100 hours . . . . No army so large & well-equipped has ever been beaten so quickly & thoroughly, AFAIK.

I wonder, if Soviet doctrine was so wonderful, why Saddam tried hiding aircraft, & sent a lot more to Iran, instead of using them to fight with. After all, they’re more effective in a real war than US aircraft (or British/Italian, presumably), so why not use them to shoot down a few hundred Coalition aircraft & bomb the ground forces massing to invade?

Its all a matter of perspective.

You seem to be under the impression that weapon a is the same for country y and country X…. It’s not. The western weapons are fine for western people and their various close vassal states that don’t really use them all that much. For a country that tends to use and abuse the stuff it buys and expect to operate it whether the original producer agrees to the conflict that the state is involved in or not… The western stuff is not to be relied on.

Iraq was a small developing country already ravaged by a huge 8 year war. It had a force of about 300k men (of whom only 60k were full time soldiers)

Vs

All of NATO and an assortment of “allies” disposing of their cache of stuff that won’t be needed for the cold war anymore on the Saudi Kuwaiti “tab”.

Iraqi units in the field were given order to retreat from.Kuwait as long as they kept up white flags on vehicles. When they left in huge column. They were simply massacred. Call it a clever deception play (Saddam was a cretin). But weeks and weeks and over 100,000 tonnes of bombs didn’t dislodge them. Only the “withdraw and we wont harm you” then carpet bomb them when they believe you bit worked…. Let’s not mention destroying every power and water and sewage facility and railway and bridge in Iraq (even in the north!) under the excuse of “dual use”;.. Well oxygen is breathed by soldiers. Go and rewatch some of the gulf war stuff today. Tell me if you don’t cringe.

PS.

If iraq Operated western weapons. They would have been grounded due to withdrawal of western staff and equipment… Not any “kill switch”. No need for that 😉

They would not have invaded Kuwait anyway since they would have been broke trying to pay support contracts for 200 tanks and 30 jets.

Russia is training is fast , cheap and effective. you can look at Olympics. Russia per capita medal count is far better than US despite sending less number athlete and Russia is not depended on one ethinic to earn majority of its medals. This tells you Russia is far effective in identifying talent and giving right amount of training at far lesser cost.
how many Russian built choppper crashed in inside Irak relative to sorties?

The real issue is that us contractors and us advisors simply work to a one size fits all formula. And that may work for USA it doesn’t work for the small developing country needing immediate military capability in the field. Somehow Russia understands the needs of their client and works appropriately to get them up and running and effective in record time. There is no discussion as to the relative effectiveness of the different “doctrines “… No wonder so.many countries are now switching to Russia for their defence supplies.

The Gulf war analogy was a factoid too. A massive one. Had iraq been a completely USA equipped military it would not have lasted one week and the entire country would have collapsed. The Soviet French equipment allowed them to sustain for 5-6 weeks and shoot down dozens of Allied aircraft. Had they been operating F16s their planes would all be grounded without a single bombing raid by allies!

Sure dude, the check is in the mail.

nice doing business with you. :very_drunk:

sad to say that meanwhile in the real world…

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20150602/1022854361.html

Looks like someone doesn’t want to give us the junk we paid for or let us buy anything else from anyone else… I wonder why.

Honestly, it does raise the question of whether supplying high-tech weapons to Iraq is a viable strategy. You are talking about a military that couldn’t defend one of its largest cities against a bunch of guys in pickup trucks. The capabilities of the weapons isn’t the problem. It is the capability of the guys using them… (or abandoning them unused in all too many cases)

Nobody with a brain would question whether the F-16 is an effective weapon system in the right hands, but in Iraqi hands? It would probably have been better to give them some of the IOMAX Archangel patrol/attack aircraft the UAE has been buying.

http://aviationweek.com/blog/iomax-commences-archangel-deliveries-uae

It would be a far better match for Iraq’s needs, and abilities.

yes we are dim witted cowards who can’t control “our own” cities and at first chance will sell your precious technology to Iran, Russia, China and North Korea (no need to sell to ISIS “the Kingdom” already has plenty of your tech).

So lets agree to a refund and forget the last 5 years. Hey you can even take the Abrams uber tanks back. That will save you from many sleepless nights about the uber technology falling into the wrong hands. You can thank me later.

PS. I won’t even bother replying to the horrendous “misunderstanding” you seem to have about what’s happening in Iraq for the past few years, I have aluded to that plenty of times already and there’s nothing more I can do.

PPS. also learn the difference between “give” and “sell”.

now the iraqi rumour mill is in overdrive…

naturally, being middle easterners, they immediately blame “conspiracy theories” of Kurds, Americans and others deliberately killing off one of the few remaining senior Iraqi pilots, as well as destroying Iraqi assets and delaying the delivery of fighters to Iraq now that the “balad excuse” is no longer valid.

FBW. I’m not implying anything about you personally. so please don’t take my words as if they are directed at you personally.

But really. the reality is.

For every Billion dollar spent. Russia will deliver 4x more “military capability” with capability stood up at a much faster pace than the US. and without the howling media/society storm about arming the enemy etc… for a country like Iraq that sadly doesn’t have a “legal” printing press for US Dollars, it means that the only rational choice for us would be to buy russian.

Lets take another “interesting” example… like the Mi-28Ne helicopter vs the Ah-64D/E apache… It took the US three years to “deliberate” whether to approve sale of the helicopter to the Iraqis who had to “grovel and beg” to put in a DSCA request and then “grovel and beg” the congress not to block that request. for helicopters that the US wanted to ship to Iraq in 3-4 years time at a “lifecycle cost” of over $200M a piece… remember that?

Then uncle vladya turns up, takes in dozens of Iraqi pilots for training in Russia, as well as maintenance system setup in iraq… and within a year the Iraqis are flying the Mi28Ne in combat and blowing up ISIS… (oh and for less than 1/4 of the “price” of the Apaches that would still be “in a pipe dream” had the Iraqis fallen into the trap of “ponying up the lolly” like they did for the F16 DumbQ).

or the SU25s that the russians literally readied and shipped to Iraq WITHIN A WEEK of Mosul falling … meanwhile the US were “withholding shipments of hellfire missiles” for Iraq’s (then) “fleet” of 3 cessna caravans… hell the US were not even prepared to ship the F16s that Iraq paid for in 2011 in 2014 to an Iraqi Air Force base in SOUTHERN IRAQ in 2014! even though the planes were all ready and finished in the US. what does that tell us?

http://www.f-16.net/f-16-news-article4960.html

http://twitchy.com/2015/06/25/f-16-crashes-in-douglas-arizona-fate-of-pilot-unknown-photos/

yes. the Mi28Ne have been flying out of a forward base for over a month now. had some “spectacular” strike against an ISIS bomb factory… which went off like a mini-nuke.