my father in law was a doctor in H3 during the entire war. The air base was a combat training and maintenance base far away from the war and it was not used by active combat aircraft during the war. the small iranian attack on the airbase from the beginning of the war came from Syria and it didn’t do any appreciable damage. It was in fact part of the broader political fallout between Iraq and Syria at the time rather than the “daring mission against the enemy rear”… especially since Iraq had mainly a few MiG21s / MiG17s there for dissimilar training etc… hardly a top target when Shuaiba AB right next to the Iranian border hosted combat squadrons flying non-stop against Iran for the entire war period.

According to Iraqis all the MiG25s (and other aircraft) flying operational missions were all flown by Iraqis. The only foreign pilots (mainly Indian, Jordanian and French) were based out of either Tikrit or one of the OCU bases far away from the front lines during the war and used as instructors only. Maybe there was some “top secret” soviet combat mission in Iraq as Tom Cooper and co claim… but absolutely no evidence for it has ever emerged, and it seems the only reason the Iranians make these claims up is in order to “prove” their kill claims…

the “budget” for 2013 has not even been approved yet… so yes the figures are VERY ambitious. but that is what the defence ministry asked for and the government want to pass… but the opposition is resisting it furiously wanting the money spent on paying for “illegal” foreign oil contracts (kurds) and extra social security for sunni provinces (iyad allawi’s party)… But if one looks at Iraq’s planned budgets over the next 5 years, You can see massive economic leaps are happening primarily to increases in oil production (other variable are also there including increased religious tourism, construction, industry and farming increases) – so the GDP (about $200Bn today) will double to about $400Bn by 2016… meaning there should be plenty of money available to pay for the defences, if the political will is there.

MSphere… my brother’s business (medical instruments for opthalmics) is in the same boat as you… his company used to “offshore” production to china, but they would build knockoffs and sell it to third party “rebadgers”… now he is onshoring the production to the UK to avoid this… this has been happening a lot lately, starving the more unscrupulous operators in china from product design expertise… also the rise in yuan / inflation as well as european deflation has tipped the competitive balance especially for the higher end of the product grades. but I digress!! the inflation in china has clearly affected their military industries too (even more so than the more competitive commercial sector) resulting in major price increases… I remember once on another forum we did some comparison in weapons that Iraq is buying and cheapest came out to be Ukrainian/Serbian, followed by US products, then Russian, then korean, and most expensive being “western european”. I think the only way that chinese weapons can appear competitive is if the “R&D cost” is not amortised over the production batches and there are no interest bearing loans on any OPEX/CAPEX for the producing company etc…

MIG-29K won against Su-33 despite MIG-29K being multi role and longer airframe/engine life. when you impart those capabilities into Su-33. its weight will increase further and performance will degrade.
Now MIG-29M is lighter version of MIG-29K. It will have same advantages over Su-30. it is more suitable for airdefence. and AESA is extensively tested. and it does not need two pilots. Iraq is already dont have that much pilots. Although fuel costs dont matter that much but lighter fighter is going to save alot over long term.

but AFAIK only MiG35 comes with AESA… AND the Zhuk-ME + OLS of MiG29M is inferior to the APG68v9 + Sniper of the F16IQ AFAIK. If only the russians could fit R77s or the europeans fit METEOR to Iraq’s F16IQ… 🙁

it has nothing to do with “fighting”… all to do with buying friends. Iraqis have paid for 36 F16s but sent only a dozen pilots to the US to train… they couldn’t care less about “fighting” prowess. its about appeasing the big boys and having political leverage in the region to not be bullied by the neighbours, and have a “nominal” capability to defend themselves. nothing more really.