sheytanelkebirOn a serious note it makes me wonder of Greece might be interested in increasing defence relations with Iraq if it puts Turkey’s nose out of joint.
I would think the Iraqi airforce would have plenty to learn from Greece in respect of F-16 Block 50/52 operations. Greece also operates a mixed Western/Eastern equipment portfolio.
Iraq sent 300+ technicians for training in Jordan. There was a plan before to cooperate with Turkey, but right now relations are sour…
PS. Balad AB is being prepared as the MOB for the F16IQ…
DJ Elliot has a very nice blog about the Iraqi new forces developments… http://home.comcast.net/~djyae/site/?/blog/
sheytanelkebirHi All…
with regards to the defence contracts with Russia, there’s a lot of contradictory information coming from official sources in Iraq…
From the defence ministry they state that 7 main types were to be part of the 1st deal ($4.5Bn) including:
1- Mi28NE helicopters
2- Mi17v5 helicopters
3- Pantsir S1
4- Tor-M2
5- BMP-3 IFVs
6- MiG29M/M2 (russians promising delivery of the first 8 by June 2013… something the Iraqis were desperate for – I presume these were some of the MiG29M built for Syria and undelivered)
7- SU-30MK2
With regards to selection process… the defence minister stated:
-we made a sub-selection of the following types: Ah-64D, Tiger, Mi28, KA-52, Mi35. and they selected the Mi28NE for the army aviation.
-The Mi17v5 was selected in lieau of the UH-60 blackhawk
-In addition to those helos… they’re looking to buy UH1-Y and AH1-Z helos for the Basra Operations Command in support aof the army / marines due to their specific requirements for operations over water / salty water.
-The Iraqis made a request for a “second deal” which contained several “strategic weapons” that the Russians had not approved for sale and included several “missile complexes which cost $210M per battalion”.
The payment for the deal is supposed to come from the 2013 budget, but since Iraq has not yet passed the 2013 budget… everything is on hold until the budget is passed.
most of these details are from the official MOD newspaper. archives are available online http://www.mod.mil.iq
oh, and if you all think that inducting the MiG29M + F16IQ + L159BQ + SU30MK2 is bad enough… an interview with the commander of the air force stated that they are in very advanced negotiations in finalising a fighter purchase deal from “Europe” and will announce details once the contracts are agreed and signed. It looks like they are planning on having 30 odd fighters from every staple 😀
The commander of the Air Defence command, also in the MOD magazine stated that they will induct the Russian SAMs, in addition to the SAMs that the US offered on Excess Defence Articles (for free, AVENGER and I-HAWK), they are also evaluating air defence systems from France, South Korea and People’s China… There’s no news if the Iraqis will take the I-HAWKS, but they do have 8 AVENGERs now.
sheytanelkebirHave translations of any of the internal Iraqi documents been put on line?
a few documents are online in english and some translations/interviews with Iraqi officers in english on the US military’s web sites, some as part of the US war college studies. google for “iraqi perspective project”
Others are from autobiographies of Iraqi generals as well as from personal document archives saved from 2003… but those are invariably in arabic.
sheytanelkebirI don’t expect anyone to blindly believe anything. What I hope (but don’t expect, because I know how biased many people are) is that they weigh evidence, take account of the relative openness of societies, of the amount of cross-checkable evidence available, etc,, & make reasoned decisions. That means comparing what the two sides in any disagreement say, & weighting them according to what you know about how they handle information, & the pressures on them.
in this instance post 2003 we got access to Iraq’s top secret presidential files and air force officers freed from any secrecy acts from the Iraqi side… a lot more openess than you have from the US side… 😉 nice examples include Phaid’s avatar which was claimed by the americans to have been a captured video recording from an Iraqi MiG29’s FDR before a sparrow missile hit it (that they captured by flying an SF team to the crash site inside iraq of the mig29 and recovering the FDR)… LOL! the fact that people believe such an outlandish nonsense even 22 years after the war ended shows us much… 😉
in fact the Iraqi documents post 2003 showed that the Iraqi Air Force fared even worse than what the US thought… but more so from the destruction of aircraft on the ground. e.g. the US thought they didn’t destroy a single SU-24MK until 2003… when in fact they destroyed 5 on the ground. among other items…
but in “air to air engagements” the US exaggarated their claims rather massively. most of the 23 planes they shot down were evacuating to Iran and were unarmed… the number of armed fighters/bombers shot down is 10 or less… vs 5 Iraqi claims for armed US fighters/bombers in the air. Iraqi high altitude SAMs (SA2) were completely useless by then, SA3 and SA6 are the only SAMs which managed some kills at medium altitude.
PS. the Iraqi officers all thought that saddam’s orders were insane, and that they had a chance to at least defend Iraqi airspace… but they were ordered to let the ADC (with their antiquated SAMS) defend the airspace and use their interceptors just to cover the evacuation of the air force to the enemy… utter insanity.
sheytanelkebirthat is a question nobody can answer 😀
Iraq also evacuated some naval craft to Iran… polnocny, OSA etc… it was quite a desperate attempt to save some resources for another day… which of course never came.
The Sukhois very good low altitude navigation meant that they managed to evacuate far more effectively than other types. MiG21s were already “second line” aircraft and were not evacuated… MiG25s were not evacuated at all, and the few MiG29s ended up in Iran almost by accident (should have been only part of the escorts to border).
sheytanelkebirthe 140 planes did not all go out in one day… it was spread over weeks. so it would not have appeared as a “massed attack” at all.
sheytanelkebirI don’t know if any MiG29s were lost in A2A engagements. a total of 17 MiG29s were lost in the 1991 war, 4 damaged, 4 flew to Iran, and afterwards Iraq had only 11 remaining (one had been lost in an accident in 1990, belonging to 39th squadron). The Iraqi air force suffered an enormous loss rate to US air attacks and the HAS were mostly useless for defence (exception being some of the shelters in Balad). Iraqi fighter interceptors flew without GCI (very effective US Jamming) and Iraq had only very antiquated high altitude SAMS (SA-2) which were completely useless (although Iraq did expend 90%+ of its SA-2 missiles in 1991 without shooting down anything AFAIK!!)… postwar they began converting the few remaining missiles for surface to surface use.
The Evacuation of the aircraft was covered by careful diversions using MiG25s and other aircraft as well as direct escorts of the aircraft to the Iranian border.
Many of the losses incurred in 1991 (e.g. the MiG23s shot down flying out of H3 towards Iran) were unarmed aircraft with multiple drop tanks, but the fighter covers / diversions did not work in those instances… In many other instances the diversions / escorts did their job and managed to assist the aircraft in reaching Iran safely (close to 140 aircraft).
covering the evacuation was tasked to MiG23ML / MiG25s. The mirages were completely “jammed” as their systems were obviously all exposed to the allies and the MiG29 / MiG21s were only of use in point defence use with GCI which in the circumstances wasn’t available…
sheytanelkebirReally?! Please do tell more, it’s fascinating. They made a History Channel episode about that engagement! (and about the F-111 maneuver “kill” which never happened, the Mirage flew safely back to base…) Were there any MiG-29s lost that day even? Also would you have by any chance a list with the 23 iraqi aircraft reckoned to have been actually shot down? Thanks.:)
I do not sadly have the complete list by type of A2A losses since the numbers are conflagated with losses on the ground by type in the presidential records. But there are a couple of guys over on iraqimilitary forum who do have the documents. my understanding is that the losses in the air were:
-some Mi8s
-MiG21s (shot down by F/A18s)
-SU22s
-PC7 / PC9
-MiG23ML / BN
-Mirages
-Il-76
-SU25s evacuating to Iran (a friend of my cousin’s was a pilot of one of these who died, he was based out of Bakr Air Base – a.k.a. “balad”).
some of these were on evacuation flights to Iran when shot down, or flying from one airbase to another on an “evacuation route” to Iran or dispersal.
The evacuation flights were escorted out by MiG25PDS and the engagements that the US side speaks of between MiG25s and F15s were basically running air battles between the fighter escorts to the Iranian border and the F15s sent to shoot down the evacuating planes (especially the slow and non-manouvering Il-76s were vulnerable during evacuation flights). The MiG25s (2-3 in the air at any one time) did manage to protect the vast majority of the evacuating aircraft despite there being at least 16 F15s over the skies of Iraq at any point in time guided by AWACS/EC-135s
sheytanelkebirthat engagement famous because it never happened AFAIK! Iraqis joke that “rodriguez was battling a speck on his windscreen”
sheytanelkebirThe following site states that a Mig-25RB was shot down by Iranian F-14 in Sep/1986 and Pilot was taken as POW. Pilot name: “Khazai”
http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/country-by-country/Iraq.htm
This seems to be another POW incident to Lt “Al-Bayaani” who was downed with HQ2.
yes that tallies (somewhat) with deliveries and Iraqi official loss numbers.
fantastic claims of shooting down dozens of non-existent MiG25s by Iran on the other hand…
sheytanelkebirthe fighter versions…
MiG-25PDS
delivered: 22
sent abroad during 1980s: ??
Accidental losses: 1
Combat losses: 1-2
remaining in 1990: 19
destroyed in 1991: 13
damaged in 1991: 1
flew to iran in 1991: 0
survived after 1991: 5
sheytanelkebirThe US has always had very strict rules for confirming kills. So, I would need some very strong evidence. If, you expect me to take such an outrageous claim seriously.
US “confirmed” to have shot down 37 or so Iraqi fighters in 1991… when the Iraqis lost only 23…. and that was WITH the whole E3C / EC135 shebang to “confirm” things. so imagine how much fantasising happened during the korean war era…
F15 fires some sparrows at Iraqi plane… Iraqi plane takes countermeasures and drops altitude, plane goes out of radar view of F15 and AWACS… confirmed kill. Iraqi plane lands back at airbase. I could Imagine such a scenario with guns must have happened hundreds of times… and everyone wants to look like the “tough guy”
sheytanelkebirI think those Tornados were confirmed as being shot down by SAMs/AA.
The only Iraqi A2A kill in 1991 was an F/A-18 Hornet by a MiG-25.
I think the shooter is in a better position to confirm what he used to do the job… Iraqi AF were more sure about the tornado kills and F111 / B52 hits than they were about the F/A18.
sheytanelkebirMiG-25RB
delivered: 12
sent abroad during 1980s: ??
Accidental losses: ??
Combat losses: 2-3
remaining in 1990: 9
destroyed in 1991: 3
damaged in 1991: 3
flew to iran in 1991: 0
survived after 1991: 3
sheytanelkebirI believe it was an RAF tornado shot down over Imam Ali AB while it was doing a JP-233 run by a MiG23ML.
the italian and other RAF tornado (on the 17th jan I think also over an airbase in basra) seem to have been downed by MiG29s.
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