With an eye on Iran, the Middle East’s air forces are expanding and broadening the capabilities of their fighter fleets.
Tony Osborne
The first Eurofighter Typhoons ordered by Kuwait made their initial flights from Leonardo’s facility at Turin in early October. Credit: Alessandro Maggia
At airfields up and down the Persian Gulf, earthmoving equipment is transforming once pristine desert sands into ramps, taxiways and hangars.
This modern new infrastructure, most notably at bases in Kuwait and Qatar, is indicative of the imminent arrival of new fighter fleets.
Across the Middle East and North Africa, air forces are at different stages of modernization, but many have already made key decisions about their combat aircraft programs—and many have expanded their fleets.
Part of this growth is driven by regional threats, most notably from Iran, a nation that many of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—see as their primary regional adversary.
While Iran’s air force fleets are outmatched by the advanced capabilities of GCC air forces, the countries must also consider how Iran will modernize as it potentially looks toward China or Russian for new fighters.
Furthermore, several of the GCC countries have become “independent regional actors in their own right,” says Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “This is something that would have been unforeseen 10-15 years ago,” he says, noting it would have been rare to see aircraft from Middle East nations participating in international exercises beyond their home borders, for example. In the past year, Qatar has deployed its new Dassault Rafales to Turkey, Saudi Arabia sent Panavia Tornados to Pakistan, and the UAE flew F-16s to Greece.
The most significant of these transformations is arguably that of Qatar. Its air force, once the minnow of the region with a frontline fleet of just 12 Dassault Mirage 2000s, is growing eightfold with fighter purchases from France, the U.S. and the UK.
Doha has already taken delivery of most of the 36 Dassault Rafales on order, which will be based at the newly constructed Tamim air base on the western coast of the Qatari peninsula. The F3R-standard aircraft differ from their French counterparts in using the Sniper targeting pod rather than the Thales Damocles or Talios systems. However, they will be able to use the MBDA Mica and Meteor air-to-air weapons and the Scalp/Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles that form the weapons package for the fleet.
Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem air base is one of several in the Middle East that has had a major makeover in readiness for new fighters, with a new runway, ramp, hangars and taxiways built in the southwest corner of the base, ready to host the country’s new Eurofighter Typhoon fleet. Credit: Google Earth
Following closely behind the Rafales will be a fleet of 36 Boeing F-15QA Eagles, locally named Ababil. A version of the Advanced Eagle developed for Saudi Arabia, the F-15QA features the wide-area-display cockpit and the Raytheon APG-82(V)1 active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. Boeing has already built most of the F-15QAs, and training of Qatari crews is taking place at MidAmerica Airport near St. Louis. The first delivery flight took place in early November.
Just as a new base was built for the Rafales, the Eagles will be housed in new facilities being built at Al-Udeid Air Base, an airfield shared with the U.S. military.
The third element of Qatar’s fighter recapitalization is the purchase of 24 Eurofighter Typhoons equipped with the AESA Mk. 0 European Common Radar System. Qatar will be the second customer for AESA-equipped Eurofighters after Kuwait. BAE Systems is building the aircraft, and a rollout is expected in the coming weeks.
As part of the buy, the Qatar Emiri Air Force has formed two joint squadrons with the UK Royal Air Force (RAF). The first is training Eurofighter pilots at RAF Coningsby, England. The second is conducting advanced jet training on a fleet of BAE Systems Hawks also purchased by Qatar, to be based in the UK at RAF Leeming, England. The joint RAF/Qatari unit is expected to deploy to Qatar during 2022 to fly combat air patrols over the FIFA World Cup.
“Qatar’s rapid growth has not only been about generating a credible force but also forging defense relationships in the West,” says Barrie, noting that the deals were orchestrated as the country faced a Saudi--led embargo severing trade, diplomatic and economic ties with several of Qatar’s nearest neighbors (AW&ST Oct. 2-15, 2017, p. 37).
Earthmoving equipment has also been active in Kuwait, where an extension to the Ali Al Salem air base has risen out of the sand to support the emirate’s fleet of 28 Eurofighter Typhoons, the first of which made its initial flight from Turin, Italy, in October. Kuwait’s Eurofighters will be the first to be delivered with the AESA radar and the only ones equipped to drop dumb bombs. The Eurofighters purchase is part of a new two-fleet fighter force that will replace the country’s legacy-model McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C/D Hornets.
More than half of the 36 Dassault Rafales destined for Qatar have now arrived, part of Qatar’s planned three-type fighter fleet. Credit: Anthony Pecchi/Dassault Aviation
The other fleet will consist of Boeing F/A-18E/F Block III Super Hornets; Kuwait is only the second export customer for the type, after Australia. Boeing has built all 22 single-seat and six twin-seat aircraft and delivered them to the U.S. Navy, which will hand them over through the Foreign Military Sales process. Kuwait’s Block III aircraft feature an upgraded Raytheon AN/APG-79 AESA radar, Elbit Systems large-area display and a 9,000-hr. airframe. The Super Hornets will be housed at Ahmed Al Jaber air base in a new complex designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In Saudi Arabia, deliveries of the kingdom’s new F-15SA fleet were completed last December, and the fleet has seen action over Yemen. But conversion of the F-15S fleet—a downgraded version of the F-15E Strike Eagle purchased by Riyadh in the 1990s—to F-15SR standard is planned to continue through the mid-2020s. The SR upgrade will bring the S fleet to SA standard, kitting them out with the Raytheon APG-63V3 AESA radar, an advanced digital electronic warfare and radar warning suite and the Tiger Eyes infrared search-and-track system.
With the F-15SAs and SRs supplementing the Royal Saudi Air Force’s F-15C/Ds, the nation now has three frontline fleets of combat aircraft, along with the Eurofighter Typhoon and Panavia Tornado. The air service is expected to phase out the Tornado toward the end of this decade, potentially replacing it with another batch of 48 Eurofighters. The groundwork for that was laid in March 2018 through a memorandum of intent with the UK. Even if that remains the plan, a formalized order may still be some way off. And it is likely Saudi Arabia will want to carry out final assembly in-country, as was recently done with Hawk jet trainers, aligning with its 2030 Vision to be more self-sustaining (AW&ST May 6-19, 2019, p. 22).
Neighboring Bahrain, meanwhile, is on course to become the lead customer of the new-build Block 70 F-16. Production of the aircraft began at the end of 2019 at Lockheed Martin’s Greenville, South Carolina, site. The nation has also requested an upgrade of its Block 40 F-16C/Ds to the F-16V Block 70 standard. The Royal Bahraini Air Force has previously told Aviation Week that the first F-16 Block 70s will be delivered in mid-2022 and become operational in 2023-24 (AW&ST Nov. 26-Dec. 9, pp. 32).
Saudi Arabia appears to be moving toward a two-type fleet of Boeing F-15s and Eurofighter Typhoons, with the Panavia Tornado likely to be phased out by the 2030s in favor of more Eurofighters, potentially assembled in-country. Credit: Tony Osborne/AW&ST
The F-35 may be at the heart of UAE plans for fighter fleet modernization, a purchase made possible through the normalization of Abu Dhabi’s diplomatic relations with Israel, but it is unclear whether the proposed fleet of 50 F-35As will replace one of the two fighter types in the UAE’s arsenal, the Block 60 F-16E/F or the Dassault Mirage 2000, or if it will opt to maintain a three-type force.
Both the F-16 and Mirage 2000 have been heavily committed to regional air campaigns, but the Mirage 2000s appear to have enjoyed wider utility. This has been the case particularly for the UAE’s operations over Libya, where they have reportedly flown in-country for Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, as well as from Egypt.
The Mirages have also operated from a base at Assab in Eritrea in support of the Yemen campaign. Use of the Mirages for such operations may suggest limitations were placed on use of the F-16s by the U.S. The UAE will still want a fighter with which it will have freedom of action as well as access to standoff weapons such as the MBDA Black Shaheen variant of the Scalp cruise missile, which may prompt it to maintain the Mirage fleet or replace it with another non-U.S. fighter in the future.
The UAE contracted for upgrades to the Mirage fleet in 2019, and upgrades of the F-16E/Fs are also underway.
Meanwhile, modernization and rationalization of Egypt’s vast and varied fighter fleet is ongoing, with Cairo moving toward a 4-4.5-generation fighters from France, Russia and the U.S. The Egyptian Air Force has retired its McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms, Mikoyan MiG-21s, Chengdu F-7s and Mirage 50s, but the country still maintains a frontline combat aircraft fleet of no less than four different types, including Dassault Rafales and Mirage 2000s, Block 15-50 F-16s and the RAC MiG-29M.
Egypt will more than double the size of its Rafale fleet with an order for 30 aircraft placed in May, but mystery surrounds the status of the country’s order for Sukhoi Su-35s. A number of Su-35s have been photographed in Russia, allegedly linked with an Egyptian order, wearing a camouflage scheme similar to that worn by Egypt’s MiG-29s. More than a year since the first photographs appeared, there is no evidence to suggest any deliveries have taken place. It is possible that pressure from the U.S. over the potential use of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions against Egyptian officials may have had the effect intended by Washington.