Ukraine Air Force

The Ukrainian Air Force is organized under a central command in Vinnytsia with four regional air commands, West, South, Center and East, each grouping tactical aviation brigades, ground-based air defense regiments and radio-technical troops in a single structure. Fixed-wing units are held in tactical aviation brigades such as the 7th, 39th, 40th and 114th, while rotary-wing assets belong to the army aviation brigades of the Ground Forces. Ground-based air defense remains the decisive component, combining Soviet-era S-300 and Buk systems with Patriot, NASAMS, IRIS-T SLM and SAMP/T batteries supplied by partners, and increasingly with interceptor drones that now account for a growing share of engagements against Russian strike UAVs.

Doctrine is one of denial rather than superiority. Lacking the numbers to contest the air outright, the force disperses its aircraft, flies short opportunistic sorties from rotating airfields and concentrates on preventing Russian aviation from operating freely over Ukrainian territory. Fighters are used extensively for air defense against cruise missiles and Shahed-type drones, a mission for which they were never designed, and F-16 crews have resorted to gun attacks on drones to preserve missile stocks.

The fleet is in the middle of a transition from Soviet to Western types. MiG-29, Su-27, Su-24 and Su-25 aircraft remain in service, many modified to carry Western weapons including AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles, Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles and JDAM-ER glide bombs, but attrition is steady and replacements do not exist. The F-16AM/BM has become the principal fighter following transfers from Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium, with the final batch of thirteen Danish aircraft handed over in January 2026 on the type's retirement from Danish service. A small number of French Mirage 2000-5F interceptors supplement them. Losses have continued throughout: F-16s in June 2025 and January 2026, Su-27s in September and December 2025 and again in March 2026 when a Russian Su-35S scored a kill with an R-37M missile, and MiG-29s and Mi-8s in June 2026.

The threat to aircraft on the ground has grown sharper than the threat in the air. Russian Geran-2 loitering munitions fitted with optical cameras destroyed helicopters at Mala Vyska in January 2026 and at Mykhailivka in March, and the jet-powered Geran-4, in service from May 2026 and capable of around 500 km/h, destroyed a MiG-29 at Voznesensk air base in June 2026 as it prepared for a mission. Hardening, dispersal and camouflage of airfields have become as important to force preservation as the sortie rate.

Procurement is now aimed at rebuilding a fighter force on a scale the country has never operated. Sweden pledged up to sixteen Gripen C/D aircraft in May 2026 as a bridge, and Ukraine signed a contract worth 2.5 billion dollars at the end of June 2026 for sixteen new-build Gripen E, described as the first phase of a programme of more than a hundred aircraft. France committed sixteen Rafale in July 2026, with pilot training beginning that year and deliveries expected between 2028 and 2029, alongside licensed production of SCALP cruise missiles and Aster-30 interceptors. The stated long-term objective is a fleet of roughly 250 fighters built on Rafale and Gripen airframes with the F-16AM force retained, a target that depends on sustained external financing and on airfields surviving long enough to receive the aircraft.