Ukraine’s Air Force is planning to rebuild itself around Western-style aviation wings and multi-type air bases. Yurii Ihnat, head of the Communications Department at Air Force Command, laid out the plan in an interview on RBC-Ukraine’s podcast “Tse Baza”, published on 26 October 2026. The target date for the new model is 2035.

The headline is organisational rather than operational. Ukraine’s aviation grew up in the Soviet mould, built around brigades and airfields tailored to a single aircraft type. The new plan replaces that with formations and bases that can host different Western jets side by side, which Ihnat described as being in line with NATO standards.

From brigades to wings

According to Ihnat, the Ukrainische Luftwaffe’s development strategy has already been written out to 2035. It covers what the force will look like after the war, what weapons it will operate and how it will be organised. For combat aviation, that means a move to units of the “wing” type.

The first of them already exists. The 107th Aviation Wing was formed in 2024 around Ukraine’s F-16 Fighting Falcons, the first unit of its kind in an air force that had traditionally organised its aircraft into aviation brigades. Ihnat said the wing had just been given its own Facebook page, where it may publish material about its work.

The F-16 itself arrived in Ukrainian skies in August 2024. Its pilots were drawn from several existing aviation brigades and trained abroad within the F-16 training coalition, which made the jet a natural starting point for a Western-style command structure.

Air bases that take any jet

The second half of the plan concerns infrastructure. Ihnat said future air bases will be built up from the operational airfields Ukraine has been using during the war, and equipped to receive and service several types of combat aircraft rather than just one.

He gave Ivano-Frankivsk as an example of the old approach. Its main type is the MiG-29, and its technical support has been organised around that one aircraft. In future, Ihnat said, bases should be versatile enough to handle F-16s, Gripens and potentially other Western types.

That fits how Ukraine’s fighter force already works in wartime. Its F-16s operate from dispersed locations, and the Air Force has shown its crews keeping the jets ready on dispersed airfields. Universal bases would turn that improvised flexibility into a permanent design.

The Ukrainian Air Force’s own film on how F-16 crew chiefs keep the jets ready on dispersed airfields.

Built on a NATO roadmap

The reform did not appear out of nowhere. On 3 August 2025, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and Air Force Command presented President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a roadmap for developing aviation capabilities to NATO standards, based on the Alliance’s air power doctrine. Ihnat’s 2035 strategy is the organisational side of that same shift.

Ihnat also used the interview to talk about aircraft. He said Ukraine has discussed with Lockheed Martin how to improve the capabilities of its existing F-16s, which are older Block 15 aircraft previously flown by other air forces, and that pilots would ultimately like the newest Block 70/72 versions.

On the Saab Gripen, he said pilots are attracted by its low operating costs and undemanding maintenance, and that Ukraine could initially receive older C/D models while Saab works on the Gripen E. A mixed fleet of that kind is exactly what universal bases are meant to support.

For now, the Ukrainian Air Force wings plan is a direction of travel rather than a finished order of battle. Ihnat did not give a schedule for further wings, and the 107th remains the only one publicly identified so far.

None of this changes the front line tomorrow. But it shows that Kyiv’s Air Force is already designing the peacetime force it wants to become: Western jets, NATO-style wings and bases that do not care which fighter lands next.

Sources: RBC-Ukraine, UNITED24 Media, 24 Kanal, Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, Ukrainian Air Force, Wikipedia (107th Separate Aviation Wing)