Iraqi F-16 down

Seems an Iraqi F-16 on a training mission has gone down in Arizona. Hope they find the pilot alive…

At the risk of going slightly current events - I think Tyler Rogoway penned an excellent article about the whole Iraq F-16 deal that is worth reading: HERE The whole military/political bedfellows thing has gotten ridiculous - to the point where decisions that should be made in the best interest of our security and that of our international partners is quite often held hostage to jobs deals, contracts, and money (and lobbying). I completely agree with Tyler’s assertion - the Iraqi’s should have bought (err…I mean, been sold…er…I mean been given) straightforward attack aircraft like the Tucano or AT-6s or something similar. A simple aircraft (put the thing on the thing and drop the bomb) that would have allowed them to put airpower over the enemy years ago. The irony is - the lack of the right equipment (as lobbied for by defense) means that the situation has blown up in Iraq (it might have anyway though), which means the defense contractors get to sell even more stuff to the U.S. and it’s partners to push back the enemy (that made gains because of the flawed initial policy). It is a win-win-win situation if you sell weapons for a living.

Amazing.

BeachAV8R

1 Like

Always a tragedy when a pilot loses their life. Even more tragic that it was a highly ranked officer in a state-of-art warfighter. Looking forward to learning what went wrong in this incident.

In relation to the FMS of F-16s to Iraq, history has repeatedly shown the equipment will not be maintained to standards that allow long term safe operation. Secondly, the security is always in question. Look when the Iraqis cut and ran from ISIS, abandoning their gear for the ISIS to pick up.

I agree that they should have been steered to purchase low tech COIN platforms that can be maintained easily.