Pakistani Air Force F-16 pilots

In relation to what Arctus said, I remember reading somewhere a statement made by a Soviet MiG-29 instructor detached to Iraq in the late 80's. About the Iraqi pilots selected for MiG-29 he said "they were like pigs looking at a Rolex watch - they sure liked it but didn't knew what it was good for or what to do with it."
Also, in the former USSR training, exercises, live fireings were done separately for Eastern Europe pilots, and in another place for arabs/africans.

Hi all,

Are there Pakistani advisors training Saudi pilots?

I read an article about the Saudi Air Force in which it called "a tiger made of paper" - an air force with impressive equipment but lacks quality men power. (As far that I know, there is good relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia).

Salute!

If you are not politically-incorrect, do not read the rest of this post.
*****************

In the very early years of the Viper, we trained all the EPG folks, plus the IAF, Pakistani and Egyptian folks. Also handled USAF National Guard and Reserve units.

I flew with Pakistani folks during my pilot training back in 1965-65. 16-17 years or so later, I flew with accomplished Pakistani fighter pilots that formed the core of their Viper force.

The original cast at Hill will all tell you (ALL) that the Pakistani folks were more aggressive than the IAF folks we had. Same-oh versus the Egyptian folks.

Jan Bei's question is a great one!

It may not be true today, but except for one of the original Pakistani Viper cadre, all had been instructors all over the mideast. They kept reminding us that they were Muslims, but not Arabs. My own student had taught various Arab folks and had great war stories. For example, when the Emir's grandson screwed up and claimed it was Allah's will, he threw the bullshit flag and told the yute, "OK, then we'll let the plane crash!".

I can't believe that the Pakistani spirit and elan and professionalism has deterioated all that much. But having no current intell from anyone, I can't make an unequivocal statement.

All I know is that I would lead or follow any of the ones we had at Hill in that cadre.

If anyone else here has ever flown with a Pakistani Viper pilot in an actual Viper, please chime in or continue to speculate.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

This is a senseless argument.

What is important is the question, is PAF & its pilots competent? Then the argument is Yes! PAF & its pilots are competent. That is whats important. PAF can hold its own very well.

Pakistan armed forces have one weakness, their Army, Navy & Air force are not coordinated. Last war they had, the three branches had no idea what the other branch in doing. They were very little coordination. PAF needs to study the concept behind Isreali IDF on how they operate as one.

Some Pakistanis argue about the competance of their pilots just under the influence of patriotism. You have to be realistic while you compare between entities.

Look carefully what the Indian Air Force is doing to train their pilots as compared to Pakistan Air Force. It seems that Indians have got the idea of use and significance of aerial assault and warfare and they have learned good lessons from it.

In past few years, there is a massive surge in cooperation between Indian and foreign airforces, particularly those using F-16, the only useful thing Pakistanis have to put against Indians.

See yourself, Singapore, US being the most prominant ones and another interesting thing is that Indian are fielding their inferior fighters to cope against the superior F-16 and F-15, in most of the exercises it was their MiG21, 23 and 27s fighting against and training with F-16s. They have also been fielding Su 30 and Mig29s with Mirages against F-16 but the biggest beneficiries will be the squadrons using inferior MiGs. Indians know well and better then ever bofore now that how an F-16 behaves in air and how it has to be tackled with.

They are honing the skills of their MiG pilots against the Pakistani F-16 fighters. This dissimilar combat training will pay for them in their next war with Pakistan. They will be better trained, better equipped, better idea of how to tackle an F-16 in air.

As compared to this effort what Pakistanis are doing. It seems they are sitting idle. Except for the Anatolian Eagle with just 14 pilots sent there, no one seems to be willing to cooperate with them. There might be political reasons for it but its a fact that their pilot training has nothing as compared to Indians these days. Indians are far more ahead of them.

Actually Pakistanis are in a fix these days, surrounded by enemies on its all four fronts, with India and Iran with a defence agreement to cooperate with each other, in case one is attacked by some other country, with India and Afghanistan on the other front against them and their long term friendship with Russia, they will be wrecking havoc over Pakistan with the addition of US fighters in their inventory as US is willing to equip them with good fighters in good numbers. It is quite evident that its Pakistan's number after Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight against terror and its quite visible from the preparations against it on its all fronts.

People also argue about the presence of Pakistanis in Arab countries and their training establishments. Forget about it as gone are the days when it was so, the economics and trade interests have changed it all. When Qatar Air Force was about to sell their Mirage2000, it was India not Pakistan who were poised to be the benificiary.

In the current scenario, Indians are as much more capable pilots as compared to Pakistanis. And its the training they are getting which is makingthis difference. It has been observed even before their these training events that Indians were more capable with inferior machines because of their good planning and execution styles.

Gums wrote:Salute!

If you are not politically-incorrect, do not read the rest of this post.
*****************

In the very early years of the Viper, we trained all the EPG folks, plus the IAF, Pakistani and Egyptian folks. Also handled USAF National Guard and Reserve units.

I flew with Pakistani folks during my pilot training back in 1965-65. 16-17 years or so later, I flew with accomplished Pakistani fighter pilots that formed the core of their Viper force.

The original cast at Hill will all tell you (ALL) that the Pakistani folks were more aggressive than the IAF folks we had. Same-oh versus the Egyptian folks.

Jan Bei's question is a great one!

It may not be true today, but except for one of the original Pakistani Viper cadre, all had been instructors all over the mideast. They kept reminding us that they were Muslims, but not Arabs. My own student had taught various Arab folks and had great war stories. For example, when the Emir's grandson screwed up and claimed it was Allah's will, he threw the bullshit flag and told the yute, "OK, then we'll let the plane crash!".

I can't believe that the Pakistani spirit and elan and professionalism has deterioated all that much. But having no current intell from anyone, I can't make an unequivocal statement.

All I know is that I would lead or follow any of the ones we had at Hill in that cadre.

If anyone else here has ever flown with a Pakistani Viper pilot in an actual Viper, please chime in or continue to speculate.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

when you write IAF, is that Israeli air force or Indian air force?

fezt wrote:when you write IAF, is that Israeli air force or Indian air force?

He meant Israeli AF (or more specifically IDFAF).

Shimud wrote:Some Pakistanis argue about the competance of their pilots just under the influence of patriotism. You have to be realistic while you compare between entities.

Look carefully what the Indian Air Force is doing to train their pilots as compared to Pakistan Air Force. It seems that Indians have got the idea of use and significance of aerial assault and warfare and they have learned good lessons from it.

In past few years, there is a massive surge in cooperation between Indian and foreign airforces, particularly those using F-16, the only useful thing Pakistanis have to put against Indians.

See yourself, Singapore, US being the most prominant ones and another interesting thing is that Indian are fielding their inferior fighters to cope against the superior F-16 and F-15, in most of the exercises it was their MiG21, 23 and 27s fighting against and training with F-16s. They have also been fielding Su 30 and Mig29s with Mirages against F-16 but the biggest beneficiries will be the squadrons using inferior MiGs. Indians know well and better then ever bofore now that how an F-16 behaves in air and how it has to be tackled with.

They are honing the skills of their MiG pilots against the Pakistani F-16 fighters. This dissimilar combat training will pay for them in their next war with Pakistan. They will be better trained, better equipped, better idea of how to tackle an F-16 in air.

As compared to this effort what Pakistanis are doing. It seems they are sitting idle. Except for the Anatolian Eagle with just 14 pilots sent there, no one seems to be willing to cooperate with them. There might be political reasons for it but its a fact that their pilot training has nothing as compared to Indians these days. Indians are far more ahead of them.

When you talk about inferior platforms going up against the F-16s that were fielded by the RSAF & the USAF, were the F-16s bested by your older platforms in any way? I do not recall that happening at all. Pitching older aircraft against F-16s is not that big of a deal esp. when we have been doing this all along (our Mirage IIIs and F-6s went up against USAF F-15s in the 70s and later on in the 80's and 90's against USN aircraft). I am sure they too learned a thing or two

Also keep in mind that with JHCMS and AIM-120 (both capabilities which PAF will have in the near future), none of the older Indian AF Migs stand as big a threat against the F-16s (even after a $800 million order to upgrade the Mig-29s in service, the F-16 would be more than a match for these aircraft). Moose69 was on the forum here when his Sqn went to India and his posts were very revealing (and thus removed from the boards)..but I do not recall him saying that his F-16s were just toyed with by the IAF line up. He (very professionally) pointed out the strengths of the Viper against each of the platforms operated by the IAF and to be very honest, F-16 did not look too shabby at all.

The fact that PAF has already purchased Erieye and is actually adding more P3 AEW platforms for the PN, a GCI based AF is not what IAF will be facing in the near future. Joint. Exs are all fine and dandy but exercising with RSAF is different than facing PAF or another AF since they all have different doctrines, tactics etc.

As far as exercising with other countries flying the Viper and getting to know the type, well the same can be said of the PAF which has been regularly flying pretty much the entire IAF lineup (except the MKI) having evaluated (for induction), operated (in secondment roles) or maintained (also in secondment roles) them. However more importantly than flying the type to understand its performance envelope is to understand how your adversary will employ the aircraft...this remains an unknown for the IAF. Additionally, PAF has not been totally stagnant, as you mentioned, at least one Sqn of the PAF has been going to Turkey for the Anatolean Eagle series of exercises regularly which exposes the force to multinational exercises of larger scale than the ones hosted by the IAF when it exercises with RSAF and USAF.

IAF will always be bigger than PAF and will have greater capabilities, that is a fact and there is no denying that, however the other side of the fact is that PAF will also upgrade and continue to be a credible deterrence against the IAF in the future.

Lastly, I am not claiming here that PAF is the best...its not, however given the region where it operates and its current modernization plans, it will have a very decent capability vis-a-vis its adversarial AF.

Actually Pakistanis are in a fix these days, surrounded by enemies on its all four fronts, with India and Iran with a defence agreement to cooperate with each other, in case one is attacked by some other country, with India and Afghanistan on the other front against them and their long term friendship with Russia, they will be wrecking havoc over Pakistan with the addition of US fighters in their inventory as US is willing to equip them with good fighters in good numbers. It is quite evident that its Pakistan's number after Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight against terror and its quite visible from the preparations against it on its all fronts.

People also argue about the presence of Pakistanis in Arab countries and their training establishments. Forget about it as gone are the days when it was so, the economics and trade interests have changed it all. When Qatar Air Force was about to sell their Mirage2000, it was India not Pakistan who were poised to be the benificiary.

In the current scenario, Indians are as much more capable pilots as compared to Pakistanis. And its the training they are getting which is makingthis difference. It has been observed even before their these training events that Indians were more capable with inferior machines because of their good planning and execution styles.

This has no bearing on the discussion on hand....may be better suited for a geo-political thread, which this one is not.

Gums wrote:Salute!

If you are not politically-incorrect, do not read the rest of this post.
*****************

In the very early years of the Viper, we trained all the EPG folks, plus the IAF, Pakistani and Egyptian folks. Also handled USAF National Guard and Reserve units.

I flew with Pakistani folks during my pilot training back in 1965-65. 16-17 years or so later, I flew with accomplished Pakistani fighter pilots that formed the core of their Viper force.

The original cast at Hill will all tell you (ALL) that the Pakistani folks were more aggressive than the IAF folks we had. Same-oh versus the Egyptian folks.

Jan Bei's question is a great one!

It may not be true today, but except for one of the original Pakistani Viper cadre, all had been instructors all over the mideast. They kept reminding us that they were Muslims, but not Arabs. My own student had taught various Arab folks and had great war stories. For example, when the Emir's grandson screwed up and claimed it was Allah's will, he threw the bullshit flag and told the yute, "OK, then we'll let the plane crash!".

I can't believe that the Pakistani spirit and elan and professionalism has deterioated all that much. But having no current intell from anyone, I can't make an unequivocal statement.

All I know is that I would lead or follow any of the ones we had at Hill in that cadre.

If anyone else here has ever flown with a Pakistani Viper pilot in an actual Viper, please chime in or continue to speculate.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

OK, got it.

I'm not going into the Pak air force Vs others etc, it may be very true that they have the best air force in the world, its just funny that they never show gun camera of all the achievements....wonder why?

I don't really see how are good friend Gums is in a position to score the Israeli cadre of pilots learning to fly the F-16, how aggresive they are? How aggresive should they be? Do you think you know better then those guys how aggresive a pilot should be in a fight....hehe

That group had more migs under the belt then he can dream of, and that's even before they started flying the viper.. they doubled that and took down the Iraqi reactor after returning from the US..(many of the guys in that raid were from the group training in the US).

Sometimes when US military meet Israelis (and i can only guess it is also true with others..) especially when they are the ones "teaching" a new system, due to the Israelis bad English and to them being the "students" our US friends get a false feeling of superiority, but in this case, with all due respect to gums, they were the ones fit to give him scores, not him giving them scores.. That's just funny... who are you to give flying scores to veteran flying Aces who have 3 times the jet combat experience and the achievements you have...?

THAT'S HISTORY AND IM STICKIN' TO IT

Sorry, I don't buy your scoring...

Salute!

Let's review the bidding........

About half of the Viper cadre at Hill had two or three combat tours in 'nam. One of my students had a Mig kill. One of my IAF students had one or more mig kills and I have a neat photo from his camera here in the war room.

One of my IAF students was on the Iraqi nuke raid, then died on the Columbia.

I never saw a Mig over 'nam. The Double Ugly folks did their job and we simply blew up stuff dodged SAM's and AAA and scooted home.

I have many more combat hours than the IAF folks from Yom Kippur or the 67 blitz. Take that to the bank. I flew with them and we talked.

The EPG folks were indistinguishable from the USAF for the most part, and in some arenas were better than we were, particularly in radar intercepts.

The IAF folks and the Pakistani folks were so close, that except for the uniforms, you couldn't tell who you were hasslin' with.

We should all bear in mind that only the best folks were attending the upgrade courses at Hill back in the early 80's. So we did not get a chance to see the run-of-the-mill pilots from the EPG, IAF or Pakistan. We did get a chance to see the average folks from the USAF Reserve and Guard.

My checkout group was comprised of two Danes, three Norwegians and five USAF troops (3 Double Ugly guys and two SLUF drivers). We studied hard, planned and flew together and you couldn't tell where anyone came from.

************

I once again beg all to leave politics out of these forums. Or religion. Or ethnic origin.

The people here that have flown in real jets and in real combat share a bond that most of you shall never understand. And that includes some of us who were "enemies".

We all did our duty, and when all was said and done, we went home and harbored no personal animosity.

that's all I gonna say....

Gums

Well, fezt, I give you credit- the equivilant of arguing physics with a nuclear science professor takes balls. Cheers

VPRGUY wrote:Well, fezt, I give you credit- the equivilant of arguing physics with a nuclear science professor takes balls. Cheers

That's funny.. isn't this f-16.net? As I have about 1,000 hours more then our friend gums on the viper, I'm not sure who is the professor and who the student...

Back to our issue,

Everybody here knows Gums as a good guy, and as a brave pilot who flew many missions in Vietnam.

But with all due respect.. his combat experience is on the A-37 and A-7, and like he said, they were mostly A2G hogs..

The 12 Israelis who trained in the US have together more then 30 MiGs !!!, so with all respect to Gums, I don't really c why anyone would think a A2G guy, brave as he may be, is in a position to judge some of the top jet aces in the world, sorry, I don't buy it.