Part of the reason F-16's or at least Gripens are wanted is because they can fire BVR missiles at both air and ground targets.
This and they have better integration with NATO weapon systems in general; JDAMs, HARM, etc. And a better sensor suite PLUS improved ECM pods. This means F-16s will be able to attack reliably and accurately from outside the range of Russian airdefense and CAP - unless said CAP gets in range of Ukrainian AAD.
If they remove Russian CAP's stand off abilities, all the better.
I still don't think giving them F-16s is a very helpful move. I'd rather see them get more armor and AAD. But we'll see how it shapes out.
The other issue is this would be the first "non-surplus" system Ukraine has gotten from the US. That is, the F-16 is going to be flying for the US until its goddamn near 100 years old, and in service with other countries probably for longer than that.
Have no real idea of what effect it will have thanks to how many SAM systems the Russians have, and I hope Ukraine doesn't deploy them until they've found a way to thin the herds there.
It has the POTENTIAL to completely change the game and remove Russia's current air superiority, but that's going to come down to Ukraine's ability to use them: Pilots to fly them (and to understand how they fly) and command to not deploy them like soviet fighters. So 40/60.
The F-16 can dunk on the S-300 no issue, the Jews do it all the time to Syria. On the other hand, the S-300 is more than capable of taking out an F-16 with an unwary, untrained, or unluckly pilot. The S-300 struggles against an F-16 pilot with training and awareness he's operating in hostile airspace - but it can be done. if a pilot uses situational awareness they can be undone by S-300 using S-200 missiles
(tl;dr to cut off any Vatnigger cope: Israel was striking Iranian targets in Syria. Uptil that point in the civil war, Israeli pilots had been all but forbidden from hitting Syrian air-defense targets as their stated cause was to hit only Iranian (Hezbollah) sites - thus Syrian AAD was maximized and operators had little to no fear of Israeli jets hitting them back. The Israeli F-16 had climbed and was doing a slow, steady orbit to validate the results of the Israeli strike when it got got. Syrian AAD still had to use 27 missiles. Immediately after this, there was a punitive stomping of Syrian AAD and Israeli ROE for pilots changed to "HARM the fuck out anything that even scans in your general director" and there have been no more shootdowns or damaged F-16s. Thus ukrainian F-16s would be unlikely to find themselves in a similar situation - no weapons hold on Russian AAD, likely no civilian leadership willing to risk pilots/planes for photo-ops)
For Ukraine, the bigger problem is the presence of S-400, and the ability of S-300 launchers to slave into an S-400 system. Thanks to America's Greatest Allies, the Turks, everyone knows the S-400 can track F-16 and there is real-world experience operator experience of S-400s locking onto them (not archiving because it does what It says on the tin - turkey used S-400 to track F-16s during some war games that included Greece)
This is only a problem if they get their F-16s in range of the front, which they won't need to. F-16 can just get up high and drop ordinance well before any Russian missiles could reach them.
The Jews are rather happy with their small piece of land in the Middle East
Since fucking WHEN?
