____ The Iraqi Air Force is poorly equipped, consisting of several Cessna planes carrying American-supplied Hellfire missiles, some American- and Russian-supplied helicopters, and Russian-made Su-25 aircraft.
Garrett Khoury, the director of research at The Eastern Project, explained that the Iraqi Air Force "recently acquired around a dozen SU-25 ground attack aircraft from Russia (with more possibly coming from Belarus) ...which give them the ability to conduct serious ground-support operations.
" are Russian jets bearing Iraqi insignia, but possibly piloted by Russians," Khoury continued. "Iraq did use the SU-25 during the Saddam Hussein era, and there are probably former Iraqi pilots who flew them, but it has been at best 12 years since any Iraqi pilot got any significant flying time with the plane."
So who bombed ISIS on Thursday night?
The most probable answer is Iraqi Su-25s, manned by Russian or Iranians—or maybe Iraqis . . .
. . . Turkish F-16s were reportedly patrolling the skies over the area near Sinjar in northern Iraq, where about 50,000 Yezidis are starving after fleeing ISIS militants.
"Iran has used its own Air Force to attack ISIS since the beginning of the group's offensive, but mostly to keep them away from the Iranian border," Khoury said. "Syria has likewise conducted air strikes on ISIS targets on the Iraqi side of their shared border . . ."
read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/08/08/who_else_besides_americans_are_flying_fighter_jets_in_iraq.html
Iraq's leader, Nouri al-Maliki, has welcomed Syrian jets bombing near a border post lost by his forces to insurgents, in a rare strike against the jihadist group Isis that also occupies much of northern Syria.
Maliki acknowledged that a series of attacks on Tuesday targeting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) near the town of al-Qaim, on the Iraqi-Syrian border, were carried out by the Syrian air force.
Joshua Earnest, White House spokesman, said earlier that the US had "no reason to dispute" reports that Syria had attacked within Iraqi territory but Maliki told the BBC that the air force had stuck to its side of the border. Maliki said the Syrian air strike on the Sunni militants left both countries "winners" but claimed his administration had no prior warning of the raids.
"There was no coordination involved, but we welcome this action. We welcome any Syrian strike against Isis because this group targets both Iraq and Syria ... But we didn't make any request from Syria. They carry out their strikes and we carry out ours. The final winners are our two countries," he said in an interview with BBC Arabic.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/nouri-maliki-admits-syria-air-raids-isis-iraq
Syrian aircraft bomb Sunni militant targets inside Iraq
= new reply since forum marked as read
