Kandi1977
George Hunt
Yes, they are trying to thin out the air defence, and I believe they also have received HARM missiles to take out radars, but they require them to at least pop up to high altitude to launch them, where they most likely will be engaged by SAM and Russian fighters, and then scoot away down to low level as fast as possible. Very risky with the current level of threat. F-16s will definitely help, but probably not as much as most people think.The Ukraines have been targetting Russian SAMs for the last while including a reported couple of S-400s and S-500s destroyed in Crimea and around the Kerch bridge with the supposed aim of reducing the threat to F16s. They've also reportedly been used to launch storm shadow missiles, giving them more range.
As you say they aren't a game changer but every little helps and it's weapons used together rather than one that will change things.
But the biggest threat to f-16 operations, and indeed any military operations the Ukraine want to launch, is a threat they must find an answer to, that they currently haven't, and that is the Orlan-10 surveillance drones. They operate at an altitude beyond the reach of MANPADS, and are to cheap of a target to use conventional SAM's to take down. It's a bad trade to spend a missile worth $4m on a drone costing $10k.
The Russians will no doubt target bases where they find f-16s, using those drones for surveillance. They simply have to find an effective counter measure to them.