Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
It sounds like you know much more about it than I do, so I'll refer to you on expertise over air superiority. That being said, I don't think the Saudis are looking for a close victory. With the massive amount of F-15s coming in - 84 F15s plus upgrade to the existing 70 - they'll be able to have total air superiority.
During middle eastern wars, air superiority has been shown to be the deciding, if not only factor. There's no guerilla warfare in the dessert, so if you can use your bombers at will, it doesn't matter how big or well armed the other sides ground force is.
Noone has confirmed anything yet, but Russia and China may be selling Iran a mix of Su-30, J-10s, an JF-17. Even rumours of these sales are going to be enough for the Saudis to demand an upgrade of their own arsenals.
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It depends on the war that you want to fight. But the Su-30 is in a lot of ways the superior aircraft, The J-10 from my understanding compares favorably to the f-16, jf-17 is from what I've seen slightly inferior to the F-16.
I would probably take the F-15 right now over the J-10, jf-17 and call it fairly close between the 15 and the SU-30.
Where Saudi Arabia would have the advantage is in pilot training and experience. Most of the pilots that were involved in the Gulf Wars went on to training slots and passed actual war experience to the new pilots coming in.
They were also trained by veteran American pilots.
The Iranian Airforce has a bad reputation in terms of pilot skills and in terms of maintenance and their ability to get spare parts in to keep their inventory in the air.
To be honest the Iranian Airforce is kind of the poor brother in the Iranian Inventory, they still believe that their army and republican guards will save the day, they also know deep down that their Navy will die in a matter of days if they try to close the Straits down.
The F-15E is one of the best air to ground package delivery systems in the world despite its age, it can carry massive loads in extremely low and fast and hit with pin point accuracy especially with the avionices in the new generation.
The worry isn't sweeping aside the Iranian Airforce, the worry is handling the Iranian's very advanced Russian/Chinese designed anti-air system, if they struggle to take that apart then air superiority means very little for the short term.