Mirage F1 كتب:الاخ العزيز احمد طه الرجاء الرجاء دعم اقوالك و لو بشئ بسيط و تكون بذلك حققت شيئين
1- تغيير الصورة التي رسمها الغرب عن القوة الجوية العراقية في حرب1991 كونها قوة هزيلة كان مصيرها الاندحار
2-تغيير صورة الميك29 التي و صفت بناءاً على فعاليتها في حرب1991 بأنها غير فعالة و مقاتلة فاشلة
اكرر طلب الاخ توبوليف العراق و لكن رجاءاً بدون ذكر اسماء خوفاً على طيارينا من الظروف الحالية
I'm not sure if I understand your answer correctly, and have no doubts that there are plenty of people who say, "Tom Cooper said this, and said that...", but I would recommend the reading of books like "Iraqi Fighters" to find out what did I say and what not (after all, some people here make extensive use of scans from that book, for example in the Su-20/22 thread ;) ).
In summary, I never said anything else but something like this:
- Iraq ordered a total of 135 MiG-29s from the USSR, in period 1985-1988.
- 34 or 35 of these were delivered, before Iraq stopped their further purchases and opted for Su-27 instead, in 1989 (up to 70 additional aircraft ordered by Iraq were manufactured but never delivered nor paid; during the 1990s, the Russians sold them to Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sudan, Yemen etc.).
- MiG-29 was designed as an interceptor and its main business was "air-to-air", not "air-to-ground". Surely, it could be armed with simple bombs (FAB-250M62, for example) and unguided rockets (like S-24B), but its primary armament as delivered to Iraq were R-27R/T and R-60MK air-to-air missiles.
- No.6 Squadron was established and became operational already in early 1988; its fighters flew combat sorties during the final stages of the war with Iran. For example, in April 1988, two MiG-29s attempted to intercept an IRIAF F-4E that attacked targets in the Baghdad area (one MiG-29 aborted on take-off, the other failed to intercept due to the use of heavy ECM by the Iranian fighter)
- No.39 Squadron became operational just shortly before the "Kuwait business", in summer 1990.
- During the 1991 War, USAF F-15-pilots claimed up to 8 IrAF MiG-29s as shot down; the IrAF admitted a loss of three MiG-29s in air combats and seven on the ground, in exchange for causing damage on one B-52G and one F-111F, and shooting down one RAF Tornado (the RAF denies this claim).
Overall, the effectiveness of the MiG-29 (more specifically: its 9.12B export variant) in 1991 was heavily impacted because the aircraft was compromised to the USA already by a Soviet spy "Donald", who sold most of crucially important secrets not only of this type, but also the MiG-31 and most of associated weapons, to the CIA ("Donald" - his true name was Adolf Tolkachev - used to work for the design bureau that later became Vympel; he was caught by the KGB and hung, in 1986). Also, its weapons system was never completely developed and thus suffered heavily from the ECM: it tended to "freeze" when jammed (in essence, this was similar to the "tendency" of MiG-23ML's weapns system to suffer malfunction when the radar was locked-on on a target; if you ask people who know, many Iraqi pilots with experience on that type can tell you lengthy stories about their experience on that type).