1991: The Iraqi Air Force stays

A-10s were credited with two kills in DESERT STORM: both were Iraqi helos. One was an Mi-8 Hip, the other was still unidentified but the pilot thought it was a Bo-105. The U.S. Army's VII Corps found the crash site of the second victim and only found a tailboom-the rest of the helo was burned to unrecognizable ash. If they had encountered MiGs or Mirages, the tactic was to turn inside the attacker, force an overshoot, and either use AIM-9s or 30-mm fire to kill the bad guy. Both kills were via 30-mm, as neither A-10 driver could get a Sidewinder lock.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
2. The longest range weapon in the Iraqi Air Force's bag of tricks was the Exocet (38 mile range) That means a potential attacker would have to evade the outer CAP, the SAM belt, the inner CAP and a second SAM belt just to reach firing range. The layman's term for this action against a CBG at Condition One is "snowball in hell".

Good points. We're not talking about something here that's a war winner. That's not what I'm talking about here. But this gives the IrAF more of an ability to soak of damage than it did before, and possibly an ability to make small bits of power projection due to it's amount of airframes.
Cal, I'm sure I don't need to tell you (but I'll point out for everyone) that just four years before, they'd managed to hit the Stark with an Exocet in late 1987. The USN increased AWACS patrols, but several times in early 1988 Iraqi aircraft made launches against US ships.
On February 12, 1988, an Iraqi jet actually launched two missiles against the frigate Chandler, but they missed. Who's to say the IrAF won't just try and launch a raid against the Amphibious group off their coast that they seemed convince would land in Kuwait or near the Al Faw?

3. The air was positively swarming with exceptionally trained Coalition pilots, virtually all of whom would have happily traded 20 years of their life span to make a kill, flying superbly maintained aircraft that were quite literally the leading edge of technology. The Iraqi pilots, conversely, had very low flight hours and were flying old Western and Soviet designs that only a madman or suicide would take into combat against the Coalition. (It is important to note that the MiG 25 that potted a Hornet did so as part of an engagement that had the Bug pilot evading multiple SAM at the same time the MiG fired. This doesn't change the facts, but context is needed in the discussion).

Again, I totally agree. The MiG-25 circumstances you point out only add to the problems that the Coalition might run into if they have to deal with more Iraqi aircraft in the skies in addition to AAA and SAMs on the ground.

That same thing could very well happen again.
 
Okay, Mac, it's getting suspicious. This is the about the fifth time now you've posted a thread directly related to information I've been looking up recently.

Anyway, the only time this is really an advantage that can be pressed (i.e. the only time when a dozen or more missiles aren't ready to fly at anything even thinking about going airborne with the wrong IFF) is early on, probably several weeks at least before the thousand hour war (! we even read the same books). If Iraq pulls off a full scale air raid, the Coalition will certainly shoot down nearly every aircraft, but if even two or three bombs and missiles hit the ground, it's a PR disaster and everyone gets hunkered down- the delays caused by the fortification could easily set the geound war back weeks, if not months, and make some coalition partners very antsy.

Another interesting idea: what if Saddam, rather than using his planes against the US and Saudi Arabia, instead sends them west- to Israel. SCUDs weren't serious; the PATRIOTs took care of them, and it's just a rocket- heck, Israel gets rocket fire so often they could probably set their watches by it. But an air force- that's some serious stuff. Even if every plane gets knocked down before a single hit is scored, that is serious stuff. Israel is going to retaliate, and that breaks up that tenuous coalition.

What effects this has, I'm too tired to say, because it's past midnight. So yeah. :)
 

wormyguy

Banned
[pureconjecture]

I think one of the major factors in Saddam's decision to fly the IrAF away was that he believed that if they continued taking such incredibly heavy losses for no return, then there might well have been a mutiny in the Air Force, that might spread throughout the entire Iraqi military and knock him off of his perch in his Babylonian palace replica.
 
BTW: The A-10 did carry AIM-9 AAM in the Gulf War. 'Hog pilots were flying the most maneuverable aircraft in the air on most days (slow as hell, yes, but they could turn on a dime and leave you $.09 change). Any Iraqi pilot foolish enough to close on an A-10 would have found out why even male African lions won't attack a Warthog by choice.

I did not know that. Interesting.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Good points. We're not talking about something here that's a war winner. That's not what I'm talking about here. But this gives the IrAF more of an ability to soak of damage than it did before, and possibly an ability to make small bits of power projection due to it's amount of airframes.
Cal, I'm sure I don't need to tell you (but I'll point out for everyone) that just four years before, they'd managed to hit the Stark with an Exocet in late 1987. The USN increased AWACS patrols, but several times in early 1988 Iraqi aircraft made launches against US ships.
On February 12, 1988, an Iraqi jet actually launched two missiles against the frigate Chandler, but they missed. Who's to say the Ir AF won't just try and launch a raid against the Amphibious group off their coast that they seemed convince would land in Kuwait or near the Al Faw?



Again, I totally agree. The MiG-25 circumstances you point out only add to the problems that the Coalition might run into if they have to deal with more Iraqi aircraft in the skies in addition to AAA and SAMs on the ground.

That same thing could very well happen again.

The Stark was operating effectively alone, and perhaps more significantly, was in a circumstance that an Iraqi aircraft would have been, at worst, considered to be from a benevolent neutral, if not an informal ally, given the Stark's mission. The Chandler was also operating on detached duty as part of the Tanker escort effort. Both Iraqi attacks on USN shipping demonstrated the incompetence of the Iraqi AF more than anything else.

Both attacks were very different than attempting to strike at a battle group at Condition One an at "weapons free" status with a hot and locked CAP overhead.
 
I did not know that, thanks for al lthe info, good reads. I have to say it would be interesting to see that big mother of a cannon go air-air.

The IrAF to Israel came up in a thread I started a while ago, about GW1. I'm not an expert but to get to Iraq, the Israeli's had to overfly Jordan. So, vise versa. Would Jordan allow this, because it instantly put them on Iraq's side in a conflict that was basically World vs. Iraq. If they did not give Suddam permission he could still do it I presume, the Israeli's did.

So, Suddam, best case scenario, gets to Israel, and lets say manages to to shoot down a couple F-4's if God is completely on his side, per basically 100% loss to the IrAF. Israel retaliates, breaking up the coalition. Would this succesfully save Suddam from the complete and utter destruction of his military? Would the US and UK and co. be able to stay in the ME?

I do love your threads Macauley.
 
IMHO the Jordanian AF won't respond to Saddams sending his AF towards Israel. They might fire some SAMs (or not) but sending their own fighters up is not likely. I'm not sure what alert status their AF was on, but one wonders if they could respond to the Iraqis in a timely fashion. Arab on Arab dogfights to keep one Arab from bombing Israel just don't see it.

If I were Saddam would send some fighter bombers over Tel-Aviv, Haifa but a unit very low level towards Dimona - it's heavily defended but if you get lucky and get hits on Israel's nuclear establishment its a big plus.

The other plus for Saddam is that there's no way, if they kill civilians in Tel Avib or Haifa or hit Dimona at all, that the Israelis will not respond directly no matter the effect on the coalition or not. The only possibility of no Israeli response would be if the US gave them not only lots of free "toys" but also some sort of written treaty as opposed to the "understandings" they have now.
 

burmafrd

Banned
Bush was on the phone to the Israeli PM constantly during Desert Shield when the Scuds were hitting Israel. He was able to keep them from retaliating. I see no reason he could not do the same if Saddam kamikazi's his AF that way.

I think some here forget that at that time the Coalition Air Force was the absolute best of the best. This was before the first big cuts in the military due to the end of the cold war. A lot of pilots knew they would soon be out and wanted badly to get a kill. The training, equipment and doctrine was the best there was out there baring the Israeli AF and even that is arguable. And Swartzkof was constantly on his air commanders to be alert and prepared for anything. The 24 hr CAP we had over Saudi was monstrous- I believe it was a minimum of 100 at any one time supported by no less then 3 AWACs. By the way AWACS would be able to tell when the first Iraqi aircraft took off. They did not have the training to stay low enough to evade the AWACS and would have been immediately spotted. You would have had dozens of coalition planes literaly fighting each other to try and get kills. And there was something like a full 10 squadrons on ready alert at any one time. That meant 15 minutes to take off.

The only chance the Iraqi's really had to cause any damage would have been before the shooting started. If Saddam had decided to try and do a Pearl Harbor (attack while the negoitations were still ongoing before the air offensive began) they might have done some damage. We still had a very heavy CAP but not as heavy once the shooting started.

And really once the air war started it was all over for the Iraqi AF no matter what.
 
Good points. We're not talking about something here that's a war winner. That's not what I'm talking about here. But this gives the IrAF more of an ability to soak of damage than it did before, and possibly an ability to make small bits of power projection due to it's amount of airframes.
Cal, I'm sure I don't need to tell you (but I'll point out for everyone) that just four years before, they'd managed to hit the Stark with an Exocet in late 1987. The USN increased AWACS patrols, but several times in early 1988 Iraqi aircraft made launches against US ships.
On February 12, 1988, an Iraqi jet actually launched two missiles against the frigate Chandler, but they missed. Who's to say the IrAF won't just try and launch a raid against the Amphibious group off their coast that they seemed convince would land in Kuwait or near the Al Faw?



Again, I totally agree. The MiG-25 circumstances you point out only add to the problems that the Coalition might run into if they have to deal with more Iraqi aircraft in the skies in addition to AAA and SAMs on the ground.

That same thing could very well happen again.

The Iraqis might have tried such a strike, if they had been a little more subtle, & used their modified Falcon 50 business jet to launch the attack...
(Said Falcon 50, which still exists, had been modified with the fire control system & radar from a Mirage F1, & reportedly could carry 2 Exocet missiles... It was used to train pilots to operate the system's involved).
If said Falcon had been flying a apparently normal flight profile for a civilian business jet, it might have got into launch range undetected & fired off the missiles...
 
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