Ukraine's fighter pilots are using Cold War skills the West deemphasized decades ago but may need again, former US pilot says

• Ukrainian pilots are using skills that Western pilots have let atrophy, a former F-16 pilot said.
• The West might need to use these skills again in a great-power war, he said.
• Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion is giving the West a slew of lessons.

Ukrainian pilots fighting against Russia's invasion are using flying techniques the West has not really used since the Cold War but might need to revive, a former US F-16 pilot told Business Insider.

Ukraine's fight has offered the West a wide range of lessons that it might need to apply in a great-power conflict. Retired US Air Force Col. John Venable, a former F-16 pilot and defense expert at the Mitchell Institute, told BI that one of those lessons is that old techniques — specifically low-altitude flying — might need to be brought back.

In Europe during the Cold War, "we flew low altitude all of the time," Venable said, adding they "were practicing against high-threat situations where you have surface-to-air missiles that can take you down."

Venable retired in 2007 after a 25-year career in the US Air Force, where he flew the F-16 in the US, Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East. He had more than more than 300 hours of combat time in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

He said low-altitude flying to evade surface-to-air threats can be particularly challenging.

"Your ability to actually fly really low until you actually need to expose yourself in order to deliver ordinance or shoot another aircraft down, that skillset is no small thing to grab ahold of. It takes a while to do that. And in the process, you lose a lot of aircraft, you lose a lot of pilots because of collision with the ground," he said.

The Ukrainians are having to fly this way because of the prolific threats to anything in the air.

Ukrainian pilots "come in really, really low, and then they pop up" to either hit an air or ground target, "and then after they're done dropping their munitions or shooting their missiles, then they have to get right back down into the low-altitude environment."

But "that skillset is no longer a part of the Western way of doing business," he said.

He said the US Air Force "continued to practice low altitude tactics all the way up to Desert Storm" in 1991. Several US aircraft were lost in the early days, so the US Air Force moved to employ medium-altitude tactics. "That was when the service began to move away low-level tactics," Venable said.

The West hasn't had to fly its fourth-gen fighter jets into contested airspace in decades, and stealth platforms like the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter allow pilots to fly at higher altitudes without worrying as much about surface-to-air missiles. But that capability could be eroded.

"There will come a point in the not-too-distant future where even stealth platforms have to incorporate some of these tactics into their engagements," he said, referring to low-altitude flying. "That is something that the United States could actually lean into and start understanding a bit better."

The West hasn't phased out all of its older airframes. In a high-end conflict, those older aircraft would likely need to employ tactics similar to those Ukraine's air force is employing now with its Soviet-era fighter jets and its US-made F-16s.

This alone could justify bringing the tactics back with greater emphasis, but these could be brought back for the stealth platforms, too, Venable said. "Eventually, even our stealth fighters will likely need to go low, at least for portions of their sorties, because of advancements in surface-to-air missile threats."

That point isn't one being completely missed in the West.

A US Air Force fact sheet says "in a world of increasingly sophisticated air defenses, the United States needs to maintain a first-class air force. In combat, many aircraft will operate at altitudes as low as 100 feet and at high airspeeds to defeat ground missile radars and avoid sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, and enemy fighters." It says realistic training is a key priority, but low-altitude flying isn't as common as it was.

The West is learning from Ukraine

The Ukraine war has heavily featured air defense and missiles, which have prevented both sides from freely flying their aircraft.

Warfare experts warn the West needs to boost its own stocks of air defenses in case of a war with Russia, a possibility for which Western leaders say NATO needs to be prepared given Russia's repeated threats.

This conflict resembles one that the West has not faced in a long time. It's a grinding, brutal, and artillery-heavy war with huge losses of troops and equipment and new components the West doesn't appear entirely ready for, like drones.

Russia, despite failures, is a far more formidable opponent in the air, on land, and at sea than the adversaries that most Western countries have faced over recent decades.

A US veteran who has fought in Ukraine previously told BI that some Western fighters who joined the war were killed because they assumed the fight would be easy, as they were used to fighting at an advantage and did not adjust to the realities in Ukraine.

The West is looking toward Ukraine for lessons about how to face Russia if necessary, including what it needs in the air and how much more military equipment is needed.

Ukrainian soldiers who are getting training from Western militaries are also feeding back information to those militaries about Russian tactics and what works well against them and what doesn't.

Even though it's not a one-for-one comparison, Venable said that "we could learn a lot" from Ukraine about fighting Russia in the air. It would be valuable to "pick these pilot's brains and get an idea of what they're facing and how they're going about countering the threats that they're facing," he said.