the Iraqi No Fly Zone period

During Operation Desert Storm the Iraqi Air Force was one of the biggest in the Middle East, following that however it was quite a different story.

There was only one coalition aircraft shot down in the entire conflict, an F/A-18 flown by Captain Michael “Scott” Speicher was downed by an Iraqi MiG-25, the (the remains of his body were only found the other day), following the coalition bombing several of Iraq's prime fighter jets were destroyed as several of their air bases were destroyed on the ground while their aircraft rested in their bunkers.



More aircraft than were shot down by the Americans flew to Iran (Iraq's mortal enemy at the time), the Iranians claimed all these aircraft as reparations for the Iran Iraq War and refused to return any of them, that was 137 aircraft whilst the coalition destroyed 42.

After Desert Storm the Iraqis had lost all of their MiG-29's, Mirage F-1's and several other aircraft and bombers, following the war the Iraqi Air Force had a single Tu-22 bomber and several squadrons of MiG-25 Foxbat's they had received from the Soviet Union before the war against Iran.

They were proven in Operation Desert Storm on more than one occasion to be able to outrun missiles such as AIM-120 AMRAAM's fired from F-15's and AIM-54 Phoenix missiles fired from F-14 Tomcats, this proved them a good asset to have during the No-fly-zone period put into force by the United States.

Also during these periods however it would prove to be difficult to keep these aircraft in the air, like the Iranian Air Force following the revolution in 1979 there was an even stricter measure put on the Iraqi Air Force enforced by the United Nations making it virtual impossible for the Iraqis to get spare parts to keep their planes in the air.



There was some dispute over what parts of Iraqi air space rightfully belonged to Iraq, the United States was enforcing the No-fly zones using the Phoenix armed F-14 Tomcat and the AMRAAM armed F-15 Eagle, this resulted in just three Iraqi MiG's being destroyed in several such encounters, usually the MiG-25's because of their impressive speed (3.2 Mach) was able to outrun these missiles and maneuver in such a way as to avoid them.

That being said the Foxbats didn't score any victory against coalition aircraft in this times and the US had a lot of and sea power over Iraq in the 1990's as evident by the hastily arranged Operation Desert Fox which saw a series of attacks against Iraqi military installations to deform Iraq's military.

Afterwords Saddam stepped up in his efforts to down a coalition plane which proved not to be successful and saw coalition aircraft for the next five years attacking Iraqi airfields and shooting down several Iraqi interceptor jets, therefore further weakening the nearly destroyed Iraqi air force.

Five years later in 2003 when the Americans launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to topple Saddam Hussein's regime an order was given by Saddam to bury the dissemble or bury the remainder of their flyable planes, the Iraqi Air Force put up no resistance against the invading coalition forces.



Several examples of the MiG-25's that survived the Gulf War were found in most cases buried, several abandoned broken down MiG-23's were also discovered in very poor condition abandoned at their bases.

Most of these were later sold for scraped or simple destroyed and dumped.

Today none of Saddam's planes bought between 1979 and 1990 remain in service with the Iraqi Air Force today.