what is even more curious is that Qatar has a 15 fighter jets strong air force,a nd they just ordered 78 jets overall… talk about boost in power…

Looks like the AdlA, RAF, and USAF are going to have to up their retention bonuses, seems Qatar is looking to build itself into a powerful regional airforce.

Would be interesting to research the numbers of foreign contractors and ex-pats in the service of Kuwait, Qatar, UAE.

The UB purchased from Ukraine were bought by a contractor providing OPFOR training. Su-27P’s were acquired from Belarus. Whether the Su-27P that have been spotted flying on many occasions from Groom are those former Belorussian Su-27 is debatable.

For one, the fact that the USAF refused to release the exact type of “classified” aircraft suggests that if it was an Su-27 or such, they probably don’t want to reveal how they acquired it.

The full extent of the smuggling operations of Soviet weapons from former republics by both the CIA and third party weapons dealers will never fully come to light. Nor is it likely that these operations have stopped considering that Russia still sells arms to cash poor states that may not be able to maintain or operate complex weapon systems long term. The pipeline of weapons from these states likely means that some Russian weapons still find their way into the US.

Some pretty awesome VKS coverage.
I have never seen the Hellducks this sluggish upon take-off before. Even after rotation, its continued down field for quite some distance before positive lift occured.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH9rl_NEB7Y

Exactly how is this action footage from syria, it’s a bunch of Su-34’s taking off with clean wings? Goods not as advertised.

Gotcha, no the Paveway II kits were roughly 12K in 2001 ( roughly 20k in 1991 according to maxwell AFB Air university study. Interestingly a GBU-15 IIR cost 300K), he’s wrong about that. Yeah no way JSSM-ER will ever be cheaper

Ok, last about Tornado.

Actually, also Tornado has been modernized and can be utilized in the same way all modern so called multirole fighters (F-15E included even if I have never considered it to be such) are but with a way better range and sortie generation rate than any of them + can perform tactical recon and in the ECR version, autonomous SEAD missions at a level USAF actually lack (and sorely miss) from the retirement of the specialized RF-4 and F-4G versions of the multirole Phantom.
And i’m sure those capabilities are more widely used even now that the supposed A2A capability has been, actually are and will be used in the future.

Those are some questionable claims:
1. How exactly is the F-15E not a multirole fighter? S.Korea and Singapore certainly view it as such. Even the USAF (which didn’t have a need to use the F-15E outside of the strike/interdiction role), had been utilizing the F-15E in air to air training more.

2. Sortie rate? How exactly are you sure the Tornado has a higher sortie rate.

3. Range? Outside of Wikipedia combat radius, do you have a range for either in a high low low high mission with combat time? I have that for the F-15E.

3. The USAF has F-16CJ’s that perform SEAD. They replaced the F-4G

This isn’t about this or that aircraft being better, but if you going to make claims, please back them up. I believe you castigated Levsha on another thread for not looking up the obvious.