Typhoons from XI (Fighter) Squadron have arrived in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join this year’s Spears of Victory exercise being held at the King Abdulaziz Air Base.
Personnel from across the RAF have deployed on this large scale, Saudi hosted multinational air warfare training exercise.
“The RAF are joining participants from several branches of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s military, as well as contingents from Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, France, Greece, Pakistan, and the US.
In addition to the RAF Typhoons taking part in this year’s exercise, the Royal Saudi Air Force will be flying their Typhoons, Tornados and F-15s. F-16s are taking part from Bahrain, Greece, and the UAE. The Saudi F-15s will be joined by others from Qatar. The French Air and Space detachment will be contributing Rafales, and the Pakistan Air Force will be flying their JF-17s. The Royal Air Force of Oman will also be flying Typhoons.”
Squadron Leader Hodgkinson, UK Detachment Commander, was quoted as saying:
“The welcome at King Abdulaziz Air Base and the support in country has been fantastic and the facilities here will allow us to really make the most of this opportunity. We look forward to a busy deployment, operating at a high tempo alongside our international colleagues; I am confident the whole detachment will learn a great deal from the Exercise.”
The United States Detachment is not flying this year, but instead has committed a mixed unit of National Guardsmen to provide a range of ground support activities, including Fire Fighters Security, and logisticians to support the exercise.
During the exercise the nations will be conducting defensive counter air and offensive counter air operations, as well as air interdiction training against live and simulated threats. The objective is to test the reactions of pilots in a variety of situations in a challenging air environment; you can read more from the RAF here.
Would be fascinating what is put in place to understand the capabilities of JF17 and hide our capabilities from them.
I guess they already know. Saudi security is not that watertight.
Yes, that is why it will be difficult to let them in to GCAP as a full partner. Whitehall would let them join in a heart beat to save a few quid no matter how much it compromised security.
Fortunately the Japanese seem to be firm on this point and it comes with the added benefit of the UK being able to blame it all on Japan.
The Saudis are saying they only want domestically produced aircraft now that they have input in designing.
If that’s the case they are no use to us as an Allie anymore. They bring much downside to any relationship and the only upside was arms sales.
Maybe MBS can wait until after 2050 when France finally manages to produce something beyond Rafale.
No good as an allie!!! The dynamics of the middle east go well beyond a few fighter jets sales. KSA rate of change is accelerating, you’ll see it align much closer to the UAE way of thinking in the next 5-10 years. That will mean it will become a huge draw for tourists and businesses alike.
Most if the Eurofighters secret capability is in the form of the Praetorian Defensive Aids Sub System and its electronic jamming capability against enemy missiles and radars.
The Rafale has a similar system and they used it in exercises against Egyptian Mig29 and the Egyptians were said to be amazed. Obviously France was desperately trying to sell Rafale to Egypt so they were probably prepared to compromised the tech, in this instance we won’t be selling anything to Pakistan ever and I can’t see a major benefit in gleaming any info on the JF17. It’s a very limited aircraft with limited export potential.
I’m sure the Typhoons from the RAF won’t be showing off their EW capability.
In terms of RCS not much can be gleamed as the Typhoon has external strokes and its RCS will continuously change depending on the mission.
In terms of manoeuvrability and kinetic performance every one already knows the Typhoon is a rocket ship able to turn on a dime.
I’m sure the Chinese would love to get data on Meteor capability but I’m sure the RAF won’t be giving much away on that.
I think it’s probably the EM spectrum stuff that we don’t want the Chinese harvesting via JF17.
I’ve got no idea how good or otherwise that platform really is; I think it’s just useful to know. You don’t want a “zero” moment where you think their aircraft sucks, but in reality runs rings around you.
I always think of the UK/US coming badly unstuck when Japan entered WW2 & we were outclassed by their torpedoes & Zero fighters etc when people dismiss our foes. Never underestimate your enemies.
Qataris are also sending Typhoons, so pretty capable ones at that.
Though they didn’t fare too well on exercises with PAF J10C recently 🤔
That’s convient!
Hmmm… reasonably convenient location for certain current activities. Political constraints could prove to be daunting. 🤔
No one in the ME is going to let the US and UK use their bases to attack Iran. Diego Garcia and Cyprus are going to be about it and those will be closed to US missions against Iran after the next election in the UK.
The US will soon discover its greatest “allie” Israel is not well located unless they want to bomb Jordan.
I think it’s going to be very much up to the USN and USMC to carry the can if the US wants to hit Iran.
I could see it being much like operation El Derado Canyon in 1986 where the US had to stick to international airspace although in this instance they won’t have the UK operating as a giant aircraft carrier.
I don’t think anyone is thinking of using the aircraft on the Saudi exercise to strike Iran. The only thing the RAF are striking is Yemen but the aircraft won’t be hitting there from Saudi. Saudi tried fighting in Yemen already and currently has a peace process. It’s not an easy country to resolve through military strikes.
The sooner Israel puts an end to its current operations the better hopefully.
Depends. If Iran kicked off & closed the Straights of Hormuz as a safe route for tankers etc, then all Gulf states would be vitally affected. Then they very likely would be willing to host forces(+ deploy their own) to bring Iran to their knees ASAP.
One bastion of freedom and democracy joins the other bastion of freedom and democracy 😁😆😄