F-16 Incident Forcing NATO Nations to Consider No-Fly Zone for Missiles Over Ukraine

The downing of the first Ukrainian F-16 last week has triggered demands within certain NATO partner-countries to impose a no-fly zone over Western Ukraine.

NATO is currently discussing the shooting down of Russian missiles over Ukraine by the air defense of the Alliance countries. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and Polish President Andrzej Duda announced this during a joint press conference on Wednesday in Warsaw.

Moscow has recently stepped up its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine's towns and cities, targeting key infrastructure and utilities as the country heads into winter.

If established, a no-fly zone would protect the few Ukrainian pilots to focus on fighting Russian jets in the east, as opposed to intercepting Russian cruise missiles in the West. It may be recalled that the Ukrainian F-16 went down while trying to shoot down Russian missiles.

Poland, Lithuania and Romania have said that Ukraine has the right to shoot down any Russian missile over Ukraine that was heading towards its borders - a thought echoed by former British Air Marshal (Retired) Greg Bagwell who said NATO should do the same.

He told British Forces News that setting up the safety buffer for Ukraine would not carry the same risks as some of the previous no-fly zones set up by the alliance. "If you actually look at the threat scenario, we've put no-fly zones over countries, over the top of their surface-to-air systems, daring them not to fire at us – whether that be Iraq or Libya," he said.

"So we have created no-fly zones over the top of a hostile country (Russia) for years. "We're talking about putting a no-fly zone, or call it what you will, an engagement zone, over the western half of a friendly country (Urkaine) where there aren't Russian aircraft.

Another way is the establishment of a no-fly zone, which Air Marshal (Retd) Bagwell said would not require engaging with Russian jets directly. "In this case, we're talking about no-object zones, so cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles even, or drones, using potentially NATO assets to engage them in the west of the country.

"Because... it would not require you to engage manned aircraft and it wouldn't require you therefore to be concerned about ground-based air defence based in Russia."