iraqi airforce in 1980s
- Thread starter Khanzeer
- Start date
Iran's F-14s are far superior to anything the Iraqis could get their hands on, even the mirage, their pilot training was fantastic (because it had been done when Iran was the USA's main ally in the region), boosted yet further by all their experience. Nothing can change that and Iraq would always suffer greater losses in air to air combat. It is however possible that Iraq could have taken out a lot more of the Iranian planes if its military were not so consistently (and sometimes deliberately) incompetent in waging the air war. Killing as many Tomcats as possible would probably mostly declaw the Iranian air force, but doing so is a massive challenge when you're flying greatly inferior Soviet-built planes with pilots who are very poorly trained, not just in tactics but in using their own weapons systems. Iran was also very careful about keeping their F-14s alive so the Iraqis needed to bring the fight to Iran.
To do this, the first thing that needs to happen is for Saddam to agree not to interfere with pilot training and for the air force to not try and overthrow him. The Soviets didn't automatically offer training with a purchase like the Americans did and the training they did offer was not that great anyway, though it was better than nothing and at least taught pilots the basics. Bring them in.
The next thing you need to do, and this is important, is get your pilots to fight as aggressively as possible, to coordinate combat operations with one another and to give them as much operational freedom as possible. This isn't how the Iraqi army really worked but if it wanted results, it needed dead Tomcats and if it wanted that, the best chance would be to shut up and let both the foreign instructors and the pilots do their thing.
They also needed to get serious about deploying and operating their SAMs. The Iraqis never brought an Iranian F-14 down with a SAM even though Iran's ECMs were not so great. In fact, Iran accidentally shot down two of their own Tomcats with Hawk missiles, which were not substantially better than contemporary Soviet designs. There is no technical reason that the missiles Iraq had access to could not take down some Iranian planes because we know from experience that these systems were capable of it and because Iran's ability to suppress air defenses was not as great as say, Israel's. Iraq was not and needlessly lost tons of planes on the ground. Iraq needed SAMs in the right places, crews who could operate them effectively and proper communication between those crews and the SAMs.
Khanzeer
Banned
Most cost effective way to kill tomcats is on the ground , so airfield attacks should take priority?
More mig27 and maybe mirage with antirunaway ordanance
The mig23M/ML in superior numbers should be able to deal with F4 and F5E
If you look at F4 victories against mig23 it was mostly MS and BN
Maybe iraqis should have concentrated on defense better and avoid F14 as much as possible
More mig27 and maybe mirage with antirunaway ordanance
The mig23M/ML in superior numbers should be able to deal with F4 and F5E
If you look at F4 victories against mig23 it was mostly MS and BN
Maybe iraqis should have concentrated on defense better and avoid F14 as much as possible
Absolutely agree on the first two and mostly on the third. Their ground attack missions were much less effective than they could have been because of the poor quality of planning, coordination follow through etc... In addition to destroying the F-14s,they could have destroyed the defenses and infrastructure supporting them and limited their effectiveness.
While better defenses were vital, I'm not sure an overall defensive strategy would actually be the best way to fight.
SsgtC
Banned
Keep in mind, the Iraqis did not have full Soviet Spec aircraft. The models they did have were severely downgraded from what the USSR or even the Warsaw Pact operated. Particularly in regards to radar. The version of the MiG-23M sold to countries in the middle East could only detect fighter sized targets at less than 18 miles. That's a killer right there.
Wow, I didn't know that it was THAT bad. Yeah, no amount of training is going to level that playing field when you're flying complete trash.
Why did they only offer monkey models? Was it just because of the danger of defections? Hadn't at least one full spec Soviet plane already defected anyway?
Last edited:
SsgtC
Banned
Couple reasons. The Soviets didn't trust any of their clients in the Third World. That was probably first and foremost. Why sell them your best when you may have to intervene against them? Second, it's the Third World. Most of the countries buying these aircraft didn't have the ability to operate or, more importantly, maintain more advanced aircraft. And finally, they didn't want some middle eastern pilot deciding a comfortable life in the US sounded really good right about now and defecting with a full spec Soviet aircraft. Even assuming that some pilots had already defected with Soviet aircraft, you still want to limit how many examples your enemy can inspect.
Maybe hire some better trained foreign / mercenary pilots to plan and fly the ground attack missions ?
That being said I recall reading some accounts of Iraqi Tu22 missions that left me with a reasonably good impression of their abilities. Perhaps they needed to focus more on flying missions against the Iranian Air Force ?
Last edited:
The easiest way for the Iraqi airforce to perform a lot better is to have the Mullah's revolutionary government execute more former Imperial Iranian airforce pilots pre war rather then just mostly imprisoning and torturing them like they did in OTL. As it was pre war the Iranian airforce was more or less completely grounded thanks to the withdrawal of American technicians and the imprisonment of pretty much all of the Airforce's pilots. When the war started the Mullah's were able to get at least some of their aircraft back in the air by emptying their prisons. If the pilots were just executed instead it would make utilizing Iran's sizable fleet of aircraft much more difficult.
Egyptians are the most likely choice here. They are rumored to have done so.
Khanzeer
Banned
Please share your accounts of tu22 missions. I've read the opposite, so I'd love to be corrected
The accounts I recall reading a number of years ago appear to be either no longer available, or may require an account on a message board to access.
That being said a quick google search turned this up..
http://iraqimilitary.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=63
Edit to add. I seem to recall the original accounts I read were on the acig.info site which now seems to want a login.
Last edited:
It was pretty cutting edge and expensive so I don't know of outfitting all of their planes to use them would be feasible. A handful of planes already outfitted to do so might be enough anyway, but this is Iraq we're talking about and resources are limited. I think the best option was to get air superiority and just drop enough conventional ones that eventually you hit something.
I seem to recall hearing report of Iraqi pilots being trained in the UK during the 1980s.
Eighty Iraqi military pilots are being trained in Britain...
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/0...s-are-being-trained-in-Britain/4326420609600/
How £1bn was lost when Thatcher propped up Saddam
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/28/iraq.politics1
Last edited:
As with the French instruction, it probably was of limited help because they were still constrained as to what they could do by the rigid military structure back in Iraq as well as the awfulness of their equipment. May have given those lucky pilots a better chance of surviving initial encounters though.
It's a cliche to say that training and pilot skill trump equipment but this is sometimes an exagerration. Switch the equipment on the two sides and Iraq would probably be able to manage a positive kill to loss ratio despite its other problems.
Last edited:
May be they could get some pilots or training from Argentina in exchange for oil.