NATO first F-16 Fighter SHOT by FRIENDLY FIRE with US-made Patriot. Kiev Failure in Kursk, Donbass

Posted by: John Phoenix

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A US-made F-16 fighter jet, handed over to Ukraine earlier this year, was downed by a Ukrainian Patriot air defense system in a friendly fire incident, Ukrainian lawmaker Maryana Bezuglaya said, as reported bu Russian News Agency TASS (sources below)

The first news about the arrival in Ukraine of a first batch of F-16 A/B combat aircraft (upgraded to the AM/BM standard 20 years ago) was released on July 31 by the Bloomberg news agency.

The origin of the first F-16s supplied to Kiev has not been clarified but it is known that the NATO member countries that have made available the aircraft of this type in service for about 40 years and in the process of being replaced by the F-35A are Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway

The first Ukrainian F-16s flying in Ukraine

“According to my information, the F-16 of the Ukrainian pilot Alexey ‘Moonfish’ Mes was shot down by the US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missile system due to a lack of coordination between the [military] units,” she wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian Air Force Criticed for falsely describing the incident as “a crash.”

The lawmaker criticized the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for falsely describing the incident as “a crash.”

“The culture of lies in the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as in other higher military headquarters, leads to the fact that the system of managing military decisions does not improve on the basis of truthful, consistently collected analytics, but deteriorates and even collapses, as is happening in the other directions,” she wrote.

In her words, none of the generals was punished over the incident that led to the loss of both the aircraft and its pilot.

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gospanews.net (EN)

Earlier, an unidentified US official told the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine had lost a donated F-16 fighter jet in the first such case. According to the official, the jet was not shot down, and the crash was likely due to pilot error. Later, the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed the death of a Ukrainian F-16 pilot, Alexey Mes. The man was trained to fly F-16, according to CNN. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the pilot was killed in an aerial fight, when his plane crashed on August 26.