Capt. Vladyslav Savieliev completed the course in March and returned to Ukraine after not flying in his old jet, the MiG-29, for at least two years. | Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo
Politico: U.S.-trained Ukrainian pilot who died in combat had been eager to get back into the fight
Capt. Vladyslav Savieliev graduated from a pilot training course at a Mississippi air base in March.
When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Capt. Vladyslav Savieliev, a Ukrainian Air Force pilot with deep experience flying MiG-29 fighter jets against Russian forces, desperately wanted to fight for his country.
But Savieliev, who at the time was enrolled in a two-year selective pilot training course run by the U.S. military at a Mississippi Air Force Base, still had another year to go before completing the program.
Savieliev, known by his call sign “Nomad,” finally returned to Ukraine after graduating in March from the U.S. military’s Aviation Leadership Program, an undergraduate pilot training course designed to boost military relationships with foreign nations. He died weeks later on a combat mission June 2, the Ukrainian Air Force announced last week.
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WNU Editor: The message that I am getting from the above article is not about a brave pilot being eager to get back into the fight after being trained by the U.S. Air Force for two years. The message that I am getting is about a Ukrainian pilot being trained by the U.S. for two years, and then being killed within two weeks of his return to Ukraine in his first combat mission aboard a plane that he was familiar with.
Let me jump ahead here and give the demented loonie tune liberal explanation for what happened.
ReplyDeleteBrave super-hero Ukrainian pilot who shot down 50+ Russian fighters crashed and died due to inferior Russian technology; highlighting the need for immediate delivery of western produced fighter jets.
lol good one
Deleteyou could go with that.
ReplyDeleteThis is a case of being rusty and maybe not getting the right intel on the ADA /bandit threat before the mission.
It also could be something else entirely,
like his aircraft not being properly maintained or the UAF chain of command saw him as a liability.
That is, in third world countries, returning US trained individuals are many times seen as, "co-opted" or "spies" and wanted him "gone" .
We may Never know.
in any case it is a shame.
I've been saying this in nearly every comment thread about F-16's. You cannot cross train pilots on western and russian systems and expect anywhere near the same outcomes as training a brand new pilot. It's suicide for the pilots who've had their training crosswired, and it only serves to make armchair generals across the atlantic feel good. We're mainly fighting a PR war. Outcomes seem less important than narratives.
ReplyDeleteok but this wasn't in an f-16
Delete2:54
ReplyDeleteI am not going to disagree. Being a modern Fighter Jet pilot is muscle memory and split second responses. That is why modern pilots are specialists now. They do not switch between aircraft, like the old days.
@3:14 that is the point. You can't train someone on western jets for two years and then put them back in the cockpit of a Russian one. That is probably why he died. I apologize if that wasn't clear from my initial comment.
ReplyDeleteThis is war. You can be trained, you can be a good pilot, you can have an advanced fighter jet. And you can still die in your first combat day, cause war it's brutal.
ReplyDeleteEverything else it's just stupid speculation.
That would be weird if they trained him on f-16s though.
DeleteIn WW2 the Japanese used their ace pilots up. They flew until they died.
ReplyDeleteThe Americans would take their aces and rotate them back to the Us for war bond drives and to train nuggets.
WNU, the great information space warfare specialist that he is, gave us an anecdotal story. He did not give us a Poisson distribution of number of missions flown until being shot down or death.
In Donbas there are pictures of Russian pilots sucking up fuel big time flying 40 feet of the deck in Donbas behind their own lines. That is how deadly the airspace is for Russian or Ukrainian, for noob or for Ace.
Have not checked the whole blog. did WNU give a rundown on the number Russian pilots killed in Pigozhin's Putsch?
Of course Information Specialist Master Chief WNU did not.
Also Russia lost a precious KA-52.
why even come here then?
DeleteRidiculous assumption , so what happened to the F16 pilot shot down over Bosnia, or the Fa18 pilot shot down over Baghdad on day 1 in 99?...it's war , lock on..boom..shit happens
ReplyDelete