jhungary
MILITARY PROFESSIONAL
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You can actually, my brother was a Marine F-18 Pilot and he went to Poland and train Polish pilot for transition from Mig-29 to F-16 back 20 years ago. It does not take 6 months to transition them into F-16 cockpit, and the rest is just basically to feel up the fighter. The basic flight principal are the same, the basic functions are the same too. As my brother, who actually flew on F-18 and Mig-29 told me that the only difference is the stick response. You have more stick response in a F-16/F-18 because of the fly-by wire, MIG-29 is very sluggish, as their fly-by-wire system are very primitive. Not sure if Polish Mig-29 is the same as Ukrainian Mig-29, he didn't say that.and I don't doubt these poorly trained fighter will be blown out of the sky in less than one month.
it take years for a fighter to learn its airplane , what it can do and what is its capabilities .
if you think you can teach that to Ukrainian pilots in 5-6 month you are in for a big surprise
The US Naval aviator pipeline is (from Line Officer (ie, no flight experience to Naval Aviator Wing)
25 hours certified FAA Flight School (flying Cessna etc)
67-70 hours on a T-34C
27 hours for Dual Seater fast jet
166 solo flying on fast jet
The grand total for a recently graduate NAW is ~300 hours, and the first 100 is done on a normal aircraft/LIFT Which the Ukrainian can mostly skipped. So your question is, whether or not Ukrainian pilot can train 200 flight hours in 6months? Well, that's less than 2 hours a day so I don't know, you tell me.
P.S. Just so you know, before you said anything, the API stage has been changing from T-34C to T-6 Texan since 2000, the answer come from my brother, and he got his wing back in the 1990s and Texan was not in service back then.
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