sheytanelkebirIraq’s T-50IQ are on their way in a ferry from South Korea to Iraq. They should arrive in the next few days.
http://iraqimilitary.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1650&start=330
sheytanelkebirWhat connection are you trying to draw between these events?
You think the Saudi Foreign Minister scheduled a visit on 2 days notice because of the bombing raid? Why on earth would he feel any rush?
I don’t know why he felt the rush. But rush they certainly did. This was not scheduled before iraq’s raid on syria. Who knows what’s going on behind the scenes but the beginnings of a power shift in the region and some realignment is in the offing and the incumbents (saudis and GCC) are trying to delay it? it may also have something to do with the recently filmed parachute drops into tel afar (near mosul) which is under siege alongside mosul… the desperation is palpable.
sheytanelkebir3 days ago the iraqi Prime minister announced that the iraqi air force F16s have conducted a bombing raid in Syria on Al bu kamal for the first time. It was done with the knowledge of the Syrian and Russian commands.
This is the first official military action by Iraq outside its territory since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Yesterday, presumably in reaction to this, the Saudi Foreign Minister Al Jubair visited Iraq and sounded disheveled and surprisingly humble in tone.
Its noteworthy that this is the first visit by a Saudi minister to Iraq for over 27 years.
sheytanelkebirjust a nice pic from a couple of days ago
[ATTACH=CONFIG]251566[/ATTACH]
sheytanelkebiri will buy yours and msphere explanation if you have an article handy that show the lada being cheaper per kilometer,
not counting purchase cost, just the spares cost that would inflict such an enormous impact
why would you not count purchase cost? surely the operator pays it, thus it should count!
sheytanelkebirI think we’ve had several similar threads on this topic already.
Just to give a few answers:
1- “iraq doesn’t need fast jets”
ans- Iraq has been directly threatened recently by Turkey (which unilaterally sent its forces to iraq and refuses to withdraw), Kuwait (which threatened to attack Iraq only last week) and USA (with trump saying “he may get another chance at taking the oil”). These are just three recent threats against Iraq’s sovereignty just in the past 2-3 months.
2- “Iraq should buy attack helos and UCAVs”
ans: Iraq has already bought both light (EC-635, IA-407) and heavy (Mi28Ne and Mi35m) attack helos as well as both CH-4 and CH-5 UCAVs. In addition they bought more AC-208 combat caravans and thousands more Hellfires to go along with them. In addition Iraq and Russia signed a deal to locally produce Ataka missiles for Iraq’s helos.
3- “Why did Iraq agree to be ripped off by F-16IQ deal”
Ans: Both batches of F-16IQs were ordered while the US still had its military forces in Iraq. The US had “planned” on selling further batches of these F-16IQs to Iraq after the US withdrawal in December 2011… but the Iraqis bought a grand total of 0 additional US F-16s after the Americans left. Similarly the US offers of Ah-64E and further M1-A1s etc after the withdrawal were all politely rejected by Iraq… Hopefully that answers why Iraqis agreed to the earlier deal (there was a swivel eyed mass murdering cowboy standing behind them whilst they were signing).
4- “Why hasn’t Iraq bought SU-30s”
Ans: Because the Iraqis are conscious of lifecycle costs and found the MiG35 to be more suitable for their need. However the ISIS war and oil price crash forced them to shelve the MiG35 contract and they couldn’t come to an agreement with Russia on financing it.
5- “How will they defend their airspace with Sparrows”
Ans: They won’t… they will use FD-2000 SAMs to do it in the short term.
6- “How will Trump take the oil”
Ans: Ask the Russian and Chinese military advisors in Kut, Suwayra and Baghdad and the SINOPEC / CNOOC / ROSNEFT / LUKOIL etc… who operate Iraq’s oil fields. i.e. Iraqis learned the lesson that investing in an insurance policy is wise when there are deranged cowboys about.
sheytanelkebirInteresting developments sheytanelkebir, the success of the CH-4B certainly shows the leaps and bounds the Chinese have made when it comes to defence electronics. The CH-4B has been a rather unreported sales success in that Region with a number of Arab states buying into it.
FD-2000/HQ-9 is a major development certainly, the question is how far is Iraq sorting out its radar coverage and integrating these assets together. I know the Danish had to deploy an AN/TPS-77 to help deal with allied air Traffic management and Iraqi civilian Air Traffic control has been struggling to keep track of all the different air assets buzzing around over their country.
indeed it seems most of the ME countries have CH4s now and others are also testing the CH5s. The terrain these countries have as well as the types of threats they face (big deserts with small groups of terrorists in pick ups) is ideal fodder for the CH-4 and CH-5.
Iraq’s IADS is being built with a combination of :
-Some US radars
-Some Russian Radars
-Some US air traffic control radars
-Some new Chinese radars
-Chinese C3 System
-Korean infrastructure!
naturally the war on ISIS and oil price crash has slowed down progress, but with the recent turkish threats against Iraq they have once again looked at speeding up the long forgotten air defence issue.
The problem you mention is because Iraqi Air Defence Assets are not allowed in Kurdistan (or more accurately Iraq doesn’t want to deploy them there lest the Kurds “repossess” them when they declare independence). So the closest Iraqi Radar Station is the AN-FPS117 and DASR-11 in Tikrit Air Base… a fair distance from the main battlegrounds. Thus, allied countries plugging that gap in coverage with their own radars… since the Kurds aren’t going to be “repossessing” Danish radars.
sheytanelkebirafter achieving a 95% hit rate against ISIS in over 200 attacks, Iraq has ordered the much larger CH-5 UCAV from China to augment its medium sized CH-4Bs
The new CH-5 has a much greater endurance and payload than the old.
900kg vs 200kg ordnance
30hr vs 14hr endurance
http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/jssd/2017-01-08/doc-ifxzkfuh6078755.shtml
This comes on the back of last months’ finance ministry budget release that showed Iraq buying FD-2000 SAMs from China for $2.5Bn.
sheytanelkebirthanks for the confirmation everyone. was secretly hoping for a bit more oomph 🙁
sheytanelkebiriraqi IA-407 helicopters playing around with APKWS guided rockets
sheytanelkebirjust a quick question to the experts here regarding the iraqi T-50IQ
today a picture of its engine was seen for the first time. Can anyone confirm if its an F404 or F414 ?
http://iraqimilitary.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1650&p=41533#p41533
[ATTACH=CONFIG]250339[/ATTACH]
sheytanelkebirChinese weapons haven’t done good in real wars. granted they are the older versions.
well to be fair Iraq used quite a bit of chinese weapons over the past 35 years. more than most countries in fact. they’ve been “ok”.
some list:
-1300x Type 69 MBTs (Iraqis use them to this day! salvaged from rubbish tips and brought back to service!)
-700+ YW531 APCs (see above!)
-5x B6D maritime bombers (worked well during the war with Iran attacking shipping)
-Silkworm missiles (both air and land launched versions…) though admittedly they were pretty poor.
-Chinese radars (including long wave) they worked. as well as they could.
-24x F7M fighters… these were pretty poor I must admit, Iraq never ever used them in combat, relegating them to advanced training from day 1.
-Type-83 152mm heavy artillery (once again still in use after being salvaged from the rubbish tips recently!)
-37mm AAA (still in use today after being salvaged from rubbish tips)
granted all the above examples are pretty “Low tech”. but the principle is that the stuff worked and was durable. Most importantly the chinese delivered on time and at good price. Compare that to the disaster that is the “cracked armour non-working engine” disaster that is the BTR4 or the ludicrously overpriced and undelivered US F16s … China’s not too bad. Certainly not as good as Russian stuff, but beggars can’t be choosers.
sheytanelkebirFunny. Who invented those concepts? Is it an Aerospace engineer?
My point is that it is useless to carry so much, the aircraft will probably be shot down it it does passes after passes. Better to make just one pass to take the MANPADS operators by surprise, and find a way to shoot all the missiles in one salvo.
highlighted for you the important bit.
as Iraq has found out, you lose the element of surprise the moment the first missile hits. therefore you need missiles which are both CHEAP and allow the pilot / operator to designate several targets and fire them ASYNCHRONOUSLY at multiple targets at the same time. Current EO/Laser targeting systems are mostly single channel… i.e. track first missile to target. then acquire next one after hit and track it etc… 40+ seconds between shots! madness.
so I would say the number one thing to do is to have a multi channel target tracking built into the airframe or somehow make your missiles fire and forget by building the sensors into the missile (added cost). With the advancement in new low cost thermal imager sensor and lower cost optics as well as “throwaway” priced commercial microprocessors it may be possible to achieve that… sometime quite soon.
sheytanelkebirThat is even too big. I’d try a single seater with an armored cockpit, with 4-6 smaller missiles, like a half the weigh of an early AH-1. I kind of doubt that in the european theater weather conditions would allow for hellfires to be used often at max range. There would also be a lot of dust over the battlefield.
Maybe a high low mix of helicopters would make sense: a heavy one with a MMW radar with long range missiles that can take out enemy defenses, and a small and very cheap one with medium range missiles.
there’s that iranian single seat helo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_285
but surely in today’s world you’d go for a UCAV armed with some ATGMs.
sheytanelkebirwe are veering slightly off topic here.
But Iraq cannot invite russia in openly. They have to play a very delicate balancing act between Russia/Iran and USA/Coallition to prevent Iraq becoming yet again a target for USA’s ire. Something that you can appreciate Iraqis are well experienced with over the past 26 years. Similarly about $100Bn of Iraqi cash is deposited at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which is used as collateral insurance for Iraqi infrastructure projects by international contractors and companies operating in Iraq as well as World Bank financing etc… So Iraq is not in a position to be on the “wrong side” of Uncle Sam either economically or militarily. They of course try their best to bring Russia / China / Iran on board since those countries are more ” natural” allies of Iraq… but their hands are, to a large extent, tied (in a sense held hostage by) the USA. Now the US, for all its ills, does try to “tone down” their “regional allies” in their war against Iraq (saudi, qatar, turkey, jordan) but so far has abjectly failed in that since the US government itself is split on the matter and ultimately those “barbarian allies” are more important for the US than Iraq is.
Sign In
