Could Iraq have beaten back the Coalition forces if they were

nope because it was impossible to get air dominance vs such an overwhelming force

there will not be the next vietnam till they invent actually good aa/sams that can shoot down any jet again

I wouldn't go as far as beaten the coalition back, but they definitely could've inflicted casualties. Iraqi C2 was absolutely atrocious and the strikes on command posts made everyone blind and stupid, which lead to mass panic and surrender as the tactical commanders were effectively castrated of their decision making ability by the way the Iraqi army command structure works.

>>34731199
No. Their air force was inferior and almost totally unable to engage BVR targets, so they could never achieve air superiority. They were out ranged, out numbered, and facing pilots with superior training and more flight hours.
On the ground, Iraqi tanks were so monkeyed it's a joke. Soviet T72As and T72Bs had composite armour similar in performance to western Chobham derivatives. T72Ms, the export model, were constructed from homogenous steel and had an inferior gun and FCS, though they looked very similar if not identical. They may as well have been replicas, and they were firing ammo from the 1960s, and some Iraqi made ammo (sometimes concrete).
And it was a conscript army of semi-illiterates who had had the initiative beaten out of them by decades of repression. And being Arabs with all the trappings of Arab armies, like the petty politicking, the stupid honour systems, the competing between officers instead of cooperating with a common goal.
Not just the leadership was awful, the quality of the whole Iraqi armed forces was crap.

>>34731393
>>34731199
To clarify a little, yes they could have done more damage if they were totally different, but no they could not have won.

No, their tanks couldnt penetrate on american tanks. They were dead from the get go.

>>34731232
Chairforce inflicted like 10% of casualties during 1st gulf war, far from irrelevant but not "gamebreaking".

OP: The problem starts from strategy and ends on training of individual soldiers.

The training issues are explained in the why arabs lose wars thingie so you can google it.

When it comes to strategy - coalition needed time before they were able to actually launch the attack but everybody knew the war would happen. What Iraqi general staff fucked up was not going all-out on Saudi Arabia to hinder coalition's supply chain from the get-go. Now they didn't go there because they've had massive issues with all the other things but if you wanted to "win" 1st gulf war, overwhelming offensive on SA was a must. Obviously that wouldn't last too much, but it would give Iraq some time and initial success to at least get a peace where they just restore Kuwait and are nice from now on, without sanctions and other shit.

>>34731422
>Chairforce inflicted like 10% of casualties during 1st gulf war, far from irrelevant but not "gamebreaking".
It was AF that destroyed their c3 and logistics.

Organised armies are not what arabs do best. Exploiting rules of engagement and using civilians as cover is their area of expertise.

>>34731405
Not from the front anyway

>>34731199

You're missing the point, OP.

Whether or not it had the best or the most toys, giving it "appropriate leadership" would, and could never happen.

By '91, Iraq had been an "independent" country for 60 years. In that time, it underwent five successful coup attempts and many more failed ones.

>1941 Golden Square coup attempt to overthrow Faisal I, followed by subsequent British invasion and restoration
>1958 July 14 Revolution, placing a military junta led by Brigadier abd al-Karim Qasim
>1963 February 8 Revolution by Qasim's ex deputy Abdul Salam Arif, placing Ba'athists in charge
>1966 July 17 Revolution by Abdul Rahman Arif (the last guy's brother) overthrows the presiding deputy President of Iraq and puts himself in charge
>1979 July Purge has Saddam take total control over the Ba'athists and military by having them all shot

and then there are the dozens of minor insurrections, failed coups, and political spats that could easily have ended any one of these juntas or dictatorships if someone competent had been in charge of the military. Better to lose the war and a few thousand peasant troops than risk your own fragile hold on political power.

Putting appropriate leadership in charge of Iraqi troops in '91 may or may not have stalled the Coalition advance, but it sure as hell would have meant Saddam's regime would have been in trouble immediately after the war.

>>34731199

Iraq didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Coalition, but they could have inflicted enough damage on them to secure a political victory. Keeping their armies in the cities only ceded manoeuvre ground to the Coalition. Iraq should have packed all their armed forces in depth around the Kuwaiti border and had their fighters in the air ready for D-Day. Coalition would inevitably have broken through, but war was deeply unpopular and heavy casualties in the first few hours would have caused a public backlash and broken up Coalition.

>>34731199
Their only real chance was to keep going for Dharan, and take it before the 82nd could land.

Holding the Saudis' oil hostage was their best move.

After that, their best option was to go chemical, hard, and cross their fingers that Bush wouldn't actually nuke them in retaliation.

On a related note, does the length and bloodiness of the Iran-Iraq war indicate the weakness of the Iranian army at the time?

>>34732256
I'd say they did pretty well given the amount of resources that were being poured into Iraq from both the US and the Soviets.