Pavlo Palisa, Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office and a serving Brigade General, announced on 20 May via his Telegram channel that he had held a fresh round of negotiations with Lockheed Martin Corporation representatives. The stated agenda covered three areas: securing a reliable spare-parts supply, streamlining aircraft maintenance, and exploring options to expand technical support for Ukrainian military aviation more broadly. United24 Media, lb.ua, and BreakingTheNews all reported independently from the same Telegram post within hours of publication.

The framing is notable for what it does not include. Palisa did not announce a signed contract, a firm delivery schedule for additional parts, or a commitment from Lockheed Martin to establish repair infrastructure on Ukrainian soil. The talks are described as focused on jointly accelerating servicing of aircraft that are currently active, rather than on future deliveries or platform upgrades. That narrow focus reflects where the operational pressure is concentrated right now: keeping the jets that Ukraine already has flying, rather than adding new capability.

Palisa closed his update by quoting two Latin military mottos used by Ukrainian forces: “Scuta premite,” meaning press the shields, and “Nunquam retrorsum,” meaning never retreat. The rhetorical flourish is characteristic of his public communications style, but it also signals the broader institutional context: the people running these negotiations are uniformed operators, not procurement bureaucrats, and their urgency is operational rather than administrative.

Ukrainian officials, led by Brigade General Pavlo Palisa, meet with Lockheed Martin representatives on 20 May 2026. Photo: Presidential Office of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s F-16 fleet currently stands at approximately 39 operational jets, a figure derived from open-source tracking by Oryx and reported by Technology.org in April 2026. Against the 79 to 87 aircraft pledged by Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, that number illustrates how far the delivery programme has progressed and where the gaps remain. Belgian transfers have been delayed by the slow arrival of Brussels’ replacement F-35 fifth-generation jets. Norwegian airframes reached a Sabena Aerospace maintenance facility in Belgium with up to 100 missing parts each and without wings, engines, or tails, producing a backlog that has set back their readiness for transfer to Ukraine.

The US has taken two distinct approaches to the spare-parts problem. The Pentagon in May 2025 confirmed it was shipping non-flyable 1980s-vintage F-16As from the Boneyard storage facility at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona to Ukraine, transported on Antonov An-124 heavy cargo airlifters after being shrink-wrapped for transit. The Air Force was explicit that these aircraft cannot be made operational: they lack engines and radar and are retired beyond return. The second approach is the industrial contract route: the January 2026 Sabena Aerospace deal, running through 2029 with a $235 million funding ceiling, handles intermediate and depot-level work that exceeds the capacity of Ukrainian line maintenance units.

Neither approach fully solves the problem Palisa is describing. Boneyard parts help fill specific component gaps but do not provide a reliable ongoing supply chain. Brussels-based depot maintenance means turnaround times measured in weeks or months of transit, not days. The core operational ask from the Ukrainian side has been consistent for over a year: shorten the distance between a jet that needs a part and the part that needs to arrive. That is the pressure behind every round of talks with Lockheed Martin.

Ukraine’s F-16s have been operationally active since August 2024, primarily in an air defence role intercepting Russian cruise missiles, Shahed drones, and glide-bomb carrier aircraft at long range. By November 2025, the fleet had destroyed more than 1,000 aerial targets; by early 2026 that figure had risen past 1,300, according to reporting by Aerotime and Technology.org. The fleet is also hitting ground targets, including strikes in close proximity to frontline positions, a role that puts the jets under additional stress and risk from Russia’s dense surface-to-air missile network.

Four F-16s have been confirmed lost by Oryx since the type entered service. The first was destroyed on 26 August 2024, an ex-Danish example, in circumstances the Ukrainian general staff described as an accident rather than a Russian shoot-down. Subsequent losses include a pilot killed in April 2025, Captain Pavlo Ivanov, aged 26, during a combat mission; the cause of that loss has not been fully established publicly. Ukrainian Air Force officers have been publicly candid that NATO-taught air combat doctrine did not transfer cleanly to the Ukrainian theatre, where Russian ground-based air defences present a qualitatively different threat envelope than any NATO planning scenario. The resultant shift to low-altitude, terrain-hugging flight profiles and new rules of engagement has been documented across multiple pilot interviews.

The operational context matters for the maintenance conversation. Jets flying low-altitude profiles in high-tempo combat environments accumulate airframe stress and component wear faster than peacetime schedules assume. The engine, radar, and avionics workload of a jet flying several sorties per week through contested airspace is substantially higher than the planned-for baseline in a standard F-16 sustainment contract. Lockheed Martin wrote the original sustainment documentation for export customers who are not at war. Ukraine needs documentation, parts cycles, and servicing intervals calibrated for a different operational reality. That is what the 20 May talks are trying to negotiate.

The industrial relationship between Ukraine and Lockheed Martin has been built in layers since 2024. The $26 million contract awarded in September 2025 covered a specific gap: Ukraine lacked country-adapted operational and maintenance documentation for its F-16 fleet, a problem that sounds administrative but is practically significant. Tailored documentation reduces the risk of maintenance errors, speeds technician training, and makes it possible for Ukrainian personnel to work on the jets without routing every technical question through Lockheed Martin’s standard export support chain. The contract runs through May 2029, signalling that the US government expects the F-16 to remain a core Ukrainian Air Force platform for at least the next three years.

Separately, at the MSPO 2025 defence exhibition in Poland, Ukrainian Defence Industry JSC and Lockheed Martin signed an agreement to expand the capabilities of a specific Ukrainian facility, with the stated direction being localised F-16 maintenance. The agreement was confirmed by both Defence Express and Caliber.Az citing the same exhibition reporting. Neither party has publicly specified which facility was involved or what the implementation timeline is. The January 2026 Sabena contract sits alongside this: Brussels handles the work that cannot yet be done inside Ukraine, while the longer-term ambition is to bring that work onshore.

The strategic logic for in-country repair capacity is straightforward. Every F-16 that needs depot-level maintenance currently has to travel to Belgium, absorbing transit time, security exposure, and the scheduling constraints of a commercial facility serving multiple clients. A jet undergoing overhaul in Brussels is not available for operations over Kharkiv. Moving even a portion of that work inside Ukraine would reduce turnaround time and increase mission-capable rates. The obstacle is not intention but infrastructure: establishing a facility capable of F-16 intermediate maintenance requires tooling, personnel certification, parts inventories, and physical security that take time and significant capital to build.