Business Insider: Russia is quickly depleting its fleet of warplanes through overuse, and Ukraine deploying F-16s could worsen the situation: expert
* An engineering expert says the Russian air force is being depleted through overuse in Ukraine.
* The arrival of Ukraine's F-16s could worsen the problem, wrote Rand's Michael Bohnert.
* Ukraine says it urgently needs F-16s to reduce Russia's air dominance.
Russia's fighter planes are malfunctioning because of overuse, handing Ukraine a potential advantage in its air battles against the Russian air force, an engineering expert said.
In an article for Defense News, Michael Bohnert, an engineer at the Rand Corporation think tank, said that Russia's warplanes were running out of "aircraft life".
"Overuse of these aircraft is also costing Russia as the war drags on," he wrote, adding that by his calculations as many as 57 Russian planes, many repurposed Soviet-era machines, might have been lost because they broke down since the start of the war.
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WNU Editor: This reminds me of the media narrative last year that Russia was on the verge of running out of missiles.