The Ukrainian Air Force learned yet more valuable lessons during exercises with the U.S. Air Force, particularly the Clear Sky series of drills, the biggest of which in 2018 was the first-ever joint multinational exercise hosted by Ukraine. Here, the regular sparring partners for the Ukrainian were the F-15Cs of the California Air National Guard’s 144th Fighter Wing, while the Polish Air Force participated too.
For the first time since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, Clear Sky gave the air force the opportunity to see the inner workings of NATO tactics on home soil. Pilots like Juice got a much better understanding of the NATO fighter pilot mindset, leadership roles, and standards. Once again, the importance of operational flexibility was paramount, in order to be able to take the fight to a much more advanced enemy — namely, Russia.
While the F-15s that took part in the Clear Sky maneuvers were older than the Ukrainian MiGs, they had been significantly modernized and were judged much more capable than the local MiG-29s and Su-27s, which have undergone only modest and piecemeal upgrades.
During Clear Sky, the F-15s were used to replicate the tactics and performance of
Russian Su-30 and
Su-35S Flanker fighters to do battle against the Ukrainian MiG-29s and Su-27s. The Eagles, with their modern tactics, radars, and missiles, were a good stand-in for the new-generation Flankers, but the Ukrainians were “sometimes pretty successful, just using our flexibility and creation of non-standard decisions,” Juice recalled. The experience has several parallels with the infamous
Cope India exercise, in which U.S. Air Force F-15s met upgraded Indian MiG-21s with some surprising results.
Speaking to The War Zone, recently-retired Jonathan ‘Jersey’ Burd, the lead planner for the 2018 Clear Sky exercise, recalled: “We did plenty of [basic fighter maneuvers] with our F-15Cs against their MiG-29s and Su-27s and to be honest we could tell instantly that their pilots were very good. They are very tactically inventive, they know their airframes and also understand what they are lacking. I mean, they fly old jets. Our F-15s for example are old airframes, but they have been constantly upgraded with new avionics.”All participants in these exercises became much more ready to meet this enemy in the air and just to know sometimes not to engage under certain conditions, for example, or to engage in some specific ways,” Juice continued. So useful was the 144th Fighter Wing’s involvement, and their sharing of methods to defeat Russian tactics, that, for Juice, it might have made the difference between life and death for some of his fellow pilots: “Maybe that’s why our guys are still alive,” he mused.
Clear Sky also brought new terminology to the Ukrainians, including the first experiences of conducting all missions using only English brevity radio communications. Today, combat missions use the Ukrainian language, however. Another new development was more intensive debriefing after missions, with small debriefs and a larger, conference-style after-action debrief, a
vital part of modern air warfare, but one that was new for the Ukrainians.
All in all, the exposure to the U.S. Air Force and NATO way of doing things made a significant impression on the Ukrainian Air Force, but it also highlighted deficiencies in the service that were not so easy to address. Namely, the need
for new-generation fighter aircraft. “Even if you’re trained, even if you’re very smart, if you don’t have the right tools, unfortunately, you can’t be effective,” Juice contends. “That’s why we’re trying to ask the West to provide us with some new stuff. New jets, new ground-to-air defenses, etc.”
So far, Ukraine's quest for new jets
has proven elusive, and international efforts to deliver
additional surface-to-air missile systems have been more successful. Meanwhile, Juice notes that the air force is still in touch with the 144th Fighter Wing, which is providing informal advice as well as items of personal equipment that the pilots need.