Here's an idea:
At some point prior to the 100 hour ground campaign, the Iraqis sent a small force to seize the Saudi border city of Khalfji. They managed to do this, but follow-up waves were annihilated from the air.
If the Iraqi Air Force was still in being at this point and went out on some kind of death ride, they might be able to sufficiently interfere with coalition air attacks to enable the Iraqis to reinforce Khalfji, making the retaking of the city a gigantic pain in the behind.
In OTL, Khalfji had no effect on the enormous coalition army massing in the west for the "Hail Mary" attack on the entrenched Iraqis from the rear. In TTL, a much larger Iraqi army dug into Khalfji could be threatening enough that additional forces could be detailed to deal with it.
The Iraqis are still going to lose, but we could generate some interesting butterflies from that--larger numbers of Saudi and Qatari casualties (it was them who played a big role in retaking Khaljfi in OTL) could have political knock-on effects down the line, as might larger numbers of non-Arab troops.
That's a very interesting idea. The Fulcrums themselves were probably the main weapons that would be able to be used in this sense, but it seems the IrAF had enough that they at least could've made some effort. The Saudi air force did have battle experience (some Mirage F1s and such), but against an aircraft like the Fulcrum? That'd be tough.
And if the Iraqis decided to forward deploy their Mirages behind the lines and just go for broke trying to hit whatever came up, then the Coalition air force might have to bomb Kuwaiti air fields just to take out the IrAF and abort what they see as an imminent Iraqi invasion.
The big thing here is that we're assuming they're able to stay in the air, mostly because these extra airframes let the IrAF take attrition damage. Not a lot, but probably more than the USAF has been used to dealing with in it's prior engagment with Panama.
If anything, this seems like it would be closer in style to the air war over Yugoslavia, where we had air superiority and were able to keep control but nevertheless had to deal with the constant threat of fighters threatening our CAP.
Now, this flies in the face of our strategy for that war: in
Every Man A Tiger, CENTCOM Air Component commander General Chuck Horner says that Schwarzkopf's orders to them were to "kick them in the teeth. Then kick them some more until they stop moving."
But Iraq's still a big place, and even with this giant exodus that's a lot of aircraft for us to keep track of. We can't keep on top of an airforce that big like we did in 2003.
I mean...the Iraqis sent 2 Mirage F1s into Saudi Arabia early in the war to try and find ground units to attack, but they were brought down by a Saudi F-15. What if they'd sent, say...10? That's not a few aircraft from a beaten air force. That's a freaking air raid. And the F1 is not a bad aircraft. The South African Air Force who used them and the Cubans and Angolans who were shot down by them will tell you.
10 Mirage F1s managing to find any one of the 4 Corps in the desert could've really messed up our day.
And no: I'm not saying "the iraqis wouldve sent the planes in and we lose the war", but it's still a hiccup in the already labourious buildup that was Desert Shield. It took us six months to do that.
The IRAF probably could have caused some more losses directly or indirectly:
That's cool stuff...I never read that. And it's an interesting thing to point out. The skies would definitely be much more crowded, and when airspace is crowded mistakes get made.