F-16s will also use the same hard point connections as the munitions Ukraine is receiving from the west. Most weapons like Storm Shadow have to have an adaptor or temp setup to use them on Soviet aircraft.

The gains for ground work will be huge. Also, parts are much easier to receive than make, which will reduce downtime for each plane. Another benefit is to use modern western radar and ECM instead of whatever was native to Russian systems. It's a lot of small gains that add up to a very real change in the air war over Ukraine. Whether the Vipers can reduce Russia air superiority or not will remain to be seen, but anything is better than what's happening right now.