How about a deal? Airbus tankers for C-17s :p

Well as much as I love European projects I think one should put politics aside when the need for a piece of equipment is so dire (I have seen German Transalls firsthand, believe me it was not a nice experience).
After all one could licence-build them too, so there won’t be a loss of X jobs. And there are enough projects in which you could invest the money saved (for example a CH-53 replacement)

F-16s are very close to being the most worthless assets that Iraq can buy at the moment. Don’t see a single thing they could do with them given the problems they have.

Strictly technically yes in a broader context no.

Su-25s might be more apt for their needs but the F-16s are US made i.e. they probably won’t have too much for pilot training and spares (if they have to pay for it at all).
The US also want to narrow the currently vast gap between Iran and Iraq in terms of military power. Of course this won’t be achieved with a few F-16s but it’s first step. Whether that makes sense or not is a different question.

No it isn’t, the stars were removed from the flag some time ago because they allegedly are remnants of the Baath party’s ideology :rolleyes:

Now that we are talking about Latin America, are there some good pictures of aircraft and helicopters operated by the Nicaraguan contra rebels?

Whatever the number Fabe. The point is that no HA-300 was ever designated or locally called “Al Qahirah” -300. That name belongs to the trainer HA-200B designed by the Spanish HASA and built under license by Helwan in Egypt. There are plenty of pictures of those two-seater in EAF markings wearing the arabic lettering القاهرة (Al Qahirah)painted on the fuselage sides.
By the way… thanks a lot again for your pictures! 🙂

I don’t doubt the HA-200 was named القاهرة but still the name could have been used for two different aircraft. I did a small illustration to show my Mirage analogy. Same basic name – different aircraft.

To make it even more odd, Nasser’s missile was named القاهر too (the victorious but this time the male version)

by the way any good pics of the HA-200 are highly welcome 🙂
I hope I don’t discuss the issue too aggressively, I am simply a little obsessed with this aircraft (just in case you haven’t already noticed :p) I am really glad you like my pictures it took quite some time to take them 😉

The fact is that the HA-200B trainers, those 75+ aircraft built by Factory Nº36 at Helwan, Egypt, were locally known as Helwan Aviation (hence the HA prefix) HA-200B “Al Qahirah”

Well Al Qahira 300 is written on the museum aircraft. The HA-200 was NOT called “Al Qahira” it was called “Al Qahira 200” That is a big difference, i.e. the last designation could be interpreted as one model of a series of aircraft (like the Mirages)

By the way the model presented in a German museum, markings of the Egyptian air force is wrong. As the Insignias of the Egyptian air force in the sixties of the last century with the two Stars in the roundel, as well as the Egyptian flag.

To be a little nit-picky it was not the flag of Egypt but the one of the United Arab Repbulic even if it consisted only of Egypt for some time :p