Ukraine's future F-16 pilots are taught to fly without GPS from the earliest stages of UK training, Business Insider reported. Russian electronic warfare on the front line has made map-and-terrain navigation a primary combat skill, not a backup. The British Royal Air Force adapted its course for that reality.
Russian jamming rewrites the basics
British instructors walk the trainees through what flying under sustained Russian jamming actually looks like. They learn to use rivers, mountains, and other terrain features for navigation during training sorties.
A Ukrainian trainee said low-altitude flying without full reliance on GPS is "really important."
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In NATO air forces, GPS-free navigation is a contingency drill. For Ukrainian pilots, every sortie may run that drill for real.
Russian front-line jamming is disrupting navigation systems, forcing pilots to rely instead on maps and visible ground features.
Beyond Ukraine's borders
Russia's GPS interference caused problems far beyond the war zone. Several Baltic NATO members have publicly blamed Moscow for jamming that throws off shipping and aviation across the region.
- Russia has moved additional electronic warfare equipment within 20 km of Estonia's border, the Estonian interior minister said in 2025.
- Three Finnish airports have reintroduced older ground-based radio navigation equipment to handle landings during Russian GPS interference.
- Alliance officials warned in 2025 that civilian casualties from GPS interference would be treated as deliberate escalation, not an accident.
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One product of that environment is the spool-trailing fiber-optic drone, immune to jamming because it's tethered to its operator by wire.
The course and the path to F-16
The British pipeline has now graduated more than 50 Ukrainian pilots. The UK leg covers English plus elementary flying; the next leg, fast-jet conversion, takes place abroad. The pipeline's endpoint is the F-16 cockpit.
The elementary flying instructor, RAF Flight Lt. Dayle, said the Ukrainians were handling the aircraft confidently inside the first ten flights. By graduation, they were running formation takeoffs, breaking into separate flight paths, dropping to the deck, and rehearsing strikes on practice targets.
Ukraine received its first F-16 fighter jets in 2024, with NATO allies pledging dozens to modernize Kyiv's aging Soviet-era fleet. Kyiv has used the aircraft primarily for air defense against Russian missiles and drones, as well as for long-range precision strikes.
