Some quotes on Iraq-Iran war

From the very interesting publically available report “Lessons learned Iraq-Iran War” by Anthony Cordesman I quote some statements on air-to-air combat.

Air combat in the Iran-Iraq War was dominated largely by problems in command and policy, parts shortages, and personnel problems, rather than by aircraft numbers, technology, and tactics. Both Iraq and Iran generally sought to conserve their aircraft, and refused battle whenever possible. Iraq emerged with air superiority largely because of Iranian maintenance and re-supply problems and not because of combat performance.

And further on:

Fighter-against-fighter combat was only common during the first phase of the war. Iran’s air force was the more successful force during this phase, but this was as much due to Iraqi incompetence and the lower performance of the sensors, avionics, and missiles on Iraqi fighters as to Iranian ability. In retrospect, there is little doubt that the Iraqis misjudged Iran’s ability to fly air combat missions in spite of the revolution, and overestimated their own effectiveness. Iraqi planners also overestimated their own level of air combat training, the performance capabilities of their aircraft, the operational readiness of Iraq’s best squadrons, their reconnaissance assets, and their command and control capabilities.

We see that neither side had a real advantage. Cordesman also adds:

Iran lost most of its few air-to-air encounters after 1983, unless it used carefully planned ambush tactics against Iraqi attackers flying predictable paths of attack. Iran not only lost its technical edge over Iraq, the entire Iranian Air Force probably could not generate more than 30 to 60 sorties per day under surge conditions after 1983. Iran also lost one F-4 or F-5 on January 17-18 1985, under conditions suggesting the Iranian aircraft had serious missile or radar problems. This indicates Iran has be committed fighters to air combat with at least some inoperable avionics. Iran has reported growing reliability and survivability problems with all of its U.S.-made missiles and smart ordnance since 1984. Iraq, in contrast, was able to generate fairly high sortie rates from 1983 onwards, increasing from a maximum of 65 sorties per day, early in the war, to levels of 150 per day in 1984, and over 250 in 1986-1988, with claims of peaks as high as 600.

The Iranians were hence not able to conduct comparable amount of missions, so that the claim of good Iranian air force reasoned with the kills made in Iran-Iraq war is not truly valid, although it seems to be one of the few really agreed facts that this war was the big success for Iran and the F-14. Like many agreed “facts” in popular fighter knowledge this seems highly questionable.

However I disagree with him in comparing Iran’s air force to Iraq. Just looking at the air to air record in the 8 years of the Iran-Iraq war, the results heavily favor the Iranian Air Force, giving them one of the highest kill ratios in modern aircombat, placing them behind Israel and the US.

Erh, sorry, I disagree. The Iranians used their air force with great care and actually did not achieve a fraction of the flying hours and sorties of the Iraqis. So they actually only used their fighters when in favor, a tactic that already helped North Vietnam to make its kill record more pleasent. Without doubt was the Iranian air force more efficient and better, but it was unable to gain air superiority due to shortage of some deciding factors (here we see again the prevailing of overall capability factors instead of particular aircraft performance).

The Iraqis used their assets sometimes very wasteful, they sticked to the Russian doctrine, which turned out to be of limited use.

It is still amazing to me, how this little episode in history still catches so much attention and how people try to bend it to a considerable success of Yugoslavian (or better: Serbian) military. Even more strange, make it a success of Russian military equipment over crappy American technology.

Nothing is harder to digest than an obvious defeat due to own (political) stupidity. The person mainly responsible is dead, not a big loss for civilized Europe, hopefully this attitude dies out pretty soon, too.

If I park my tank under a tree and turn-off the engine, there is simply no way in detecting it. This tank adds no additional capability to my army. When I turn on the engine, I am detectable.
Having wasted multi-million dollar missiles doesn’t hurt too bad,
– if they gonna be outdated in a few years anyway
– if there overall cost is a infinite small fraction of your income
– if a crappy truck is relatively more expensive to Serbia than the multi-million dollar missile to NATO
– if after all demonstrated that I can hit anywhere anytime.

War is about competing resources. In this respect with Yoguslavia economically as powerful as Delaware there was little point in fighting it out. Unfortunately Mister Milosevic didn’t attend the lesson about basic principles of war fighting. His people had to pay it, in cash, assets and lifes. I’ll hope they know who to thank.

Does the difference really exist? There was a recent Saudi B747 evacuation, in Sri Lanka I think, due to a bomb hoax call. Bomb did not actually exist. No explosion happened. No fire. No smoke or extraordinary darkness. All exits usable – no requirement to close half exits.

Out of the less than 440 passengers to be evacuated, and B747 is supposed to be able to evacuate 660, 62 were injured. And one perished. Not an elderly person, either – apparently healthy and fit woman in late twenties.

I have not heard of anyone yet dying in a test evacuation, but one person has become paralyzed by a test evacuation.

Out of the people to evacuate the A380 on Sunday – 538 seats on main deck, 315 on upper deck – the prospect of being among the first fatality/ies of test evacuation sounds very real.

The evacuation of the A340 in Toronto went through wthout killed people although the aircraft was on fire and some exits were blocked. I think an real-life evacuation always bears some risks and in case of a catastrophic event the likelyhood of somebody getting killed has to be accepted. Why change design parameters if there are a few victims each each out of billions of passengers.

The B777 is in many aspects more critical as the A380. For example does it have less exits per passenger than the A380. The A380s biggest challenge is the height. Let’s hope that an evacuation never is necessary.

Okay, lets assume we are a country and we want to upgrade F-14s and we have no access to US technology. What are our options? How far can we go?

PLA-MKII’s expert answer (based on speculation and day dreaming):

Key would be getting a replacement for AIM-54s. Since radar codes are compromised and non compatible with eastern weapons, radar would also therefore need to be changed. The main question then becomes if, how and what you can replace the tomcats original radars. Not necessarily a MiG-31’s radar but it is open to other radar sets as well. If I recall the Su-27’s radome is comparable to the F-14’s and a slightly larger antenna would be even better and a non issue.

Second portion of this would be the weapon systems: after such a radar fit both Russian and Chinese weapons would be integratable. Further, all kind of seeker heads and main bodies can be integrated, possibly one which seemingly looks like tha AIM-54 but is a totally different animal.

the PL-9s would make a nice complement to this XBVRAAMs resulting in a all new new Pheonix rising from the ashes of war, an avenging angel garding golden eggs of nuclear proportions.. 😀

If I have the ability to build spares and replace radars, why should I concentrate on an outdated, heavy and carrier-optmised airframe like the F-14? People seem to think that having an F-14 means you are invincible and all enemies will be defeated off the coast. Still the aftermath of ‘Top Gun’?

The Iranians need for a usable AD system first and most important surveillance. That is as first choice ground based radar systems, preferraby movable. Then SAMs and fighters.

The F-14 is expensive, very costly in maintenance and training. They could afford 2 to 3 F-5 for the job. I don’t think the F-14 brings in that big advantage.

BVR-capabilities of the MiG suffered greatly from a big disappointment in the development of a Russian slotted array radar. Due to technical difficulties the N010 came much later than originally planned and the interim stopgap solution in form of the twist Cassegrain concept remained until today on all vanilla MiGs. Sukhois were affected as well and the N001 serves on all Su-27s, as well as continues with Su-30KN/MKK and Su-27SM. Due to this fact all vanilla models have problems with simultaneous target tracking and practically lack TWS mode which is a BIG drawback.

I agree that the MiG is no longer a light fighter. Looks like the 10 ton class is getting pretty popular, but not with the customers.. What really bugs me is the fact that Russians have completely lost the light and/or single-engined fighter market segment – the only thing on offer are MiG-21 upgrades. This LARGE gap is being filled with hordes of Vipers, Gripens, J-10s and FC-1s now. And they are selling like cakes, while 10-ton-class Bugs, Typhoons, Rafales and Fulcrums are battling for orders.

I am not aware of any FCS altering with the K/M-model. I have noticed that the LERX edges have been sharpened, but whether is this modification attributed to FCS tuning or aerodynamics I cannot say. The only proven ‘stealthing’ feature of the MiG-29s is a widely-available spray-on RAM paint.

I think so, too. The MiG-29 is currently not really attractive on the market because it competes against F-16, Eurofighter, Rafale, even F-15. Its price is not so attractive and it has a bad reputation (although that might be not justified). However, the F-16 is slightly lighter but today LM can offer you everything from the Block 40 discount to the Block 70 multi-role fighter which has little in common with the A-model in terms of mission concept. Worst problem is the lack of economical power by Russia, which has less GDP than the homestate of Lockheed Martin (California). Therefore I see the future of the MiG-29 in vain.

The real useful thing would be a fighter in the category of the MiG-21 (5 to 8 tons empty weight) with modular avionics. Agility and speed don’t need to be EF-like, it has to cruise comfortably at M0.9, reach supersonic speeds at altitudes above 10.000ft with reasonable AA-load. No stealth or Mach2 is necessary. But flexibility, ease of maintenace and training. That would be exactly the successor of the F-5 and compete against the T-50 (or F-50) Golden Dragon, but with the advantage of being independent of American export laws.

F-16 matured to similar multirole capabilities as MiG-29 but started from a different end (albeit came always two or three years sooner than the corresponding MiG, I admit that).

Early F-16s already had PGM capability (LGBs, Mavericks) and lacked any kind of BVR, MiG had BVR from the very start but lacked any serious A-G modes. After that F-16 came with ADF version which was fully comparable to early MiG-29 in A-A plus advantage of A-G. Then F-16C Block 30 and MiG-29M came. These would be pretty similar, me thinks.. AIM-120A vs R-77, AGM-65 vs Kh-25, Paveway II vs KAB-500/1500R/L, slotted APG-68 vs N-010, we can put these on par.

MiG-29M removed teeth problems of the vanilla model, pretty much eliminated range shortage, pulled out the old N019EA radar and even mastered carrierborne version and capability to use rough airfields, as well as added antiship missiles (Kh-35, Kh-31).. RD-33Ks still had roughly a half of service life compared to PWs and GEs, but that would have been eliminated by cheap unit prices – a feature that becomes a big advantage in war and does not disturb that much during peacetime. N010 was surely twice as heavy as APG-88 but it worked and overall maneuvrability was not affected. Together with integrated HMS and KOLS I see the M platform a bit better than Block 30 series.

Then MiG was stopped due to anyone in Soviet Union having much bigger troubles than care of fighter aircraft. Block 40 and 50 were issued. Even if these do not constitute a major leap in capabilities, they still added SEAD, HMS, JDAM, AIM-120C, color LCDs, wide angle HUD, new fairings with ECM, digital RWR, CFTs and other stuff. MiG has not provided anything new for ten years and only caught on later with MiG-29SMT-2 or M2.

Now F-16 is in the lead with Block 60. MiG will be answering with Ks for India. All in all I think Russians managed to pass thru this difficult era better than we have initially expected. Yes, they don’t have 5th gen or AESA ready but with their limited budget that is no wonder. Now, despite Su-30 series selling like hot cakes MiG managed to sell out the old stocks, has found three contracts (Yemen, Algeria, India) for newbuilds and made its place in the new PAK-FA project, I think they will get over the difficulties somehow.

General agreement. The F-16A already went a long way, the originally proposed F-16A had no radar, two pylons each wing and was smaller. It was the original Light-Weight-Fighter. The A-model already sacrificed some design principles in getting more complex, more expensive and heavier. However, overall performance was still above anything available that day and in respect to missile developments it proved a reasonable sacrifice.

For the BVR-capability of the MiG-29A we should add that these were on the level of MiG-23 capabilities and did not match the F-15s capabilities (as originally intended). So the MiG-29 was able to be used as ground-guided interceptor like the MiG-23 but the advantage of more flexibility in WVR combat.

The real difference of both aircraft is the approach. The F-16 was designed as light-weight alternative to the F-15 with less cost, better WVR-capabilities with better performance as the MiG-21 of any version. The MiG-29 was built originally to counter the F-15 and later the F-16. MiG started with a much heavier airframe, the original proposals were based on the MiG-25. The MiG-29 came out after someone figured out that the original design was unaffordable (and as usual with Russian military specifications contradicting). MiG went the easier and more conservative way than Suchoi and were able to field the aircraft in 1983, 3 years ahead of Suchoi. Still, original plans for the radar were postponed to later models.

In the end the MiG is a little bit heavy for its capability (F-16A: 7100kg, MiG-29A: 11.000kg) and in my perspective was optimised too much on agility. The very conventional FCS were a limiting factor of the A-model, I don’t know about the sophistication of the FCS of the M-model.

It would be fairer to have a better mix of people on the test, to get a more realistic picture, not everybody is going to be super fit men and women…i’d quite happily volunteer my 60 year old mother for the test as a Mothers day present to her :diablo:

But on the flip side it isnt a realistic test…doesnt recreate the fear or survival instincts, that a stricken/burning plane would do…

There is a JAA/FAA rule saying how the percentage of women and old people has to be. The rest are, of course, as young and sporty as possible. It also usual to have young people (students) more easily available for such a test.

the same problem applies for clinical tests of new drugs, with the difference that due to that people really die sometimes (I don’t mean the young people trying but the old people getting prescriptions).