Makeup of the Egyptian Airforce in the Past and the Future

[EthanXH58]

Egyptian Airforce argumentatively is one of the best and well trained airforces in the third world. it is equipped with 250+ F-16 A/B/C/D fighters. The latest is the block 40 configuration. It also has a few F-4s and a single squardron of Mirage-2000 fighters acquired in the mid 80s from France. Egypt had originally planned to acquire at leat 40 Mirage-2000 fighters from France, however it opted for 20 fighters only. The remaining of the fighter fleet is composed of older Mig-23/27 fighters and Chinese J-7 fighters assembled under licence.

To the best of my knowledge it's older inventory of Soviet aircraft have been retrofitted with western avionics. The AWACS fleet is made up of 6 ex American Navy E-2 Hawkeye aircraft.

I am not sure if the Americans ever sold the EAF the AMRAAM missiles and in the future if they plan on providing it with more advanced variants of the F-16s. Earlier EAF wanted to acquire some F-15E eagles for deep penetration strike capability but due to pressure from Congress and Israel U.S. did not sell them F-15E.

Questions to ponder are?
1. What are the Eyptians going to replace the older inventory of Migs and Chinese aircraft with?
2. Are they going to be acquiring JSF?
3. Will they always remain behind the Israelis?

 

[hovercraft]

there are few indications that egyptians wants JF-17, but this plane is also under contruction, may be they want to replace older chineas or russian aircrafts with JF-17.
aquiring JSF for egypt is difficult but possible, may be they get few JSF.
and israelies have huge help and support of usa and europe they have neuclear wepons they have modren missiles and anti ballastic missiles but getting these technologies for egypt is not possible, no us or europe help and no support.

 

[EthanXH58]

Rumors of Egypt being interested in JF-17 fighter jet I think are just rumors as they have not been expressed in any official capacity.

 

[Gaenth]

I think getting rid of their old equipment will be a blessing for the Egyptian Air Force, maintaining them is most likely not getting any cheaper and it becomes harder to find spares.

In my opinion having such a large fleet of F-16s makes them great candidates to replace the old equipment with newer block vipers, then you can more or less unify training, maintenance, upgrades, etc with attractive economical and logistical benefits.

As for capability, Block 40s and newer more than exceed exceed F-4s, Mirage 2000s, the MiGs and J-7s capabilities but definitely at higher costs, but there's no way you can avoid that unless you're willing to reduce the size of your AF or stretch your current situation for as long as you can. On the weapons issue, the problem I think is that they'd have basically two options: US or Israel and their willingness to sell them.

Will Egypt get F-35s? Possibly, why not? If it's preferred by other countries in the region, cost is not prohibitive, and again, what US has to say about it.

Will they always remain behind the Israelis? Maybe not if they turn to Typhoon and other European offers. Chinese fighters may enter the picture and just to even things at best, but with all due respect for EAF most likely they will remain behind.

 

[KAPITAIN]

I saw a F-104 on my way back from cairo looked neat, but other than that what aircraft do the egyptian airforce deploy?