the 4x 9.12s could be useful if upgraded to match some of the MiG29M capabilities at least (and maybe retire the MiG21s finally). That would give a credible squadron of high end fighters.

But I reckon 20-30x Yak-130s would be a nice addition to replace the remaining J22s and Super Galebs. and provide advanced training, ground attack and air policing duties at a cost much lower than the MiG29s… (and be forward deployed to Nis to more effectively cover southern Serbia).

Russia supplying S400 seems like trolling NATO 😀 I think the Serbs themselves would turn such an offer down…

SA2 did not shoot down anything according to the Iraqis. Also don’t forget the limitation of single channel guidance… i.e. an entire SA2 site and all its staff and vehicles, missiles, loaders etc… etc…. can only guide ONE missile at a time!

regarding vietnam, it was a completely different type of war, limited within cold war constraints (i.e. USSR had the PRVs back)… perhaps the gulf war can be compared to simply the “linebacker II” operation and not the overall vietnam war… results were similar. US air overwhelms 3rd world country and proceeds to completely destroy the country’s civilian life from the air which forces that country to throw in the towel rapidly.

several points.

Iraqi force figures were greatly exaggerated before the war (propaganda purposes to make the war look like a fight against the 4th reich and not some 3rd world country!).

Iraqis lacked the real time intelligence gathering and Situation Awareness of the allies. Same would be in a fight with the USSR.

Iraqis did not have a single “real” high altitude SAM (S75s were all completely obsolete and did not score a single kill AFAIK).

At low altitude they had some effective systems, but once again only some “spots” were covered… they did not have a “nationwide” coverage from ground based systems, so it was easy to go around the SHORADs for the strike packages.

Iraqis simply did not have the intelligence to be able to carry out strikes on US airbases nor would such an attempt go undetected (there was one such attempt by 4 Mirage F1s to attack the apron at dhahran with cluster bombs… that failed with the shooting down of 2 of the Mirages.

lastly during the war saddam took direct command down to tactical level and he took the decision to evacuate the air force aircraft to Iran instead of using them for a “rear guard battle”… quite simply from the perspective of the Iraqis they did not want to “lose face” by withdrawing without a war, nor did they want a “total war” over kuwait that Iraqis aren’t particularly fond of (they just wanted the ports and oilfields)… they never expected (before the war) the US/Allies to completely destroy all of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure from Basra to Mosul under the guise of liberating Kuwait! Under those circumstances after the war started the Iraqis fully expected to be nuked or have the dams bombed had they tried any serious attack against the US… (that is the framework under which saddam’s mind operated). Don’t forget Iraq’s completely flat terrain gave the advantage to the country with AWACS / JSTARS / RC135s (and Russia’s equivalent)…

Soviet Jammer SEAD/DEAD aircraft would have swooped down to destroy Iraq’s ground based early warning radar networks… then SU27s establish air superiority supported by A50 AWACS and IL78 tankers to keep up constant CAPs… then TU22M and other bombers can go on the rampage freely…

postscript.
Any of the superpowers dropping 130kt of ordnance against any medium sized third world country would have a similar result 😉

This whole thing, I find personally nonsense. There is always a four fold issue with battle. Tactics, Training, Weapons, chance/luck.

ALL military planes are weapons of war. They are meant to be lethal, and that is what they do.

A MiG 21 is a very small plane, and a very fast too. Used correctly it can do a lot of damage. The F-16 is a very agile plane with a very broad mission envelope, a highly effective tool. The list goes on and on, for all planes. Reason; they all addressed service requirements, they weren’t created hot rod style to just be more spectacular than some other type !

Why nonsense? There is a reason countries invest in high quality GCI / AWACS / ESM… to improve the situational awareness of their combat pilots and increase their chance of success.

Take and F15A without GCI / AWACS / ESM flown by an Israeli pilot vs an arab inferior pilot in a MiG23 with full GCI / AWACS / ESM support… The AWACS will rather easily help the MiG23 to vector in to the F15 out of the radar view of the F15, and since the MiG23 is not transmitting anything, it is not detected by the F15 until the last few seconds (or not at all even if it uses IR missiles). Even an “arab” pilot can follow simple instructions from the controller (I hope you agree).

would have been the same outcome pretty much… especially if the soviets not only deployed 3-4x more combat aircraft + A50 AWACS + semi-realtime satellite imagery and all other air support assets…

Without AWACS those F15s would have been not much more effective than a MiG25PDS for the Iraqis… and the SU27s supported by A50 and operable GCI would have made short work of controlling the airspace.

I believe it took a while before countries began buying each individual model that the chinese build. I am guessing people are waiting to see the first operators use of it for a few years before buying (perhaps not trusting the rigorousness of chinese pre-production testing).
Also quite a few countries are still using their cold-war era jets for a few more years… once they start to be truly grounded… JF17 will find a market.

the AiM7s were launched at that range since those MiG23s were flying AWAY from the F15s (ferry flight towards Iran)…

most (but not all!) future wars could be fought by the US without having to expose manned fighters… the broadband low latency satcoms they have in place as well as the ultra long endurance UAV platforms even start to make the USN CVBGs seem a little “redundant”….

Wasn’t there a guy called Kurt Plummer back in the days of soc.alt.mil / rec.aviation.mil who used to rave on about UCAVs replacing manned fighters already 15 or more years ago?