during the 1991 gulf war, Iraqi MiG25PDS ran dozens of escort and diversionary missions to cover and protect the flight of bombers, transports and other jets from Iraq to Iran.

They succeeded in protecting most of the jets that set out to ferry across the border to Iran and many of the encounters with F-15s and others were during these diversionary missions. Its notable that the US had non stop AWACS and dozens of F-15s in the air at all times to try and destroy as many Iraqi aircraft as possible. In addition to the flat open terrain and the several hundred km run to the iranian border for many of the aircraft. the MiG25s did their job very well under the near impossible circumstances then.

It is notable that they themselves did not evacuate. Just covered the evacuation flights

Thats a perfect example

just imagine if Iraqis had 100 + Mig-25s not 25,they might not have scored a lot of A2A kills but they would have been incredibly disruptive to their opponents air campaign

Furthermore imagine if Iraq was just fighting KSA + kuwait + UAE airforces alone in 1990 and not the entire might of NATO.Thats the kind of odds you are dealing with in a USSR vs Turkey/Japan scenario

^ it had more than enough range to escort bombers over black sea /sea of japan approx 200nm from the coast of japan and Turkey

Thanks , makes sense from the same website I listed above

As early as 1996, McDonnell Douglas proposed the “Harpoon 2000” improvement, later evolving into the Harpoon Block II. Suggested Block II features included a GPS-aided INS, a radar seeker with improved ECCM and some SLAM hardware. The GPS/INS guidance would allow much higher precision in attacks on shore-based targets. The “Harpoon 2000″/Block II proposal was apparently not too well received by the U.S. Navy, and no development order came forward. However, Block II was developed for export as AGM/RGM-84L, q.v.. In February 2008, the designations AGM-84J and RGM-84J were retroactively allocated to Block II conversions based on the AGM-84D.

the links you posted does not specify if it was mig-25PD are you basing it on another source
does anybody know why the iraqis did not or could not fire ?

Thanks TomcatViP

I was suggesting this

target airbases and navalbases in Japan and lets say turkey in the mid-80s

plan to attack them with ASM and ARM ( AS-6/AS-4 and AS-16) carried by Tu-16/Tu-22 and Tu-95

they need to be escorted to the launching point which is approx 200nm from their targets , that is where they will launch their missiles and then immediately turn back and head home as their missiles have inertial and active radar guidance

that means they need to be protected not for long distances over hostile territory but just to 200nm or so from enemy’s bases

The primary threat to these bombers is the interceptors F-15/f-16 AND f-4 which will be scrambled as soon as the soviet bombers are detected likely several hundred miles away from the jap/turkish bases ( due to AWACS).

The bombers are at high altitude accompanied by mig-25s

Now the mig-25s accompanying them will race ahead to meet these fighters head on and this will accomplish 4 things
1-Distract the interceptors from the bombers
2-Draw in fire from their SARH missiles which otherwise could be used against the bombers, since enemy interceptors can only guide one SARH missile at one time ( and foxbats have shown they can be notoriously hard to kill with AIM-7s) this can be quite time consuming giving the bombers time to reach their launch point
3-The foxbats can fire their own missiles which even if they mostly miss will still make the fighters take evasive actions
4-Since bombers are at high altitude this will force the enemy interceptors to fight at higher altitude where foxbats perform better than at low altitude

In the meantime the bombers can reach their launch time, release their missiles and head home

In this way i though foxbats might be quite successful in their goal as escorts, not by destroying large number of enemy interceptors but by keeping them occupied long enough for the bombers to launch their missiles and foxbats may even get a few kills by their slash and dash tactics

What made the MLD superior ? Even with R24/R60 missiles ?

^ so before 1991 the f16 were not using AIM 7 in Egyptian air force?