If you spent your money on MiG-31, MiG-35, Nebo & S300 in current circumstances, it wouldn’t matter what happened between you & Saudi Arabia. IS would take them off you at ground level. You’re talking like a man in a burning house saying he needs an expensive new burglar alarm & door locks, while ignoring the water hose that would enable him to put out the fire.

How many aircraft or SAM’s or radars have isis “taken off us” at ground level so far? Surely when you make an assertion in a very matter of fact kind of way there is a precedent youre working with… Right?

So if we had mig35 and mig31 and some nebo m radars and s300v4 units… The Saudis would still squash us like a bug? Really? All these items are eminently affordable for iraq if there was a will to “break away” from kowtowing to Washington. And Saudi would have to spend a looooot.of money on trying to effectively break through our defences then. Perhaps giving them a pause for thought that an 40 year old sparrow missile won’t.

I hazard a guess that the earlier F16 kills you mention were against f15s and typhoon class aircraft supported by awacs? Or are the Saudis flying mig21mf and mig23ms armed with k13 and guided with old gci?

Not Iraqis in general, but those in charge of military procurement for the last few years.

It’s obvious to anyone conscious that Maliki screwed up massively, & left the armed forces disorganised, demoralised & poorly-equipped. The performance of the Iraqi armed forces against the initial push by ISIS was dire, so abysmally bad that not to know better than those responsible what Iraq needed then would require mental deficiency.

I think there is a lack of understanding about what happened in Iraq. The most fundamental point is that what happened in the sunni Arab uprising last year was simply units turning en masse (Sunnis soldiers joined isis kurds took their equipment and gave it to Peshmerga and the few shias stuck in a rut had to fight their way out as best they could through hundreds of kilometers of hostile territory.

Though maliki was an imbecile and it’s very popular to blame what happened in Iraq on him as a nice clean sweep generalisation. Truth is that he was not a dictator but the head of a “national unity” government that was compromised from within by the national unity partners (kurdish and sunni Arab parties) who’s aim (openly discussed on Arabic TV stations) was to sabotage the state from within.

Maliki had a kurdish chief of staff who was not even a college graduate. A kurdish air force commander who did not train anyone or buy any fighters before the us withdrawal and agreed to downgraded junk at massive prices. They were happy to have just 140 mbt of which barely 30 are operational now. Oh and they are still in their positions now… Because neither maliki nor Abadi are allowed to “touch them”. So much for “shia dictatorship”. Commander of ground forces sunni Arab in maliki time and today. Minister of defence. SunnI Arab as well in maliki time and today. In fact the only commanders in the military who are shia are the commander of the air defence and army aviation (helicopters).. ; and coincidentally the only ones who magically seem to be building their forces capability without internal sabotage.

Within the parliament the iraqi budgets were blocked for years on end by political obstruction by the “national unity partners” . A government in which ministers were partner the government but also in opposition to it!! When iraq wanted to hey fighters from Russia all hell broke loose in 2012. The us ambassador “batch slapped” maliki at the time.. So.Much for the vaunted “shia iranian strongman dictator “. That imbecile maliki was unceremoniously dumped after the 2014 election without any bloodshed. Not the spectacular way the (sunni Arab) iraqi dictators usually go. But there’s always something new.

Mosul itself the governor and the populace campaigned for years to “kick out the shia army” and the few southern soldiers Posted there were attacked incessantly and treated as an invader by the locals.

And a simple test about the “iraqi army falling Apart ” is how come they remained in charge of 65% of the country? Surely if they collapse at the first sight of an isis pickup then isis would be in basra… That rather basic fact that seems to elude most discussions about the iraqi military effectively hides the true nature of what happened and is happening in Iraq and simply apportion “Blame” at an organisation that doesn’t have the pr capability to answer for itself. Thus the silly talk about “maliki and incompetent iraqi army wot Don it” remains unanswered with a retort and becomes “fact”.

When assessing the war in Iraq. Think of it not as one country. But as three separate countries… Which were at war but also shared one parliament and one government and one army. In fact think of the iraqi army as the yugoslavia army in 1991 in Slovenia or Croatia as a better analogue.

Irak need full defense treaty with Russia so A-50U can be deployed that can see several hundred kms inside Saudi. than strike them with Iskander/Yakhont. Ruaf size is getting bigger soon and Russia is getting oil contracts so its natural to defend them.
those F-16-IQ are practically useless against Saudi airforce backed by AWACS.

F16-IQ is a complete joke really. they’re OK ground attack planes and maybe for tactical recon. but for air defence completely and utterly useless. However I don’t think that Haider Abadi has the guts to make an alliance with Russia / China (SCO)… It would take a very big assault on Iraq (like the Saudis bombing Iraq or blocking Iraqi oil export ports or “opening a second front” against the Iraqi forces … as the “tribal revolutionaries” have been pleading for) for the Iraqis to invite Iran/Russia/China in “openly”. For now things haven’t escalated that far yet.

I would love it if the Russians quietly ship in an S300 unit deployed out of southern Iraq and maintain radar silence until Iraqi radar sees a saudi intruder… then quietly blast it out of the sky whilst its in Iraqi airspace. one can dream. (as Y20-baconman would regularly accuse me of doing!).

BTW, I’ve just read a report (a couple of weeks old) that the USA was about to ship 1000 AT4 (Swedish) anti-armour weapons to Iraq. That’s the sort of thing that should be in just about every squad, not just platoon, in any army.

1000 has arrived and another 1000 are arriving in the next few weeks.

Also Russia has shipped some RPG-29 and RPG-32s.

France said they’ll ship some MILANs, but this is not 100% certain.

Thing is. The war with ISIS… Iraqis have literally several thousand “point defence” areas that are potential targets and there’s no clear lie of defence at the contact points. There’s no “no mans land” separating Iraqi positions from marauding ISIS units that swarm at a point of their choosing then disappear. Very much in the vein of the 18th and 19th century war by the wahabis in that very region….

What needs to happen “at the most basic level” are the following:
1- create clear “no mans land” where all vehicles are deemed enemy and open for destruction. This improves the ROE situation for Iraqi and coallition aircraft and artillery in engaging marauders “freely”
2- Stop all mobile phone signals and work on jamming SATCOM signals in all “hostile held” territory
3- Improve the woeful PR and media campaign of the Iraqi side. I mean in the last week the Iraqis took all of Baiji city and environs as well as Al Garma in Anbar and held of a mass ISIS attack on Tharthar and decisively defeated them,… but I doubt if ANYONE has really heard much about it. Conversely If the Iraqis lose 4x Humvees and a couple of M113s to an ambush next week however the world media would be up in arms screaming “the useless cowardly Iraqis gave dozens of abrams tanks to ISIS and ran away!”.

Those three “basic” steps would improve the situation a hundred fold IMHO, including vis a vis the free use of airpower.

how’s catching up to OMAN’s GDP per capita coming?
I hope its coming along nicely as are those mig-35 and su-35 deliveries lol

2013 + 5 = 2015!

(But to be fair to you, I did make a mistake there, mixing up GDP PPP with Nominal GDP!). Apologies for that.

Now on the topic… GDP PPP is still growing (albeit slowly since last year due to oil price crash and a new war)… so don’t you worry about us 😉

And more importantly we’re already higher on a per capita basis than a whole load of countries operating pretty modern air forces… 😉
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD

Uganda. GDP PPP $657 – Operates Flankers
Angola GDP PPP $8000 – Operates Flankers etc…
Vietnam GDP PPP $5500 – Operates Flankers etc…
Indonesia GDP PPP $10000 – Operates Flankers, T50s, F16s…
Morocco GDP PPP $7200 – modern F16s, upgraded mirages etc…
Algeria GDP PPP $14000 – SU30s, MiG25s, SU-24s etc…

Iraq. GDP PPP $15,500 – Has no modern jets. Plenty of enemies. But apparently can’t afford to buy expensive jets. They have enough money in savings, very low Debt/GDP to buy ANY aircraft they wish to buy. That is the economic reality. The fact that they haven’t bought anything is down to many issues including the disagreement of different sections within Iraq about strengthening the military.

their debt to GDP is very low…
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iraq/government-debt-to-gdp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-exchange_reserves
foreign exchange reserves of $74Bn (just behind UAE and higher than Norway for example..). If they spent just 10% of that on air force equipment… they’d get a couple of squadrons of whatever they fancy.

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?127908-T50IQ-Iraq-s-new-trainer-light-fighter

just like your fantasies of F-50s with AESA and F414 or EJ200s
no ability to differentiate what you would like to have to what Iraq can really have..

huh? So now you’ve reviewed and “downgraded” your hyperbole from F35/PAK-FA to discussing and speculating as to the fittings on a simple LIGHT JET that Iraq has indeed bought, but we don’t yet actually know what it is fitted with. If you actually understood English you would be able to differentiate between “speculative inferencing” and “fantasies” that I wrote there… and would have understood the difference between “opening a debate on what aircraft they bought could be fitted with” and “fantasies and daydreams”… Don’t dig any deeper :applause: