High-powered Western fighter jets could be soon sent to Ukraine to bolster its forces in the battle against the Russian invasion, the head of the United States Air Force has said. 

General Charles Brown, the US Air Force Chief of Staff, said US officials are pondering training Ukrainian pilots as part of a future package of support.

The military chief said Washington and other Western governments are in discussion over Ukraine’s “long-term plan on how to build their air force and the air force that they’re going to need for the future”.

This could include, for the first time, shipments of Nato-standard fighter jets as Ukrainian pilots continue to defy the odds and stay airborne in their fight against Russia’s invasion.

Speaking at a security conference in Aspen, Gen Brown said Kyiv would unlikely be given Soviet-made MiG aircrafts because spare parts are too hard to obtain from Russia.

“There’s a number of different platforms that could go to Ukraine… it’ll be something non-Russian. I could tell you that,” he said. “But I can’t tell you exactly what it’s going to be.”

Gen Brown raised the prospect of US fighter jets, Swedish Gripen jets, the Eurofighter Typhoon and French-made Rafale fighters as possible options.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also raised the possibility of training Ukrainian pilots at a Pentagon press conference on Wednesday.

“On the flight training, as you know, we look at all kinds of options to present to the secretary [of defence] and the president, and there’s been no decisions on any of that,” he said.

“But we do examine a wide variety of options to improve pilot training.”

In March, the United States blocked a proposal to transfer Polish MiG-29 jets to Ukraine, branding the plan “high risk” and warning it could drag Nato into the conflict with Russia.

Warsaw had suggested sending its fleet of Soviet-era aircrafts to the US military’s Ramstein air base in Germany to eventually be transported to Ukraine.

Kyiv has repeatedly called for the donation of Russian-made jets because their pilots are trained to fly the fighters.

Officials from the war-torn country have also not been shy in asking for US-made fighter jets, such as the F-15 and F-16 models, and claimed Ukrainian pilots could “learn to fly these with just two to three weeks training”.