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In article .com,
wrote:

Cooper, Bishop and Devlin have provided credible artiles on the status
of the IRIAF coupled with an warning that those who ignore the
capabilities will be doomed to failure against the Iranians.

That is a useful warning. They delve into things like the training and the
political control of the pilots. Iran had a very well-trained air force in
the 1970s, but a lot of the pilots were imprisoned or controlled by the new
regime. As this article notes, the survivors from those days are now all
reaching retirement.


The article implies that there are 44 operational Tomcats instead of 28
operational and 29 inoperational as cited by US intelligence sources.
But it was Cooper and Bishop in their 2003 book on the Iraq/Iran war
that stated the original assertion of 28/29 as of F-14's.

I saw a post by Cooper last year where he said that he has better
information than he did for that book.

My only concern is that we don't get a good sense of how reliable their
information is, or how careful they are checking it.


life. That is because they are not able to buy US made aircraft and
foreign aircraft with US made parts incorporated in them. That is why

There must be a huge aftermarket inventory on Phantom parts. But what is
interesting in this article is that they actually provide a motive for
keeping the American aircraft--they don't like the terms that the Russians
have offered.


For the US to attack Iranian military bases with IRIAF fighters sitting
on the tarmac, they would have to expend 300 plus cruise missiles and
then wait another 18 months for new build stocks of cruise missiles to
come from the manufacturer to replenish their supplies. There is no

The US Tomahawk inventory is well over 2000 missiles, so expending 300 is
not crippling.


To achieve air superority would require that we accept the loss of a
few aircraft, including fighter planes and a few prized bombers of B-1
and B-2 vintage. Since we have only 21 B-2's, we cannot lose afford to
lose even one or two as that would add immensely to our long term
attrition rate for that aircraft and we would not have sufficient
numbers of B-2's for a future conflict.

I don't think that either assertion is true. There's no reason to believe
that the B-2 would be vulnerable. And we have already operated them for
over a decade without a single loss.

So, the ball is in the President's court and we will see what he will
do. I believe that an agreable deal can be made between both countries
on the nuclear matter in exchange for the United States to promise an
non-aggression pact against Iran and for Iran will do the same to the
United States.

Iran doesn't want a bomb to protect them from the US. They want a bomb to
make them a major power, and to use on Israel.


Onc more curious tidbit. Did the CIA get the 22 Mig-31's from the
Russians under their dummy arms buying corporation?

The article implies that they did not, that the CIA was primarily interested
in preventing them from going to Iran, but when the Iranians lost interest,
so did the CIA.



D