Something I thought was interesting came from one of my coworkers, who is a F/A-18 pilot. I asked him about the feasibility of training Ukrainian MiG pilots on F-16s. He said it isn't so much the learning a different airframe that is difficult; they can do that in 6-12 months, it's that the F-16 was designed for US/NATO doctrine, which is different from the Soviet doctrine the MiG is built around and that the Ukrainians train to. Teaching a pilot who has been trained one way to learn the other is a bit of 'teaching an old dog new tricks'; it's more effective to either give the Ukrainians more MiGs (and there is a limited supply of those outside of Russia) or train a new pilot from scratch, which is more expensive and takes longer.
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Signed 1953 Topps set: 264/274 (96.35 %)
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