The Storm Shadow is air-launched, not ground launched. The speed and altitude provided by the launching aircraft give it the very long range it has, which allows it to be fired from well outside of the range of enemy SAM systems, so it isn’t really that big of a point in the context of the question, but there it is. Regarding how effective air defense has been over Ukraine in the current war, Perun does a much better job of explaining it than I could if you have the time and willingness to listen to one of his excellent hour long videos:
The upshot is that hmmm… hand on a second, I’ve said this before in a post in the “In the Defense of Russia” thread in the pit. I doesn’t look like anything I said can’t be repeated outside the pit, it was written back in November hence the comment about the last 8 months of war rather than the last 15:
For anyone interested in a factual look at air defense in the Ukrainian War and the odd situation where both Russia and Ukraine have air defenses so effective against the other sides aircraft that both sides have resorted to flying manned aircraft at very low altitudes where they are vulnerable to MANPADS, Perun put out another of his excellent videos on just this topic the other week.
The short of it is that they both inherited Soviet-era air defense systems that are very effective when not suppressed against non-stealth aircraft and can cover huge areas for aircraft that risk flying at anything but low altitude, and the Soviets also devote immense efforts to low level capable, but by necessity shorter ranged air defense systems. While Russia in theory inherited Soviet-era anti-radiation missiles and SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) tactics, the Soviets never placed anywhere near the kind of emphasis on SEAD that the West in general and the US in particular did. Add to that the general clusterfuck of corruption and ineptitude that the Russian Federation’s military is, and Russia has been unable to even achieve air superiority over a foe that it dramatically outnumbers in terms of combat aircraft even after 8 months. Russian pilots didn’t even in theory get anything close to the number of flight hours that NATO pilots get, and no aircraft squadrons are specifically dedicated to SEAD.
By contrast, the very first thing the US and NATO plan to do in any air war is to carry out heavy, extensive, sustained SEAD to destroy their enemy’s ability to effectively conduct just the sort of air defense that both Ukraine and Russia are putting up. Pilots are trained in SEAD, and entire squadrons and their equipment are dedicated exclusively to the task. Contrary to what our resident comrad thinks, air defenses have long been multi-layered and integrated affairs, Soviet-style ones in particular. The term is IADS, Integrated Air Defense System. Iraq had a Soviet-style IADS back in the 1991 Gulf War, which was the first target of the air war, and we all know how that turned out.
One consequence of this is that the US and NATO haven’t placed anything like the kind of emphasis on surface to air missiles for air defense as the Soviet Union and Russia have, and they are often intended as much for missile defense as for defense against manned aircraft.
F-16s would be immensely useful in the war in Ukraine for launching JDAMS, which again rely on using a launching aircraft to provide the speed and altitude to give them their range. JDAM doesn’t have anything like the range of Storm Shadow, and there is a recent thread in FQ regarding using the Physics of using Toss Bombing to minimize the risk to the launching aircraft by having them fly low towards the target, then release the JDAM while climbing and accelerating at the launching point, which provides them with their range. They are being jerry-rigged to be compatible with Ukrainian Soviet-era MiG-29s, Su-27s, and Su-24s (if any Ukrainian Su-24s are actually left operational) just like the Storm Shadow is, but the F-16 is already compatible with JDAM and doesn’t need jerry-rigging. It’s also natively compatible with the AGM-88 HARM, which has also been provided to Ukraine and jerry-rigged to work with their Soviet-era aircraft.
As others have said, the question of the future of manned vs remote piloted aircraft is a very distinct question from would F-16s and the like be useful in Ukraine and why is the airspace over Ukraine so deadly for both sides.