OT Things are getting hairy in the Middle East

[RN7]

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.

[Olefin]

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.

[Olefin]

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.

[Louied]

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

[StainlessSteelCynic]

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.

[RN7]

Originally Posted by Louied

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

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.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Olefin

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)

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.

Originally Posted by Olefin

And using mercenaries and foreigners is never a great idea - while it worked great for the SS...

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