The first Western-supplied F-16s fighter jet crashed and killed its pilot Oleksiy “Moonfish” Mes on August 26, but there is confusion over how it happened.

Kyiv denied that it was brought down by Russian air defences; the fighter was initially reported to have crashed, according to Ukraine’s Defence Ministry.

“A Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet was destroyed in a plane crash on Monday, a US official said, just weeks after the first US-made aircraft arrived in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported.

However, Ukrainian lawmaker Maryana Bezuglaya claimed that the jet had been brought down by friendly fire; Ukraine’s air defences had mistakenly fired a Nato-supplied Patriot missile at the plane.

Preliminary reports said the plane was not shot down, but F-16s were used to shoot down inbound missiles during the massive barrage on August 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said this week, when over 200 missiles and drones targeted 15 regions, the largest attack since the start of the war over two years ago. Mes destroyed three cruise missiles and one drone in Russia's largest aerial attack to date before crashing.

"Oleksiy saved Ukrainians from deadly Russian missiles," the Ukrainian Air Force wrote in a statement on social media. "Unfortunately, at the cost of his own life."

The US official speculated that the crash mostly likely occurred as a result of pilot error. Ukrainian aviators have been rushed through their training to fly the advanced F-16s, a process that usually takes years.

Friendly fire

However, there are conflicting reports as to the cause of the downing of the jet. Bezuglaya criticised Ukraine’s Air Force for falsely describing the incident as "a crash", claiming it had shot the plane down by mistake during the frenzied operations against Russia’s massive missile barrage on August 26.

"According to my information, the F-16 of the Ukrainian pilot Alexey ‘Moonfish’ Mes was shot down by the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system due to a lack of coordination between the [military] units," Bezuglaya wrote on Telegram, as cited by TASS.

She claimed the jet was downed by a Ukrainian Patriot air defence system in a friendly fire incident.

"The culture of lies in the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as in other higher military headquarters, leads to the fact that the system of managing military decisions does not improve on the basis of truthful, consistently collected analytics, but deteriorates and even collapses, as is happening in the other directions," she wrote.

Welcomed, but too few

The number of F-16s that Ukraine has obtained remains unclear, but reports suggest that six out of a total 80 promised to Ukraine have been delivered, Zelenskiy announced on August 4. The Ukrainian Air Force did not provide figures, but a second US official said a total of six planes had arrived and Ukraine had six pilots trained to fly them.

US President Joe Biden first authorised European allies to send F-16s to Ukraine in August 2023. But the US has been very reluctant to send Ukraine the potentially game-changing fighter jets and reportedly has been deliberately dragging its heels with the training of pilots. Zelenskiy has been calling on Nato to provide Ukraine with fighter jets and to “close the skies” over Ukraine since the very first week of the war.

Ukraine is desperately keen to acquire and use the jets, which are one of the few defences it has against the devastating and massive FAB glide bombs that Russia introduced over the summer, against which it has few other defences.

As bne IntelliNews reported, the arrival of F-16s has been welcomed, but as they face a Russian fighter jet fleet of some 350 advanced Sukhoi jets Ukraine’s fleet is hopelessly outnumbered. With so few, they will make little difference on the battlefield, as Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) cannot afford to risk them in direct combat operations against Russia’s jets.

Ukraine is hoping to receive more F-16s this year from a F-16 coalition made up of European countries. The US, which has over 1,000 planes, will not provide any directly. Several European countries have said they will send their F-16s, but only after they have received the more advanced F-34 jets they have on order from the US.

Dutch Chief of Defence Gen Onno Eichelsheim confirmed on August 29 the Netherlands will provide Ukraine with 24 of the jets, in addition to more weapons. Poland has also promised to send some and said this week it might send some MiG fighters as well.

Separately, the US has said it will send Ukraine advanced missiles to use with the F-16s. The United States Air Force unit specialising in wartime jamming, radar detection and related software development announced on August 26 that its technicians had just upgraded “electronic warfare capacities” aboard F-16 fighter jets donated to Ukraine by Denmark and the Netherlands.

The 68th EWS technicians and engineers, working with Dutch and Norwegian counterparts, updated programming in “an unfamiliar EW system” installed in the F-16s, and in two weeks had installed “a best-ever mission data file” in the Ukrainian jets’ computers, the statement said.

It remains unclear if Bankova has permission to use the F-16s in the Kursk incursion or whether they will be used in offensive operations. The few comments from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) so far suggest that they will be mainly used in defence, especially to shoot down inbound Russian missiles and drones.

On August 29, Mes’ brothers-in-arms, commanders and subordinates, friends and colleagues, and hundreds of ordinary Ukrainians bid farewell to the pilot, the Air Force said.

"A pair of MiG-29 fighters paid tribute to the fallen pilot from the sky. Oleksii's combat friends flew over the procession. By the order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant Colonel Oleksii Mes was posthumously promoted to the rank of colonel," the Air Force said.

Mes was a vocal advocate for Ukraine to receive F-16s and together with his colleague, Andriy "Juice" Pilshchykov, travelled to the US last year to lobby for the delivery of the plans. Pilshchykov was killed in a crash in August 2023.

“Oleksiy was an exemplary pilot. Always an excellent student, always the first, always the best," Tetiana Shevchuk, a friend of both pilots, wrote on Facebook as cited by Politico. "He was the first Ukrainian pilot to sit at the controls of an F-16 and the first to fly combat missions."