Do we have any sense about how much of Ukraine’s offensive capabilities remain after this summer? How long can they feasibly push at the same rate in the Tokmak direction?
As long as NATO is delivering at least around 70,000 artillery shells a month.
That said, other equipment - especially soft-skin vehicles - is badly atrited. And there's still a critical shortage of mortar bombs.... so, overall, no idea: I'm only sure, the ZSU is still receiving far too little for serious advances.
As long as there's enough ammunition and weapons, they could be pressing their attack up to rasputitsa time, at least (in approximately a month from now). I guess that rasputitsa will mean Ukraine will continue to use mostly light infantry, trying to clear up the Russian defenses during November and December, then mechanized assault troops will up again the pressure.
If I understand correctly, there are still divisions in reserve, waiting to exploit a breakthrough, if it happens before that (but these are being drawn more and more into rotation with the assault troops).
Well the Ukrainians are into their 10th mobilization wave that mostly consists of women so it doesn't sound like they have any men left alive for any kind of assault.
Would you please contact the Substack moderators to find out why they banned Ivan Bajlo? All his comments were deleted after he posted several historical documents that were showing that USSR's military industry during WW2 was running on raw materials provided by the USA for free. A day later he followed me with a message "For some heinous act banned from commenting on substack forever :-p", then his profile was deleted.
This looks very much like the crowdbanning the Russian trolls used against Ukrainian posters on LinkedIn and Facebook. They make a hundred of accounts report one of the user's posts as offensive, and the user is banned by the social network's engine without any judgement from the moderators.
I feel I got banned by some very stupid AI which got triggered by something I wrote... (to make things more absurd all that LL stuff got copy/pasted from WW2 FB group and is few years old), appeal process are just dumb bots with no human to even tell you the reason so it is completely pointless...
anyway I lost any motivation to comment on this platform since it can delete everything for any reason... even FB admits and restores some posts it deletes by trigger happy algorithms and has yet to delete everything... apparently breaking some substack unwritten rule is worst possible crime in the world...
p.s.
I'm off to destroy skynet I mean substack ai before it becomes self-aware, in case I fail you and Tom are in charge of European resistance... get a dog just in case ;-)
Thanks for the update Tom. Lately there is no mention about 92 Mech, any idea where are they? And now when there was FB friends clensing maybe you could accept some of us who are in waiting room? :D
I belive that the usual rule of thumb is that a unit that take 30% losses is considered combat ineffective.
But strangely, russian units go on fighting with heavier losses than that, and those VDV seem like an especially tough breed, although I fail to see what their motivation for fighting and suffering such losses might be.
What kind of losses does a VDV regiment need to suffer before it becomes combat ineffective, do you think?
Thank you as always Tom. A far more comprehensive assessment of the latest Russian attempted pincer attack. One surprise perhaps to me is the impression (at least from a little footage that I have seen) of Russian helicopter operations. I have not seen footage or reports of losses, what conclusion do you drawer from this confidence in use? Or are the videos taken outside the envelope of Ukrainian MANPADS coverage and look more impressive than effective.
Many thanks also from me. Obviously busy times for you and giving all of those conflicts are causing tremendous pain and suffering, for sure a burden for all those, which deep dive and view all the violent videos/pics
Most recent satellite imagery shows extensive naval presence in Sevastopol.
You might want to see these CIT reports on Russian (2022) mobilization, the second one being just released. They also compiled a spreadsheet of "at least 123 different units were created as part of the mobilization, with the real number likely higher still. The majority of these units, 77, were nominally classified as motorized rifle regiments. We also found references for 18 separate motorized rifle battalions, five engineer-sapper regiments, five tank regiments, as well as seven artillery regiments and 11 artillery battalions."
As said in conclusion: if they're not attacking - they're 'automatically losing'. Slowly, but certainly. So, there's no other option but to continue counterattacking. That's slowing down Ukrainians.
"[8] Furthermore, the majority of Russian forces currently fighting in the Avdiivka area are likely elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 1st Army Corps, which the Russian 8th Combined Arms Army predominantly controls.[9] ISW has not observed any 8th Combined Arms Army elements not from DNR formations involved in ongoing attacks, and ISW assesses current Russian offensive efforts in the Avdiivka area are likely primarily comprised of DNR forces."
I was primarily thinking about the infantry, because the way they attacked looked - well, I only had basic training, but that was not the way we were sent forward
Many thanks for the update, Tom. Is a nice thing to see orcs being sended back to their starting positions (and left -temporary- all the Putin fans without words after bragging about the “unstoppable” Russian counterattack)
- the uncontested low level presence of RuAF choppers in the Avdiivka area is not good sight. Up till now at least in MANPADS there were no shortage (as there weren't plenty of targets), but now they looked like flying at will.
- I have a pretty well scaled meter on the VSRF moves - the Hindustan Times YT channel. They cheer the smallest advance and everything is devastating, fatal, catastrophyc to the ZSU. So when there were NO videos about the clashes around Avdiivka, I was sure it went south in big fashion.
Hindi-Russi bhai-bhai! I only wonder why such a lot of Indian students used to study and to live in Ukraine for years if they are so fond of Russia. Mere companies of them before the war went to bathe in Dnipro.
Not when living and studying hear in the university. I see you have never been to Russia or to Ukraine. Modern Ukraine resembles Russia no more then Scotland resembles USA.
Elena, that was a joke.! Of course I don't think anyone except a Russian nazi thinks Ukraine is part of Russia. I am sorry, I know this isn't a funny subject.
Btw I have been to Russia when it was soviet and I learned why anyone would want to escape and stay as far away as possible from the Russian system. I also went to Ukraine about 10 years ago. I could see that it had started to escape but hadn't finished yet.
Avdiivka is the most surrounded place on the frontline (maybe Bilohorivka a little bit more). So it is the easiest place for helicopters to attack, as the only region manpad fire can come from is under artillery preparation as well.
This morning we were impressed and delighted by Russian losses reported by Ukrainian media. I simply did not believe my own eyes. It seems Putler is a fan of Stalin's style of military operations: beating one's head on the wall. Thanks for the update. Slava Ukraini!
Oct 11, 2023·edited Oct 11, 2023Liked by Sarcastosaurus
I always thought the length of time for conversion to F-16 talk was kinda ridiculous. I'm reminded of what a west German fighter pilot said about flying the first time in the MiG-29, and how it compared to the F-4 to which he said...."it's a fighter jet". People forget how war necessitates a faster pace of learning and adaptability. In WW2 fighter pilots had to potentially learn 2 or even 4 different aircraft, over the course of the war and each with new engines and systems that could be vastly different from what they had prior.
I mean didn't it take the Iraqi pilots roughly about 6 months if I recall to convert some pilots over from their MiG's 21 and 23's to Mirage F1's back in the early 80's? Going from early version MiG-29s and Su-27s to F-16A+'s is about the same kinda leap in tech. As for servicing them, it's still low bypass turbofan engines, and pulse doppler radars. Sure there are differences but it not like going to something absolutely foreign in overall design.
The language of all their documentation is foreign. I read somewhere that Ukrainian maintainers (and maybe pilots) were having to learn English, which was adding a few months to their training.
I wonder to what extent Iraqi pilots under the Hussein regime were selected on merit.
Ukraine got 100 000+ IT specialists most of which work for foreign customers, know technical English and can easily translate the documentation if given access to Google. Probably too heretical a solution for the military advisors.
We IT people might be good at English (some of us, anyway), but "technical English" in IT and "technical English" in aircraft documentation is likely to be very different (to say the least). I think, you slightly overestimate the ability of an average person to correctly translate something full of terms they've never in their life encountered in any of the involved languages.
Get an engineer from Antonov aviation plant, set him next to a programmer, and let the programmer check how the unknown words are used on Wikipedia, then the engineer would check the overall correctness of the translation.
It is similar to how you stuff your projects. You don't try to find 5 programmers who know hardware, drivers, web, UX and QA at the same time. You will need 1 person to know UX, 1 person to know QA, and 1 person to know hardware.
While it's definitely possible to generate approved translations of all documentation, as Tom has said that's not enough.
There is probably a requirement that Ukrainian maintainers be able to learn from on-site training delivered by English-speakers, and, once in the field, be able to communicate with more skilled/experienced maintainers in real time.
Ground support crews are also a big problem. I would expect at least one hundred people crewing an F-16 squadron, plus the pilots. They all would need an adequate knowledge of the English language, in order to be able to read and understand the many thousands of pages of manuals etc.
Look on youtube channel of C.W. Lemoine former F-16/F-18 pilot. He makes a clear distinction of flying the F-16 plane and using the F-16 Weapon system. Flying it he said is 2 month but using it as weapon systems is a lot more complicated if you want to survive first missions.
I'm familiar with Lemoine, and in all do respect he was trained and operated in peace time and during low intensity conflicts. Time tables are always greater during those times to maximise efficiency, prevent accidents and justify costs, and they work within a pretty standard work schedule. Unfortunately that is not feasible with the time tables required in high intensity conflict, and at that point your working vastly longer hours and spending vaslty more money, so having a higher accident rate and equipment failure rate is just expected and easy to justify, because you need the capability now. The pilots don't need to learn "every" aspect of the weapons system of the F-16 all at once, and again you see it historically in high intensity conflicts where the need is great, peace time time tables are thrown in the bin and everything accelerates at a much more rapid pace, because your systems and tactics likely get countered or become obsolete in a very short time period.
Depends if you are speaking about learning the F-16 (or Gripen, or Rafale) as an aircraft, or as a weapons system. The first can happen in 2-6 months for an experienced pilot, the second easily can take a year or so, depending on the roles and weapons and tactics that need to be learned (you may need three months of training for air superiority, three more months for close air support role, etc.)
To give a data point, Hellenic Air Force received the first Rafales in January 2022, after 3+ months of flight training in France. Still, the first squadron hasn't been declared operational, despite HAF being familiar with Mirage aircraft for nearly half a century (Mirage F-1CG, Mirage 2000)
Again that is pretty typical for a nation at peace, and to accelerate the training for a nation at peace would be reckless and completely unessesary, but as mentioned before when the window of opportunity is limited, and your country has switched to a war economy those priorities and time tables drasticlly change. The pace and hours that are being put in by soldiers, pilots, and technicians are significantly different then one at peace or in low intensity conflict, as is the need, and the focus. Also the Ukrainans won't be using the F-16s in a typical NATO's country fashion, they simply don't have the same support and force multipliers to work with, such as AWACs support, or in flight refueling, to name just a couple, and even their tactics aren't going to be the ones NATO uses, because they don't have all the bells and whistles that a NATO task force would bring, use, and train with. Rather they are going to be using the tactics that they've learned already in this conflict and the F-16 will just hopefully allow those tactics to be more effective. It's exaxtly the same with the ground forces, they can't do all the things that a NATO ground force can do, simply because they don't have all the equipment and support that would require, and that carries over to the air war they therefore aren't going to have the same requirements that a pilot operating in a NATO task force would be expected to do.
I find it hilarious that NATO pilots are fine calling the Ukrainians the "experts" on one hand, because they have now actually had to deal with intense high stakes air to air and ground to air threats, but then turn around and say, but you still have to learn it the way WE were taught, because we know best.
It's like learning violin - if you want to flout the rules, you must first learn them.
If you want to use new tactics, fine - but first, you have to learn the essentials, at least. Trying to use Soviet-era tactics with a western fighter may not be the best idea...
We shall see. My guess is that the Ukraine pilots will be proficient in flying the F-16s by next spring, but operating (and maintaining) these as weapons systems will take at least the summer, add 2-3 months for training in each additional role.
Except the Ukrainan pilots in your example are violinists already, they are just using a different type of violin. They haven't been using Soviet tactics and have been training with NATO tactics with NATO forces for a few years before the war even started. As for the fighter being different, the basic differenance is that it has better range, (single engine design) but really only compared to the MiG-29, better radar interface for pilot and better for finding drones and prosecuting them (but still just on par with the radars Russia is using on it's modern fighters) better AA missiiles in terms or active guided missiles like AIM 120C (which still means it's at a big disadvantage trying to go againt Su-35 and MiG-31s using R-33 that overall as a package have better range and better radar and better high alt performance to the F-16 AIM-120C package) and it gives them better interface with weapons that the Ukrainians are already using (HARM JDAM) they'll get a few other bomb and cruise missilies options, but as they picked up using JDAM HARM, on the MiG-29 and Su-27 and the Storm Shadow for the Su-24 pretty quickly I don't see how that's going to take longer now.
Do we have any sense about how much of Ukraine’s offensive capabilities remain after this summer? How long can they feasibly push at the same rate in the Tokmak direction?
As long as NATO is delivering at least around 70,000 artillery shells a month.
That said, other equipment - especially soft-skin vehicles - is badly atrited. And there's still a critical shortage of mortar bombs.... so, overall, no idea: I'm only sure, the ZSU is still receiving far too little for serious advances.
As long as there's enough ammunition and weapons, they could be pressing their attack up to rasputitsa time, at least (in approximately a month from now). I guess that rasputitsa will mean Ukraine will continue to use mostly light infantry, trying to clear up the Russian defenses during November and December, then mechanized assault troops will up again the pressure.
If I understand correctly, there are still divisions in reserve, waiting to exploit a breakthrough, if it happens before that (but these are being drawn more and more into rotation with the assault troops).
Well the Ukrainians are into their 10th mobilization wave that mostly consists of women so it doesn't sound like they have any men left alive for any kind of assault.
Hello Tom,
Would you please contact the Substack moderators to find out why they banned Ivan Bajlo? All his comments were deleted after he posted several historical documents that were showing that USSR's military industry during WW2 was running on raw materials provided by the USA for free. A day later he followed me with a message "For some heinous act banned from commenting on substack forever :-p", then his profile was deleted.
This looks very much like the crowdbanning the Russian trolls used against Ukrainian posters on LinkedIn and Facebook. They make a hundred of accounts report one of the user's posts as offensive, and the user is banned by the social network's engine without any judgement from the moderators.
Thanks.
Oh dear! Didn't know about that!
And, to make sure - and because I was 'banning trolls like wild' the last few days - have checked if I did so, by mistake of course.
To my huge relief, it wasn't me.
I'll see to find a way to contact mods: it's a shame they've suspended him.
We want Ivan! Bring back Ivan!
psst, it is I Leclerc... I mean Ivan ;-)
I feel I got banned by some very stupid AI which got triggered by something I wrote... (to make things more absurd all that LL stuff got copy/pasted from WW2 FB group and is few years old), appeal process are just dumb bots with no human to even tell you the reason so it is completely pointless...
anyway I lost any motivation to comment on this platform since it can delete everything for any reason... even FB admits and restores some posts it deletes by trigger happy algorithms and has yet to delete everything... apparently breaking some substack unwritten rule is worst possible crime in the world...
p.s.
I'm off to destroy skynet I mean substack ai before it becomes self-aware, in case I fail you and Tom are in charge of European resistance... get a dog just in case ;-)
Substack is a new business, they don't have any money to hire a support team for the sake of few unlucky outsiders.
...2023...not 2013 😁
What do you have against 2013? :P
I have a lot of personal issues with the year 2013 😅
OK mate: out of sympathy with you, have corrected this. Hope, the new title is better on your eyes - and memories. 😉
Insert hide the pain Harold meme. Cheers!
Thanks for the update Tom. Lately there is no mention about 92 Mech, any idea where are they? And now when there was FB friends clensing maybe you could accept some of us who are in waiting room? :D
Re. 92nd Mech: no specific idea, and think that's fine that way.
Re. FB: I'll check and - if I can find you (have over 1,700 requests) - I'll accept.
Thank you, request was sent in late July if that helps.
Sorry, can't find you there... I'll try with FB's search function.
Maybe this helps:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094670385176
Gets a mention here
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1712124678867747251
Thanks.
FB is soo 2010!
Yes, I am old.... :D
What % of VDV forces is left of those that were thrown to fight in Zaporizhia
AFAIK, less than 60%. Cautious estimate.
Wow, those are indeed heavy losses.
I belive that the usual rule of thumb is that a unit that take 30% losses is considered combat ineffective.
But strangely, russian units go on fighting with heavier losses than that, and those VDV seem like an especially tough breed, although I fail to see what their motivation for fighting and suffering such losses might be.
What kind of losses does a VDV regiment need to suffer before it becomes combat ineffective, do you think?
Thank you, Tom, for your tireless coverage.
Thank you as always Tom. A far more comprehensive assessment of the latest Russian attempted pincer attack. One surprise perhaps to me is the impression (at least from a little footage that I have seen) of Russian helicopter operations. I have not seen footage or reports of losses, what conclusion do you drawer from this confidence in use? Or are the videos taken outside the envelope of Ukrainian MANPADS coverage and look more impressive than effective.
Many thanks also from me. Obviously busy times for you and giving all of those conflicts are causing tremendous pain and suffering, for sure a burden for all those, which deep dive and view all the violent videos/pics
Most recent satellite imagery shows extensive naval presence in Sevastopol.
You might want to see these CIT reports on Russian (2022) mobilization, the second one being just released. They also compiled a spreadsheet of "at least 123 different units were created as part of the mobilization, with the real number likely higher still. The majority of these units, 77, were nominally classified as motorized rifle regiments. We also found references for 18 separate motorized rifle battalions, five engineer-sapper regiments, five tank regiments, as well as seven artillery regiments and 11 artillery battalions."
https://notes.citeam.org/mobi-in-russia-1
https://notes.citeam.org/mobi-in-russia-2
Cool stuff, thanks!
Thank you for the update Tom.
Do you have any itention why the Russians used those forces to counterattack here and not supporting the forces in the Robotyne salient?
As said in conclusion: if they're not attacking - they're 'automatically losing'. Slowly, but certainly. So, there's no other option but to continue counterattacking. That's slowing down Ukrainians.
So the land war has devolved for Russia into putting "stuff" between ZSU and the borders, that stuff unfortunately including the souls of men?
ISW wrote today that the attack formations are mostly DNR troops. So they aren't even Russian. That bolsters your explanation.
The 90th Tank Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army = 'DNR troops'...?
"[8] Furthermore, the majority of Russian forces currently fighting in the Avdiivka area are likely elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 1st Army Corps, which the Russian 8th Combined Arms Army predominantly controls.[9] ISW has not observed any 8th Combined Arms Army elements not from DNR formations involved in ongoing attacks, and ISW assesses current Russian offensive efforts in the Avdiivka area are likely primarily comprised of DNR forces."
I was primarily thinking about the infantry, because the way they attacked looked - well, I only had basic training, but that was not the way we were sent forward
Thanks for the update!
Many thanks for the update, Tom. Is a nice thing to see orcs being sended back to their starting positions (and left -temporary- all the Putin fans without words after bragging about the “unstoppable” Russian counterattack)
Thank you for the update.
- the uncontested low level presence of RuAF choppers in the Avdiivka area is not good sight. Up till now at least in MANPADS there were no shortage (as there weren't plenty of targets), but now they looked like flying at will.
- I have a pretty well scaled meter on the VSRF moves - the Hindustan Times YT channel. They cheer the smallest advance and everything is devastating, fatal, catastrophyc to the ZSU. So when there were NO videos about the clashes around Avdiivka, I was sure it went south in big fashion.
Hindi-Russi bhai-bhai! I only wonder why such a lot of Indian students used to study and to live in Ukraine for years if they are so fond of Russia. Mere companies of them before the war went to bathe in Dnipro.
They must have thought Ukraine was part of Russia.
Not when living and studying hear in the university. I see you have never been to Russia or to Ukraine. Modern Ukraine resembles Russia no more then Scotland resembles USA.
Elena, that was a joke.! Of course I don't think anyone except a Russian nazi thinks Ukraine is part of Russia. I am sorry, I know this isn't a funny subject.
Btw I have been to Russia when it was soviet and I learned why anyone would want to escape and stay as far away as possible from the Russian system. I also went to Ukraine about 10 years ago. I could see that it had started to escape but hadn't finished yet.
Russia does not want to let us go but we are already gone.
They are like a psychopath who rapes his ex girlfriend thinking she will come back to him, but she's already married someone else.
Avdiivka is the most surrounded place on the frontline (maybe Bilohorivka a little bit more). So it is the easiest place for helicopters to attack, as the only region manpad fire can come from is under artillery preparation as well.
Thanks for the update. If the Nato headquarters people could understand more... yes, lets hope.
This morning we were impressed and delighted by Russian losses reported by Ukrainian media. I simply did not believe my own eyes. It seems Putler is a fan of Stalin's style of military operations: beating one's head on the wall. Thanks for the update. Slava Ukraini!
me think there was a lot of late registrations of the two days before today,.
Looks like it was more DNR losses than Russian ones.
Could be ukrainians from occupied territories forcibly mobilized to rushist' army
I always thought the length of time for conversion to F-16 talk was kinda ridiculous. I'm reminded of what a west German fighter pilot said about flying the first time in the MiG-29, and how it compared to the F-4 to which he said...."it's a fighter jet". People forget how war necessitates a faster pace of learning and adaptability. In WW2 fighter pilots had to potentially learn 2 or even 4 different aircraft, over the course of the war and each with new engines and systems that could be vastly different from what they had prior.
We did retraining from Leopard 1A5 to 2A4 in two weeks back in the 90s. Well, a battle tank is a battle tank.
I mean didn't it take the Iraqi pilots roughly about 6 months if I recall to convert some pilots over from their MiG's 21 and 23's to Mirage F1's back in the early 80's? Going from early version MiG-29s and Su-27s to F-16A+'s is about the same kinda leap in tech. As for servicing them, it's still low bypass turbofan engines, and pulse doppler radars. Sure there are differences but it not like going to something absolutely foreign in overall design.
The language of all their documentation is foreign. I read somewhere that Ukrainian maintainers (and maybe pilots) were having to learn English, which was adding a few months to their training.
I wonder to what extent Iraqi pilots under the Hussein regime were selected on merit.
Yes, of course: they all first have to start with 6-months English-course.
Ukraine got 100 000+ IT specialists most of which work for foreign customers, know technical English and can easily translate the documentation if given access to Google. Probably too heretical a solution for the military advisors.
We IT people might be good at English (some of us, anyway), but "technical English" in IT and "technical English" in aircraft documentation is likely to be very different (to say the least). I think, you slightly overestimate the ability of an average person to correctly translate something full of terms they've never in their life encountered in any of the involved languages.
Get an engineer from Antonov aviation plant, set him next to a programmer, and let the programmer check how the unknown words are used on Wikipedia, then the engineer would check the overall correctness of the translation.
It is similar to how you stuff your projects. You don't try to find 5 programmers who know hardware, drivers, web, UX and QA at the same time. You will need 1 person to know UX, 1 person to know QA, and 1 person to know hardware.
While it's definitely possible to generate approved translations of all documentation, as Tom has said that's not enough.
There is probably a requirement that Ukrainian maintainers be able to learn from on-site training delivered by English-speakers, and, once in the field, be able to communicate with more skilled/experienced maintainers in real time.
As if one could not find an authorised translstor for the documentation these days...
Ground support crews are also a big problem. I would expect at least one hundred people crewing an F-16 squadron, plus the pilots. They all would need an adequate knowledge of the English language, in order to be able to read and understand the many thousands of pages of manuals etc.
Look on youtube channel of C.W. Lemoine former F-16/F-18 pilot. He makes a clear distinction of flying the F-16 plane and using the F-16 Weapon system. Flying it he said is 2 month but using it as weapon systems is a lot more complicated if you want to survive first missions.
I'm familiar with Lemoine, and in all do respect he was trained and operated in peace time and during low intensity conflicts. Time tables are always greater during those times to maximise efficiency, prevent accidents and justify costs, and they work within a pretty standard work schedule. Unfortunately that is not feasible with the time tables required in high intensity conflict, and at that point your working vastly longer hours and spending vaslty more money, so having a higher accident rate and equipment failure rate is just expected and easy to justify, because you need the capability now. The pilots don't need to learn "every" aspect of the weapons system of the F-16 all at once, and again you see it historically in high intensity conflicts where the need is great, peace time time tables are thrown in the bin and everything accelerates at a much more rapid pace, because your systems and tactics likely get countered or become obsolete in a very short time period.
Depends if you are speaking about learning the F-16 (or Gripen, or Rafale) as an aircraft, or as a weapons system. The first can happen in 2-6 months for an experienced pilot, the second easily can take a year or so, depending on the roles and weapons and tactics that need to be learned (you may need three months of training for air superiority, three more months for close air support role, etc.)
To give a data point, Hellenic Air Force received the first Rafales in January 2022, after 3+ months of flight training in France. Still, the first squadron hasn't been declared operational, despite HAF being familiar with Mirage aircraft for nearly half a century (Mirage F-1CG, Mirage 2000)
Again that is pretty typical for a nation at peace, and to accelerate the training for a nation at peace would be reckless and completely unessesary, but as mentioned before when the window of opportunity is limited, and your country has switched to a war economy those priorities and time tables drasticlly change. The pace and hours that are being put in by soldiers, pilots, and technicians are significantly different then one at peace or in low intensity conflict, as is the need, and the focus. Also the Ukrainans won't be using the F-16s in a typical NATO's country fashion, they simply don't have the same support and force multipliers to work with, such as AWACs support, or in flight refueling, to name just a couple, and even their tactics aren't going to be the ones NATO uses, because they don't have all the bells and whistles that a NATO task force would bring, use, and train with. Rather they are going to be using the tactics that they've learned already in this conflict and the F-16 will just hopefully allow those tactics to be more effective. It's exaxtly the same with the ground forces, they can't do all the things that a NATO ground force can do, simply because they don't have all the equipment and support that would require, and that carries over to the air war they therefore aren't going to have the same requirements that a pilot operating in a NATO task force would be expected to do.
I find it hilarious that NATO pilots are fine calling the Ukrainians the "experts" on one hand, because they have now actually had to deal with intense high stakes air to air and ground to air threats, but then turn around and say, but you still have to learn it the way WE were taught, because we know best.
It's like learning violin - if you want to flout the rules, you must first learn them.
If you want to use new tactics, fine - but first, you have to learn the essentials, at least. Trying to use Soviet-era tactics with a western fighter may not be the best idea...
We shall see. My guess is that the Ukraine pilots will be proficient in flying the F-16s by next spring, but operating (and maintaining) these as weapons systems will take at least the summer, add 2-3 months for training in each additional role.
Except the Ukrainan pilots in your example are violinists already, they are just using a different type of violin. They haven't been using Soviet tactics and have been training with NATO tactics with NATO forces for a few years before the war even started. As for the fighter being different, the basic differenance is that it has better range, (single engine design) but really only compared to the MiG-29, better radar interface for pilot and better for finding drones and prosecuting them (but still just on par with the radars Russia is using on it's modern fighters) better AA missiiles in terms or active guided missiles like AIM 120C (which still means it's at a big disadvantage trying to go againt Su-35 and MiG-31s using R-33 that overall as a package have better range and better radar and better high alt performance to the F-16 AIM-120C package) and it gives them better interface with weapons that the Ukrainians are already using (HARM JDAM) they'll get a few other bomb and cruise missilies options, but as they picked up using JDAM HARM, on the MiG-29 and Su-27 and the Storm Shadow for the Su-24 pretty quickly I don't see how that's going to take longer now.