Britain now has the largest helicopter force in Europe thanks to the RAFs 14 new Chinooks.

At least not everything is being cut…!

Yup, and with an Army of just 80,000 makes Blighty probably the most mobile armed force in Europe too!

Cant think of anyone else who can heli lift an entire brigade in Europe (maybe the Germans and French?)

It will be interesting to see what “is” the future of the “former state of Iraq” and where and if those F16s ever get delivered.

If the “central / southern” Iraqi state (“sumer and akkad”) still has good relations with the US, then I’d expect they’ll receive the F16-IQ jets since they paid for it.

If the US refuses to send them to Iraq, then I’d expect them to be incorporated into the USAF inventory and the americans “pocket the money” as they’ve done with other third world countries that went through turmoil etc…

Would the US give the Kurds planes that Iraq paid for? Who knows… Right now the Kurds are playing out the result of their “Molotov Ribentropp” style agreement with the various ISIS/Baath groups in order to mutually grab bits of land from Iraq… so anything is possible!

I’d expect if the US does refuse to send the planes to “sumer and akkad” … the Russians and Chinese will take 100% of that market… the Russians have been airlifting more Atakas, Mi35Ms and other items since the Mosul crisis started and intensified training for Iraqis to bring them into service quicker. The US is still debating on whether to let the Iraqis have a few hellfires for their “cessnas”.

PS. the army in Mosul / Kirkuk which collapsed was manned with Maslawi officers / soldiers who “turned coat” and Kurdish officers and soldiers who took off with their equipment to hand it over to Kurdistan. The small number of southern soldiers were then surrounded and had to flee southwards any way they could.

Still in areas where the Maslawis and Kurds did not predominate the units, they held out valiantly, like in Husaiba where a group of 60 soldiers and 10 humvees held out their border post against terrorists until they ran out of ammo and were all killed (5 days!), and Baiji power station were a group of 250 Iraqi engineers and local guards are to this minute holding out against ISIS assaults by 200+ vehicles against them and are being resupplied by helos at night time with ammo and supplies.

Similarly in Samarra the ISIS and their sunni-arab allies singularly failed to take the town or any area around it and were repulsed in all their attacks.

In places like Tel Affar, the units of the army and border guards fought to the death, culminating in the battle in the central castle last night… the Peshmarga forces holding sinjar, were not attacked with a single bullet by ISIS on the other hand… and did not come to the aid of Tel Affar either.

Interesting. Will be hard for the US to integrate into their force as slightly different from USAF machines, also they are fighting tooth and nail to keep every F-35 they can, so may not want too waste operational expenditure on 36 new F-16s. Past experiance seems to indicate that they may be placed as agressors with USN/USAF or sold to another country and Iraq reimbursed their funds.

The less one hears about logic from you, the better it’ll be..you’ve displayed it earlier on the Tejas thread. You haven’t been able to back up your claim with anything, so when I point that out you claim its because I hate Pakistan..quite sad behaviour really.

The reports were clear- one solitary J-10 and one J-7 participated in the exercise from the PLAAF side. I didn’t say that- the report said it and an Australian defence attache remarked on it..you OTOH have not been able to show a single report or picture disproving that..so as things stand, its you who is desperately clutching at thin air trying to prove a point that you otherwise cannot. If you do however, show a picture of a flightline or anything that backs what you’re saying, then I’ll be happy to say that I stand corrected..

But I don’t think that’s gonna happen. 😉

So, its safe to assume that the report was correct.

AFM will be doing a report on this exercise (Alan Warnes is in Pakistan right now). As I said, 20 odd Chinese pilots did not come over to Pakistan with just 2 planes. It is a matter of time before you will be proved wrong (as you seem to be constantly), so lets wait, I would not assume anything if I were you, not after your past mistakes…….

Were the PAF’s F-16s ‘hanger queens’ between 1991 and 2001, or did the US ‘take it easy’ on the entities supporting PAF?

Ah, the default setting of avoiding the argument by dragging in Pakistan.

Not quite the graduation picture, but a good shot of the participants.

Dig through their archives for the ramp/runway shots with the participants.

Right, so as I originally stated, the concept of getting a ides of aircraft numbers involved from a a end of exercise pic as Blackarcher was claiming is utter ******** then right?

Interesting thread. I read somewhere that Pakistan Air Force F-6 availability rates were somewhere around 50%-60%. With a very low time between overhauls and engine replacements many planes had to be sent back to China or thrown away completely. Some Sqds needed 24 planes just to have 16 available for flying.

Take a look at the chart again. Does the canopy need to be switched out every 2000 hours with a new one delivered by a US-based company? Will the lighting system require replacement? Will the fuel nozzles?

If you want to see how the aircraft will be sustained, you study the usage and sources of spares and consumables.

In the Gripen’s case, SAAB would not have been restricted from trade with India. Which would mean that in the event of US sanctions, IAF Gripen fleet would still have been better off than PAF’s F-16 fleet was in 1991.

Your making the massive assumption HAL can replicate all the consumables.It’s good you have faith in them, even if the IAF does not….