German Gepard mobile gun.
It’s clear the Ukrainians know they have an air interdiction problem. They’re visibly trying to meet the Russian BAI campaign with a BAI campaign of their own —but they’re doing it with Fire Point FP-2 one-way attack drones.
Where the older FP-1 devotes most of its 270 kg (about 600 lb) payload to fuel, extending its range to nearly 1,600 km, the FP-2 devotes most of its payload to its warhead. So the FP-1 strikes with 60 kg of explosives, but the FP-2 explodes with 100 kg. The downside is the newer drone’s limited range: just 200 km or so.
But that’s just enough range for a BAI strike. On the night of December 27, Ukrainian drones — FP-2s, most likely — struck a Russian commando base in Berdyans’ke in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. The attack killed or wounded 125 Russians, according to the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces.
F-16s are even deadlier. An F-16 can lob eight 100-kilogram Small Diameter Bomb glide munitions as far as 80 km. In other words, a single F-16 sortie is worth as many as eight FP-2s.
Assuming half of Ukraine’s F-16s are operational at any point, a brigade with 40 F-16s could drop nearly 200 glide bombs on the Russians’ heads every day. That pace of interdictory strikes would almost match the Russian rate.
It’s possible Ukrainian leaders recognize the propaganda value of the F-16s’ high success rate against cruise missiles. The jets are the shiniest symbols of the air defense effort. But even if they wanted to assign the F-16s to the much less glamorous task of bombing Russian troop concentrations, they couldn’t.
At least not yet. There aren’t enough bombs to go around.
Starting in late 2022, Russian factories quickly spun up to support the production of, so far, tens of thousands of UPMK glide bomb kits. By contrast, Ukraine continues to rely on foreign donations for its own arsenal of glide bombs.
And these donations are paltry. France pledged 50 Hammer glide bombs a month starting two years ago; it’s unclear whether that pledge has increased, though there are online videos showing their use. The Biden administration gave Ukraine potentially thousands of SDB and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) glide bombs, but it’s far from clear whether the Trump administration has continued the supply.
To arm the F-16s for the mission where they’d make the most difference, Ukraine needs bombs. Lots of them, and fast. It’s true that an effort to develop a Ukrainian glide bomb broke cover in late 2024. But if that prototype has become a production munition, there’s no evidence of it.
To match the Russians’ BAI campaign, the Ukrainians require thousands of glide bombs a month — and the political will to shift F-16s from inefficient air defense to efficient battlefield interdiction. All eyes turn to Germany, which has poured billions of euros into the Ukrainian arms industry. That financing has helped pay for thousands of Fire Point drones.
Maybe the next tranche of investment from Berlin should pay for a few tens of thousands of glide bombs.
David Axe is a journalist, author, and filmmaker in South Carolina. For 20 years he has covered war for Forbes, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, The Village Voice, Voice of America, and others. He has reported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. Right now, he is focused on covering Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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