Posted on 04/24/2018 9:23:18 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Following a recent strike its F-16IQ Viper multi-role jets flew against ISIS terrorists in neighboring Syria, the Iraqi Air Force has released a detailed infographic showing how many combat and combat support missions each of its aircraft types have flown over the past nearly four years. Of particular note is that the country’s An-32 cargo planes have conducted more airstrikes than either Iraq’s F-16s or its Aero L-159 Advanced Light Combat Aircraft, or ALCA, light attack jets.
The Iraqi Air Force released the infographic, with its text unfortunately only in Arabic, on its official social media accounts on April 23, 2018. But the statistics, which cover the period from June 10, 2014 to December 31, 2017, clearly show that the An-32s flew 990 strike missions during that time, almost twice that of the Iraqi F-16 fleet’s 514 sorties and nearly a sixth of the total missions that the aircraft conducted altogether. Neither figure is close to the more than 3,500 strikes that the country’s Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack aircraft flew in that same period.
It’s also worth noting that the F-16IQs only began flying combat missions in 2015 and it’s unclear how long the Iraqis have employed their An-32s in the bomber role, if they’re still operating the aircraft in this way, and how many of the six total aircraft had or still have the ability to carry out strikes. Official Iraqi Air Force social media accounts have posted pictures of what appear to be An-32s with side-mounted bomb racks as recently as earlier this month, but we don't know if those images are necessarily new or not.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedrive.com ...
Are you kidding me? That thing is a heat seeking missile magnet.
Less than you might think. Lots of older Eastern Bloc IR guided missiles have problems locking on to anything that doesn’t have the big thermal plume of a jet engine. They track exhaust heat and aren’t sensitive enough to ‘see’ the friction-warmed skin of an aircraft. That’s generally what these aircraft would be up against, so it’s not so high a threat.
Remember, our B-52s sweeping in at treetop height make dandy missile targets too. So do our AC-130 converted transport gunships. But they rarely get shot down by those missiles in that part of the world. This is another take on a concept we’ve used with great success - the converted transport gunship.
Third world, baby...!
yeah....!!
The Russians seem to like dual-role cargo plane concepts. That greenhouse ain't for growing flowers. (yeah, that's me:-)
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