• A Ukrainian F-16 pilot may have pulled off a feat no one flying the jet has achieved before.
• Ukraine's Air Force Command said the pilots took out six Russian cruise missiles in a single flight.
• Colonel Yuriy Ihnat said it was the first time this had been recorded in the jet's history.

Ukraine said one of its F-16 pilots achieved a feat nobody flying the jet has managed before.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Ukraine's Air Force Command said a pilot flying an F-16 took out six Russian cruise missiles during a single flight, using air-to-air missiles and an aircraft cannon.

This occurred during a "mass" missile and drone attack in December, it said.

On December 13, Russia fired almost 200 drones, Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles, and 94 cruise missiles at Ukraine.

The pilot's main target was the cruise missiles, according to the post.

He used all four air-to-air missiles on board the F-16, two of which were short-range, forcing the jet to fly closer to the missiles — an "extremely dangerous" task, it said.

The pilot then struck two other missiles flying close to each other using an air cannon.

Business Insider was not able to verify the report.

Intercepting "such important targets is not an easy task for a pilot, but who, if not Ukrainian pilots, has the most experience in the world of winged missiles?" Colonel Yuriy Ihnat, head of the Ukrainian Air Force Command's public relations service, said.

Since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has frequently launched large missile attacks on Ukraine, aimed at overwhelming Ukraine's air defense systems and hitting targets behind the front lines.

The pilot, who had recently undergone retraining for F-16s in the US, said in the post that Ukrainian F-16 pilots had never used an aviation cannon to shoot down targets.

However, he said he applied the lessons he learned in the US.

"I must have set a record that day," he said, adding, "I am convinced that this experience will be useful to colleagues."

Colonel Ihnat described it as the first-ever documented case.

He said that "based on objective control, we have one hundred percent confirmation that for the first time in history in anti-air combat, an American fighter F-16 shoots down six winged missiles."

• The US Navy has developed a new way of reloading warships with missiles while at sea.
• It will be "critical" to any future conflict in the Pacific, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said.
• The solution could be useful, but it's untested in real war conditions, one analyst said.

The US Navy has developed a new way of reloading its destroyers, cruisers, and other sizable warships with missiles at sea, as it contends with the growing naval threat from China.

The Wall Street Journal gained exclusive access to a recent test off the coast of California, where US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro described the new capability as "critical to any future conflict in the Pacific."

The technology is based on repurposed 1990s prototype equipment and uses a hydraulically propelled system that transports missile canisters from a supply ship via a zipline to place them into a launch cell, it reported.

TRAM was tested on land in July and then at sea for the first time in October, off the coast of San Diego, where Del Toro touted it as a "powerful deterrent" to US rivals.

"Without the ability to rearm at sea, our service combatants must return to port, sometimes thousands of miles away," Del Toro said at the time.

This could put them out of action for weeks at a time.

Del Toro said the US Navy expected to start deploying TRAM within the next two to three years.

In a speech at Columbia University in December 2022, Del Toro said delivering the "game-changing" capability to rearm US warships at sea was one of his top priorities.

China has grown increasingly assertive in the Pacific in recent months, crossing into the airspace and waters around Taiwan, a key US partner, and carrying out maritime gray-zone operations in the South China Sea against the Philippines, an ally the US is treaty-bound to defend.

To date, the US has only been able to reload its warships' cruise missile launchers from solid ground, or in sheltered harbors.

In September, the USS Dewey reloaded at an allied naval base in Darwin, Australia.

But "if conflict were to erupt, or if something were to happen, being able to go to various different locations around the Indo-Pacific, it makes it much faster for us to reload," Nicholas Maruca, the commanding officer of the USS Dewey, told the Journal.

However, the technology alone might not be enough.

Nick Childs, a senior naval analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, noted in a recent military blog that the system has only been trialed in "fairly benign" sea conditions and that the Navy needs to distribute enough equipment, replenishment ships, and missiles around the fleet, and also modify warships to receive them.

"However they are accomplished," he said of reloading solutions, they "will be no silver bullet for navies."