Russian invasion|Both Ukraine and the United States are trying to figure out what brought down the experienced pilot on Monday.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
Ukraine lost F-16 fighter and pilot Oleksii Mes during the Russian attack.
Mes was involved in the defense against the Russian missile and drone attack.
It has been claimed that Ukraine’s own air defenses accidentally shot down the fighter jet.
US military officials consider the Patriot system to be at fault as unlikely.
Ukraine lost a vital F-16 fighter jet and its experienced pilot on Monday, when for an as yet unknown reason It would be Mesunder the fighter name Moonfish, went down during the Russian invasion.
General Staff of the Ukrainian Army by Mes was involved in the defensive battle against Russia’s large missile and helicopter attack. F-16s, of which Ukraine is known to have only a handful, shot down four Russian missiles.
In the middle of the battle, the connection with Mesi’s fighter was lost. The fighter crashed and Mes died. Now both Ukraine and the United States are trying to find out the reason for the drop.
Three days after the downing of the fighter, a member of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Parliament Marjana Bezuhla attracted attention with his claim that Ukraine’s own air defenses had accidentally shot down the fighter jet.
“According to my information, Ukrainian pilot Oleksii “Moonfish” Mesi’s F-16 was shot down by the Patriot anti-aircraft system due to insufficient coordination between units,” Bezuhla wrote on his Telegram message channel.
Bezuhla did not say where he got his information. On Friday, the US newspaper The New York Times (NYT) added water to the rumor mill by tellingthat according to an anonymously interviewed Western official with knowledge of the investigation, “signs” have been detected that the Patriot system shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet. However, the possibility of pilot error or mechanical failure was not ruled out.
Saturday paper interviewed two US military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they considered the Patriot system’s culpability unlikely.
As Bezuhla and the experts have stated, in war damage happens. For example, in 2003, the US Patriot system shot down of a US Hornet fighter jet in Iraq, as it was mistaken for an Iraqi one. However, the system has been developed since then.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi presented the F-16 fighter jets at the beginning of August.
It is possiblethat Mes himself made some kind of mistake while flying the plane. Although Mes was an experienced pilot, he could not have had a long experience with the F-16 behind him. Ukraine said only about a month ago that it had received machines.
Training has also been fast: For example, in Denmark, training for F-16 fighters takes four years, but Ukrainian pilots have had it for about a year. The financial newspaper Bloomberg reported at the end of Julythat it was uncertain whether the Ukrainian pilots would be able to use the fighters immediately.
Mykolai Oleschukwhich the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi fired the air force commander shortly after the accident, called Mesi “one of the best Ukrainian fighter pilots”.
Interim Commander of the Air Force of Ukraine Anatoly Kryvonozhka on the other hand, earlier in August, Mesi was used as an example of an experienced pilot. Mes was also present in the United States to present Ukraine’s demands for F-16 fighter jets, NYT reports.
The Ukrainian newspaper Fakty ta Komentiar reported in August 2023 Mes participated in F-16 training. He said at the time that the F-16 was significantly different from the Soviet-made fighters previously used by Ukraine.
“All our pilots now have at least two to three years of military service and combat experience behind them,” Mes said at the time, according to Fakty ta Komentar, on Ukrainian television.
Third possibility is a technical fault. According to the US Aviation Safety Network, F-16 fighters have been involved in more than 750 accidents since 1974.
There are no recent statistics on the causes of F-16 accidents, but the 1996 US Air Force Medical Academy research according to between 1975 and 1993, in about 55 percent of the most serious accidents, pilot error was at least partly the cause.
F-16 in air combat is never dropped, but anti-aircraft has some managed to shoot down. Even in the Mesi case, the experts have not mentioned any doubts that Russia shot down the fighter.
The Ukrainian Air Force also remembered Mesi with a flyover of two Mig-29 fighters on Thursday.
#Russian #attack #experienced #pilot #died #Ukrainian #F16 #crashed #theories #explain #mystery
