OT Things are getting hairy in the Middle East
 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49721301

A Twilight 2000 RDF scenario or variant perhaps?

IIRC, and it's been a while since I last read it, Red Storm Rising's WWIII started after a terrorist attack on a Soviet Oil Refinery.

I started listening to it on youtube this morning. because of the news.

Looking at the site itself, combined with pictures of the damage, it looks like the attack which hit the four tanks (pictures in article), came from the west.

Definitely concerning.

The Future of Warfare is Here: Drone Swarm Attacks
 

As the author of this defense blog explains, the direction the attack came from doesn't necessarily indicate the perpetrator.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...greater-issues

Oh of course. I simply meant that the holes in the tanks appear to be on the western side, not that the drones came in from the west or anything. I would note that the oil fields that were also attacked were southwest of the refinery, but that's what, 150km away? Without more information on the drones used, who knows where they were likely being operated from (or if they were in fact drones at all, has that even been confirmed yet?).

In any case, it's concerning because it seems the cold war between the Kingdom and Iran is heating up. To clarify, I'm not saying that Iran caused the attack, but despite denying it they are strongly suspected to support the Houthis, and Iran and the Kingdom have long been known to take proxy action against one another.

Pompeo is saying its an Iranian attack and an act of war. So looks like we may get to see some nice F-14 versus F-15 dogfights over the Gulf soon and finally get to settle who is the better dogfighter

Worth a look I think...
https://bombardsbodylanguage.com/201...fab128d028b1eb

An F-15 has never been lost in air to air combat. Unfortunately the Tomcat can't say the same.

I definitely think that Iran had at least something to do with it. The Houthis have proven to be pretty resourceful, but I haven't seen anything indicating that they are capable of carrying out an attack this complex, this precise, completely on their own. At the very least, they surely had substantial material assistance from the Iranians (i.e. Iran provided the attack drones). Even if the Houthis themselves launched the drones, I reckon that at least a few Iranian "advisers" were on hand to "observe" the operation (wink-wink).

The last thing the U.S.A. needs right now is to get directly involved in yet another proxy war in the Middle East.

American defense contractors must be creaming their jockeys right now, but enough is enough. We've provided the Saudis with billions of dollars worth of subsidized, high tech American-made weaponry. Let them fight their own battles.

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Raellus - not talking about American planes - the Saudis fly the F-15 and the F-15E as wel.

Hey Olefin, I also think the question is interesting, F-14 or F-15?
However I don't think it would be a fair test of the aircraft because I think in this case, it will come down to who has the better pilots & doctrine, the Saudis or the Iranians. :confused:

Nothing the Saudis have done militarily in the last three decades has impressed me much. They can't defeat rebels in the region's poorest country and they couldn't stop said from temporarily knocking out half of the world's oil production.

The Iranians, on the other hand, have been punking the Saudis at every turn and, although it's been a while, the Iranians have operational experience at air warfare. I'm not saying predicting an Iranian victory, but I think that they'd give the vastly better equipped Saudis a run for their [oil] money in any aerial clash over the Gulf, perhaps even getting the better of them.

Agreed on all points. MBS might be the great millenial hope of the Saudis at the moment, but his foreign policy decisions have left quite a bit to be desired. And Soleimani has shown that he's more than capable on the Iranian side. Hopefully it doesn't end up escalating, but the next couple of years should prove interesting (meant in the apocryphal Chinese curse context of "interesting").

I'm pretty much of the same opinion as you Raellus, I haven't seen anything from the Saudi's that leads me to believe they'll be the victors. I don't know what it's like now but in the past they often hired foreigners to serve as officers or technical personnel apparently because they couldn't get enough of their own people to join the military or those that did, didn't have the education needed for the roles.

When you see the Saudis wasting their Abrams MBTs because they didn't bother to follow common sense let alone good doctrine and deployed them without any infantry support, you start to question just how good (i.e. bad) the Saudi military is, particularly their leadership and doctrine.
When you hear stories of the Saudi's paying Sudanese families to send their children to fight against the Houthis, you start to question just who can lay claim to any moral highground in any conflict involving Saudi Arabia and their neighbours.

As for the Iranians, as you mentioned, they've been engaged in conflicts for several decades. They have combat experience and it seems a strong national imperative to have a strong & capable military (compared to their neighbours).
As I originally said, I don't think any Saudi F-15 versus Iranian F-14 would be a good test of which aircraft is better. I tend to think the Iranians actually have the better pilots and pilot experience is going to be worth much more than the machine they're flying in this example.

As of 2019 Saudi Arabia had the world's third largest defence budget and has overtaken Russia.

The Saudi's have spent a fortune on buying top-of-the range equipment in all areas from the West, and on paper they are the best equipped force in the Middle East after Israel, but they are not considered an ineffective force and would struggle if they had to take on Iran by themselves. Their main weakness is their army which is considered second rate. It suffers from lack of training, chronic shortages of manpower and rivalry between the Saudi Army, National Guard and Royal Guard. They also have a lack of logistical equipment and experience in large-scale operations and expeditionary operation outside their own borders.

The Saudi's have been fighting a proxy war against the Iranian backed Houthi in Yemen for three years and have got nowhere. Its mainly been an air campaign against the Houthi as relatively few Saudi land units have been sent into Yemen. Sending larger Saudi land forces into Yemen would probably cause more trouble with the Houthi who have been successful at attacking Saudi forces in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and might even embarrass the Saudi government if their army got overrun. The Iranian's don't rate the Saudi's very highly or do the West. They could defend Saudi airspace and contest the air and sea over the Persian Gulf, but other than that they would need American help against Iran.

Keep in mind that the Iranians havent fought in the air since the Iran-Iraq War - meaning those pilots who had combat experience are all retired or dead by now most likely (i.e. its been 30 years)

I think the Saudis would have the edge in the air and most likely at sea too - but I agree that their army, to say it mildly, sucks. For one they may have spent a hell of a lot of money but in many ways their army is like the Japanese Navy was in WWII - lots of combat vehicles but not enough support, engineering and maintenance vehicles.

And using mercenaries and foreigners is never a great idea - while it worked great for the SS and the French Foreign Legion its never really worked for anyone else.

FYI my money is on the F-15's if it does come to combat in the skies. The F-14's are great planes but they are very long in the tooth.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but IIRC didn’t the Saudi’s hire a whole Division of Pakistani’s (or have a treaty with Pakistan to provide a whole Div) around the time of the First Gulf War 1990/91

Would not surprise me at all if the Pakistani Division thing was true.
About 20 minutes ago I got off the phone to a friend about this coming weekend. He's an English language teacher and has had some experience in the Arab nations. His opinion of the Saudis is that they have become too wealthy and are now hedonistic, snobby and intellectually lazy.
There are plenty of stories of the Saudis hiring masses of people to do the jobs they don't want to do and they have done so in the past with the military as well.

It appears that in the most part, the general opinion of the Saudis is pretty low so when it comes to the hard work of military operations, the opinion naturally enough follows that the Saudis don't have the desire to do what it takes to be a strong, effective fighting force.
I'd still put my money on the Iranians in air combat - the Iranians are hungry for victory while the Saudis would rather pay someone else to do it for them.

And some of those vets probably inhabit the upper echelons of their air force, or at least passed on their operational experience to the next generation of fighter instructors before leaving the service (or dying). I wouldn't sleep on their pilots. I'd put my money on the Iranians, IF the Saudis didn't have several E-3 Sentries. As history has demonstrated time and again, those things are game-changers. AFAIK, the Iranians don't have equivalent dedicated AWACS platforms. That said, IIRC, they used the F-14's powerful AN/AWG-9 radars as a sort of ersatz AWACS for aerial fighter direction/control in several engagements during the Iran-Iraq War. If the Iranians still had any AIM-54s for their Tomcats, the Saudis would be at a disadvantage in BVR fights.

It would be interesting to see an air war between Iran and Saudi Arabia play out, on an intellectual level. On a purely human level, I hope it doesn't come to that.

While some of the Waffen SS foreign "volunteer" units were quite good (5th SS Wiking Division, for example), others were disastrously incompetent.

Not quite but there is some truth to this.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have had a close military relationship since the 1960's. Both governments claim that its due to their shared majority Sunni Muslim religion, but Saudi money and oil also play a big part. Pakistan advisors and pilots have served in the Saudi military since the late 1960's, but the first large Pakistani troop deployment to Saudi Arabia dates to 1979. After fundamentalists seized the Grand Mosque in Makkah in 1979 in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, Pakistani special forces were sent to Saudi Arabia to participated in operation to eliminate fundamentalist elements. Later during the Iran-Iraq war up to 15,000 Pakistani troops were stationed in the Kingdom to boost its security. Some of them were part of a brigade positioned near the border with Israel and Jordan. Most left after 1988 but during the First Gulf War in 1991 up to 13,000 Pakistani troops and 6,000 advisers were based in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani forces frequently have participated in joint military exercises inside Saudi Arabia and Saudi cadets have been trained at various academies in Pakistan. The Pakistani Military has repeatedly reiterated that the security and physical integrity of Saudi Arabia are equally important as that of its own. The close ties were tested in 2015 when the Pakistani parliament rejected a Saudi request for Pakistani troops to support its Yemen campaign. But Pakistan still provided some naval assistance early in Saudi’s Yemen operations, and since then the two militaries have conducted joint exercises.

Why not some F-22s hunting F-14s.

Seems like we have this Thread starter every eight to 12 months.........so what the difference this time?

The plebs who watch the MSN needed reminding who the "big bad" is and how terrible their own current leadership is supposed to be?
All really just part of the propaganda cycle. Events like this are relatively commonplace, but the media only reports on those which fit the overall narrative they happen to be pushing.

But in that attack there was nothing left of the oil refinery while the Saudi oil refinery is still partly functional.

Some F-22s hunting ancient F-14As.

Except according the September 2018 issue of Air International pages 58–59
the number of combat ready Tomcats in Iran was still low (seven in 2008) and the Washington Post reported on 26 January 2012 that Iranian F-14 fighter jet had crashed in country's south, and both pilot and co-pilot killed. So I would call the use of F-14 by Iran questionable

In July 2007, the remaining American F-14s were shredded to ensure that any parts could not be acquired by Iran

As of 2018 the Iranian Air Force had 43 F-14's in service, and possibly more.

After the Iranian Revolution Iran’s ability to acquire parts for the F-14 was limited. While Iran developed the manufacturing facilities to service the simpler F-5E and kept the F-4E Phantom flying through a combination of reverse engineering and acquiring parts on the black market, this was not an option for the more complex F-14. A severe shortage in AIM-54missiles after the Iran-Iraq War further limited the F-14's usefulness in Iranian hands, and only a fraction of the fleet remained operational for several decades.

However new technologies including 3D printing has allowed Iran to more effectively reverse engineer parts the F-14 and AIM-54 missile. Most of Iran's F-14's having seen well under a decade of service, some under five years, before a lack of parts placed them in storage, these airframes are essentially brand new and with the supply of new parts can be fielded in considerable numbers. Iran's F-14 fleet has reportedly received over 250 modifications and upgrades, including new radars, cockpit displays, electronic warfare suites and other avionics. When the almost new airframes are properly modernised, likely with Russian or Chinese assistance the result will most likely be the most capable fighter in the Middle East.

Also the Iranian Fakour-90 AAM bears a strong resemblance to the AIM-54 Phoenix.

In the late 1980's Iran allegedly sent the AIM-54 and an entire F-14 fighter to the Soviet Union for study in exchange for assistance in developing such a missile. The Soviets operated the similar R-33 AAM missile with an original range of 120km. This was gradually enhanced to a 300km range and the Soviets/Russians were well placed to aid Iran in developing an indigenous variant of the AIM-54 as relations between the two countries improved and a strong defence partnership developed from the late 1980s.

The Fakour-90 not only matches the capabilities of the AIM-54 but improves on them. Iran puts its range at 300km with Western sources estimating a range of around 220km, compared to the original AIM-54's 180km range. The Fakour-90 also retains a guidance system capable of providing a radar lock independently of the launch aircraft’s own radar. This capability is lacked by modern Western combat aircraft and most Russian ones, which makes Iranian F-14's potentially highly lethal in BVR. Travelling at over Mach 5 and striking with the same degree of precision if not higher than the AIM-54 did, the missile can target enemy fighters well beyond their retaliation range. The Fakour-90 has at least three times the range of American AIM-120B which have a range of 75km, and at least twice the range of the more advanced AIM-120C. The Fakour-90 is also likely to have inherited the Phoenix's hypersonic speed, making it faster and longer ranged than the AIM-120 deployed by Saudi and Israeli F-15s. In the event of a regional war with Saudi Arabia the Iranian F-14's can potentially shoot down Saudi fighters without leaving Iranian airspace, and if the Iranian F-14's cross the Iraqi border they can even target aircraft over Israel.

The tension in the Middle East is now going off on an arc all of its own.

Since Trump pulled US forces from Syria the Turkish invasion of Northern Syria is underway with widespread attacks on the pro-American Kurds. There is also a real danger that ISIS prisoners in jails guarded by the Kurds could be set free, in fact some have already escaped.

Russia has moved its forces into some of the areas evacuated by US forces and the Russian Army is now are acting as a buffer or peacekeeper between Turkish and Syrian forces.

Turkey is member of NATO and is invading another country were American and Russian military forces are based. The Turks even launched an artillery barrage at some US forces still in Syria!

The most worrying aspect of all this is the fact that 50 B61 nuclear bombs stored at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey are now effectively hostages of the whims of the Turkish President. Turkey is also talking about developing its own nuclear forces.

........And Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel are not even directly involved.

Read elsewhere. Haven't had time to verify it, but sounds plausible, even likely.

I don't know if the UN, NATO or anyone else outside of Trump's inner circle knew about this in advance but Trump seems to be back stepping a bit and making some serious threats to destabilise the Turkish economy. If the US knew that Turkey was going to invade Syria in advance would they not have moved the 50 nuclear weapons they have in Turkey elsewhere. Also the Europeans are not acting like they knew about it in advance. France and the UK are threatening sanctions and the British government may send the SAS Regiment into Syria to capture or kill ISIS fighters who escape from the jails.

The entire world has known for years Turkey was going to step over the border into Syria. They've got previous form in doing just that!
This whole messy situation is the result of a lot of political decisions going back decades.

The problem is not that it was done, but how it was done.

The USA had the balance of power before its pullout. The simple fact was the USA could determine just how the Kurds were situated vis a vis Syria.

Instead of engaging with Syria and negotiating a status agreement of the Rojava area the US simply pulled out quickly giving their allies no time to prepare.

No one should be stupid enough to believe that the USA should have stayed in Syria, for one thing the presence of any non-ally of the Syrian government in Syria is illegal by any viewing of international law.
However the fact was the USA *was* there and *did* let the Syrian Kurds take 11,000 casualties - 13% of their total fighting force - fighting ISIS when the Kurds could have otherwise sat that war out.
It's at this point we ask ourselves: "what sort of ally are we?"

I'm more in agreement with ChalkLine: the US could not stay in Syria or back the Kurds there forever, but whipping those advisors out without any notice (even to the DoD or the troops involved) was a particularly shitty thing to do.

As for the Turkish offensive being "long-planned" and "okayed in advance", I think there's a difference between understanding that this is something Turkey has long contemplated, and specifically signing off on something. The bluster about sanctions, with signals of European agreement, would seem to indicate that it wasn't agreed all around, as does the presence of American advisors even after the attack started.

Some may have suspected that Erdogan would do something like this but I don't think anyone knew he was going to do it. Certainly the US troops on the ground in Syria and the brass back in the Pentagon seem to have been as surprised as everyone else. Erdogan is a dictator and he is turning Turkey into a rogue state. Turkey needs to be kicked out of NATO and sanctioned by America and the EU. Turkey does not have vast oil reserves or does it have or make anything much of value, and its economy and military will wither under sanctions.

Totally agree with you there. The "military coup" of a few years ago seemed too convenient to my liking - all it did was cement Erdogan in power. I (and others I've spoken to) strongly believe it was a con job specifically designed to give him and his cronies even more power and eliminate any domestic political opposition.

It could have been as it was a particularly weak coup. It also gave Erdogan the excuse to fire a lot of Turkish military officers and thousands of civil servants who were opposed to him. Also the West has had growing misgivings about Erdogan's motives for sometimes. In July Turkey was kicked off the F-35 stealth fighter programme after buying Russian S-400 SAM systems, as a Russian intelligence platform based close to an F-35 could compromise the technology of the F-35.

Erdogan has built up Turkey's defence industry and they produce a lot of their own weapons, and Erdogan probably thinks he can ride out any threat of sanctions. But Western sanctioning could really hurt the Turkish military. The Turks license produced or buy directly from Western countries. Its army uses the Korean designed Altay tank and German Leopard 2 and a lot of other German and American equipment, while their Air Force combat aircraft are all American.

Financial sanctions will also seriously hurt a weak economy like Turkey. A full US and EU sanction will basically destroy their economy and Erdogan and his allies cannot use or trade in US Dollars or have any transactions with US financial institutions which is devastating. The big British, German, Swiss and Japanese banks also nearly always support a US government financial sanction.

one thing about the YPG and PPK. they are not KRG or KPD or PUK. the last are the Kurds that fought ISIS and help the Yezidi. the YPG and PPK were Russian backed, and like to blow up busses and the like to destabilized a NATO member.