Yes, because Pickett’s charge was such a glorious loss of life.
Reports are that F-16s have finally arrived in Ukraine.
One of the biggest benefits of F-16 is that it has a very different shape and outline than any other fighter jet in Europe. That would help prevent a lot of blue-on-blue friendly fire incidents and eliminate confusion, given that a lot of aerial warfare in Ukraine today is Russian-design jets going up against Russian-design jets; MiGs v MiGs and Sukhoi v Sukhoi.
Historically, the Soviets/Russians have always placed more emphasis on AAA assets than the West has. Western doctrine is to establish air supremacy, so Soviet doctrine was to deny it with heavy AAA capabilities.
Ukraine’s new F-16s will almost certain be held to use above Ukrainian airspace in an effort to deny Russian aircraft the ability to enter it and attack troops and ground installations. I’m not sure to what extent the Russians are still doing that, but a fleet of F-16s will sure as hell make it harder. Attempting to use the F-16s in ground interdiction will almost certainly result in a lot of them being blown out of the sky by SAMs.
I do notice it’s been awhile since I saw video of Russian aircraft on the front. Russia’s air force is stretched to keep fighting in Ukraine; they have a lot of airspace to defend and can’t use everything in their imperialist ambition in Donbass. From Ukraine’s perspective, a degree of parity - or just neither side having interdiction abilities - is a win. It’s the aggressor that most needs air support.
Outside of the use of MANPADs, I think most of the aerial warfare in Ukraine is BVR, and obviously if you’re beyond visual range the visual characteristics of a plane aren’t terribly relevant.
Their effect on the front is primarily through glide bombs, which are useful because they get launched well back from the front. Not sure off the top of my head about relative ranges of that vs air to air or SAM standoff ranges. I imagine it’s far enough back that the F-16 won’t be able to engage/ push them back more.
AMRAAM missiles have a range of ~100km (assuming they got C’s - the new D variant has a range north of 150km). The Russian FAB-500 glide bombs have a range of around 60km.
The Russian ground-based air defense systems have a variety of ranges. Pantsir ~20km, Buk ~50km, S-300 ~150km. However, these are the max ranges of these system’s missiles without taking maneuvering into account. Trying to engage an F-16 in the upper third of those ranges isn’t likely to be successful unless the F-16 pilot is sleeping with the autopilot engaged. Also, the Ukrainians have been blowing up a very large number of air defense emplacements using HIMARS, which has led to a tendency for the Russians to position their air defense units quite a ways back from the front.
I would anticipate that the number one use of F-16’s will be to try to counter the use of glide bombs.
From the photos of the Danish F-16s that made it to Ukraine, the AMRAAMs have large rear fins, so they are most likely the primitive AIM-120B, with shorter range.
I wonder if this would actually work to Russia’s benefit, on net. Ukraine is using a lot more smart systems that use things like encrypted radio signals for IFF, while Russia is relying more on low-tech options like the Mark I Eyeball. We’ve heard about a lot more friendly-fire incidents on Russia’s part than on Ukraine’s.
Keeping the f16 in an air defense role to dissuade Russia from getting too close with its aircraft would free up some of the remaining Ukrainian multi role MiG 29 and Su 27 for more at risk attack roles.
That would keep the F16 safer , and provide more time for familiarity, training and ironing out any support and maintenance kinks, and avoid any early losses of F16s that Putin’s useful idiots in the west could point at and say nonsense words.
That’s been my impression as well; the effectiveness of ground-based air defenses has pushed aircraft out of anything but low altitude when near the frontlines. I haven’t heard of any air-to-air combat having occurred within visual range. Ukraine has admitted that the “Ghost of Kiev” was a propaganda hoax. Russia has been reportedly enjoying some success using the R-37 very long range (up to 200km) hypersonic AAM. It’s apparently not terribly effective at making actual kills against maneuvering combat aircraft but is very effective at forcing Ukrainian aircraft to abort what they were doing to defend against them.