The first widely available images of a Ukrainian Air Force F-16 fighter fully armed for air-to-ground combat showed the US-made multi-role aircraft loaded with precision guided munitions along with its ubiquitous air-to-air standard self-defense/swing role missiles.
The original video of the low-flying F-16, fully armed for its multiple roles, appeared on TikTok on Sunday.
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The one-second recording of the fighter flying low-level at high speed above a rural location showed the warplane, according to Ukrainian milblogger reports, carrying a heavy load including two 370-gallon (1,400-liter) external fuel tanks, an AN/ALQ-131 electronic counter-measures (ECM) pod (on the center hardpoint), and two BRU-61/A pylons each probably carrying a pair of GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb GPS-guided bombs. Two AIM-120B/C AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles) were visible on the wingtips. The Kyiv Post research team confirmed that loadout.
Some observers said the aircraft also seemed to be carrying a pair of AIM-9 short-range IR (infrared) air-to-air missiles. The Kyiv Post research team also confirms this additional information.
A few reviewers of the grainy video said the F-16 appeared to have been rigged with an ECIPS+ electronic warfare system, an AN/ALQ-162 radar jammer and AN/AAR-60 missile warning system, and a DS+ chaff/flare countermeasures system.
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Kyiv Post review concluded those add-ons were possible – in fact probable given what upgrades likely came with the reportedly twice modified F-16AM Vipers delivered to Ukraine – but that conjecture on the part of the milbloggers is only their speculation and cannot be ascertained by looking at a video.
Israeli military analyst Yigal Levin wrote on Sunday of the electronic add-ons:
“Interestingly, the appearance of electronic warfare systems and containers on Ukrainian Western-style aircraft has long been expected, as they provide another level of protection, in addition to standard countermeasures in the form of ejected chaff [multiple dipole radar reflective ‘tinsel’ or ‘confetti’] and [IR decoy flares].
“These means are a set of tools that, upon detecting radiation from an enemy aircraft or SAM radar, send back ‘spam’ of electromagnetic waves in the same range, adjusting to the constantly changing frequency of radiation. In this way, the system ‘jams’ [or, more likely, ‘spoofs’] the radar [targeting you]. However, due to power limitations, these means are not panacea, since the enemy radar may ‘burn through’ the interference with a more powerful signal. In addition, they operate at a relatively short distance but are capable of giving the pilot several critical minutes to make a decision.”
Based on the visible loadout, the pilot’s mission was to carry out a ground strike against a pre-planned target and avoid engagements with Russian aircraft, at least until delivering its air-to-ground ordnance, Kyiv Post review found.
Operating in combat, the F-16 aircraft is designed to always have an inherent self-escort capability and, following air superiority doctrine, the pilot can “swing” to a fully offensive counter air-role, even on a ground strike mission.
So, the aircraft would always carry the 2 x 2 (2 x AIM-120, 2 x AIM-9) loadout of air-to-air missiles visible on the Ukrainian F-16 in the video. There is no benefit to not flying with the missiles since these hardpoints cannot carry anything else, and their presence on the outboard stations dampens wing oscillations and increases the airframe lifespan.
Reuben Johnson of the Maryland-based defense research group 19FortyFive (1945) on Sunday reported Ukraine’s F-16 fleet has “significant limitations (that) may hinder their effectiveness. The aircraft, sourced from Denmark and the Netherlands, are older models equipped with outdated [though modified] AN/APG-66 radars and stripped of Link 16 communication systems – severely limiting their air-to-air capabilities.”
Link 16 is a US Air Force and NATO-standard state-of-the-art digital data-sharing platform that allows so-equipped aircraft equipped to trade information automatically, and for critical input to be shown on cockpit displays. The networking system gives the side operating it a possibly decisive tactical advantage by enabling pilots to evade threats or attack targets detected by other aircraft.
The US insisted F-16s transferred to Ukraine by the donating nations Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands be stripped of the Link 16 software and hardware because of concerns a shoot-down of an aircraft might put the advanced data-networking system in Russian hands, Johnson reported.
Johnson erroneously claimed that “Without Link 16, Ukraine’s F-16s can’t fire long-range missiles like the AIM-120 or AGM-158 JASSM, leaving them at a significant disadvantage against Russian fighters and bombers.” The F-16AM can shoot AIM-120s and employ the AGM-158, neither of which requires LINK-16.
The radar aboard the older model Block 15 MLU F-16AMs operated by the Ukrainian Air Force is a 1990s-vintage system called an AN/APG-66(V)2 radar. That radar scans with a mechanical antenna and is shorter-range and less capable than the [electronically scanned APG-83] radars installed in top-end F-16s operated by some close US allies, [especially those nations with Block 60 F-16E/Fs (UAE) or Block 70/72 F-16V (Slovakia, Taiwan, and others),] as well as in first-line Russian combat aircraft, the article said.
However, the AN/APG-66(v)2 modification was specifically designed to include data-link from the radar to the AMRAAM missile, which has nothing to do with the entirely separate LINK-16. F-16s were shooting AIM-120s in combat long before the incorporation of LINK-16 into the aircraft.
Also contrary to some information implied in the 19FortyFive article, the US Air Force does not have the latest versions of the Viper, the Block 70/72 F-16V, or the electronically scanned APG-83 radar.
Instead, it has opted to replace its fleet of extensively modified Block 40/42/50/52 Common Configuration Implementation Program (CCIP) F-16s with the F-35A. Incidentally, the official name of the F-16V is Viper, not the radio call unfriendly official USAF name of “Fighting Falcon,” never used within the F-16 pilot community.
One of the most successful combat aircraft in history, the F-16 was designed in the 1970s as an air superiority fighter able to out-dogfight any adversary. Upgraded versions of the aircraft are still capable of holding their own in modern air battles thanks to advanced electronics while retaining the extremely agile fly-by-wire 9-G airframe platform.
The 1990s-era F-16s donated to Ukraine by Denmark, Netherlands and Norway were a technology generation older than the latest-model F-16s, before removal of Link 16 technology.
The 19FortyFive quoted a Ukrainian engineer: “This is a radar [on the F-16s Ukraine has received] that is less capable even than the versions of the MiG-29’s N019 radar that have been upgraded by our industry. So, it is hard to do much with these aircraft considering what the Russians are putting up against us.”
Ukrainian Air Force pilots have told local defense media they send and receive information about detected threats and targets by voice radio. That communication method dates back to World War II and is often less efficient than automated data link, and is especially prone to inaccurate transfer of information in the heat of combat. Air Force statements say the most common use of Ukrainian F-16s in past months is intercepting Russian kamikaze drones and cruise missiles.
The pro-Russia milblogger RybarZ, an information media platform linked by the independent group Meduza to a Kremlin media manager named Mikhail Zvinchuk, in a Sunday write-up on the F-16 video claimed the Ukrainian fighters mostly have been based at airfields in Romania and Poland, but have flown actual combat missions after being armed and fueled at air bases in Ukraine’s Kyiv and Rivne regions.
The number of F-16 sorties along the line of contact “has increased sharply” since the start of 2025, with regular flights to front-line air space in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Chernihiv regions, he said.
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