Soviet Support For Iraq During The Iran–Iraq War - Air Warfare

Air Warfare

At the start of the war, the Iranian air arm had superior equipment to what was largely Soviet equipment in Iraqi hands. The Iraqis used the Soviet air defense model, which gave pilots relatively little initiative.

The Iraqis and Soviets had different priorities for waging air warfare, shown by how each assigned their best pilots to different aircraft types. This conflicted with Saddam Hussein's strict control of the Iraqi military, but over the course of the war some flexibility did emerge. The Iraqis considered ground attack to be the most important and put their best pilots into their French Mirage F-1s rather than Soviet air-superiority fighters and interceptors such as the MiG-25 and MiG-29.