Ukraine finally has the jet it begged for. The problem is getting it out of the hangar. More than half of the Ukrainian Air Force's F-16 Fighting Falcons are currently tied up in maintenance, according to a Wall Street Journal report published this week, and at the present rate of use Kyiv could run out of available F-16s by the end of 2026.

At the same time, Bloomberg reported on 30 September that Ukraine is negotiating to buy tens of thousands of 20mm cannon rounds. The reason is blunt: air-to-air missiles are scarce, so pilots are increasingly shooting down Russian drones with the gun.

Put the two stories together and you get the real shape of Ukraine's air war in autumn 2026. A small fleet of Cold War fighters is flying a punishing interceptor schedule against swarms of cheap drones, and both the airframes and the ammunition are running short.

The 300-Hour Problem

Every F-16 needs a phase inspection after roughly 300 flight hours. It is the deep-maintenance visit where panels come off, systems are tested and worn parts are replaced. In the United States the job typically takes two to six weeks.

Ukraine cannot do it at home. Its jets fly to Belgium, where the work is handled by Sabena Aerospace Engineering under a Pentagon-funded contract worth more than $230 million. According to the WSJ, a phase inspection there can take as long as 40 weeks. That is close to a year with the aircraft out of the fight.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Ukrainian F-16 pilots are flying far more than peacetime crews, chasing cruise missiles and Shahed-type drones night after night. More flying means jets reach the 300-hour mark faster, and a slow depot means each one stays away longer. If that cycle continues, the WSJ reported, the number of available jets could fall to zero by year-end.

TWZ estimates Ukraine has received somewhere between 40 and 50 F-16s from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, and has lost about five. Some of the delivered aircraft are also held back for training in Europe. The headline fleet number therefore says little about how many jets can actually launch on a given night.

Guns Against Drones

The second half of the story is about what the jets carry. Ukraine's F-16s have relied heavily on AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-120 AMRAAMs for drone and missile intercepts, and those missiles are expensive and in short supply. Pilots have reportedly been rationing missile shots and falling back on the M61A1 Vulcan, the six-barrel 20mm rotary cannon built into every F-16.

Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi, citing Bloomberg, reports that an intercept with the gun takes around 150 rounds and that the force needs about 10,000 rounds a day. The F-16 carries 511 rounds, so on those numbers one full load covers only around three gun kills. Kyiv is reportedly negotiating with several European countries and manufacturers for the shells.

Gun kills on drones are not new for the F-16. Romanian F-16s have already used the cannon against a sea drone in the Black Sea. What is new is the scale: the cannon has gone from backup weapon to primary drone killer.

Perché è importante adesso

The timing is bad for Ukraine. Russia has started launching jet-powered Geran drones, which are much faster than the older propeller-driven Shaheds. Slow interceptor drones and older air-defence guns struggle to catch them, so a fast fighter with a gun becomes more valuable, not less.

Help is on the way, but slowly. On 29 September President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Belgium will transfer three more F-16s by the end of 2026. Three jets will not fix a depot bottleneck. Faster maintenance, more ammunition and more missiles will decide how many F-16s Ukraine can actually put in the air this winter.

The F-16 was never the silver bullet some hoped for in 2023. It has turned into something more useful and more ordinary: a workhorse interceptor. Workhorses, though, need stables and feed, and right now Ukraine is short of both.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, TWZ, Militarnyi, NV (The New Voice of Ukraine)