One needs to also consider how many ports in China can handle tankers, and the rate China could unload barrels of oil from tankers in a day. It makes no sense to receive 10,000 tankers a day if you don’t have the infrastructure to prevent shipping bottlenecks. Then you also need to consider rate of loss in the event of a blockade, since ships that try to break through will be sunk.

I mean “truck” tankers, overland. once they cross into china, they would split up and go directly to the refineries… they’d have a hell of a journey though! I presume most refineries are by the sea 😀 :diablo:

its something the Iraqis have learned to deal with over the years. just separate supply chains for different types, segregation by units. It didn’t cause much issues really. I do believe they will have 3-4 different types eventually. US / Russian / European / Asian (chinese or korean)… they’ve always operated a souffle of weapons in that country!

I don’t know… IMHO a MiG29M/MiG35 would suit Iraq’s needs perfectly…

SU35?
F15SE?

no a deal has definitely been signed, but they are coy about officially telling us what the details are due to internal iraqi political bickering about the budget 😀

anyway, the Iraqi MOD has a habit of having “models” for every type they buy… so this is what we’ve seen in the official MOD magazine…

is the plane on top of the shelf a MiG29 or MiG35?

minister of defence holding up a Pantsir:

minister holding up an F16IQ model

but …. still I haven’t seen any news tidbits about the “attack helo” squadrons or the new VIP helo squadron, or the maritime helo squadron they’re also buying…

too early to say. apparently a delegation returned from Moscow after signing “something” (could be just waffle like a “training agreement” or letters of credit etc…)… journalists in Iraq are notoriously inaccurate in their reports on military matters… so its better to wait for confirmations IMHO. Iraqis are ramping up their training for fighter pilots massively ATM, and in addition to the pilots sent to the US, they have now also agreed to send fighter pilots to train in Egypt and Pakistan… I’d expect that whatever was signed yesterday in Moscow is in relation to training as opposed to equipment.

Thanks for that confirmation.

I don’t suppose you know which squadron the two Su.25’s shot down on the 6th February whilst attempting to reach Iran belonged to?

Steve

The Su25s came from Al Bakr AB (balad AB in western parlance). One of the planes shot down resulted in the death of the pilot who was an acquaintance of one of my cousins (that’s how I know about it).

squadron numbers 109, 115, 119 from Official IrAF records, there are a number of old officers on iraqimilitary forums. they can answer your questions better than me on that topic!

no, there was only one MiG25PDS squadron. 96th. the 84sq operated MiG25RBS.

the MiG29s were in 6th and 39th squadron only.

there were a total of only 4 Mirage squadrons, none were disbanded after 1988.