Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Reborn of the Yemeni Air Force began ?

Since the begining of Operation Decisive Storm on March 26th, 2015, most of the Yemeni Air Force has been destroyed on the ground by the Saudi led coalition airstrikes. Begining May, Al-Dalaimi air base was targeting and one Mig-29, two F-5s, one Mi-8, three Su-22s, two IL-76TDs were destroyed. Most of these aircrafts were probably not airworthy (except the Ilyushins). On August 4th, one Su-22 and one Mig-21 were lost on Al-Anab (close to Aden IAP) during the battle for the taking of the base by coalition airstrikes.




In October,  UAE Air Force started to train Yemeni pilots at Al Anad on IOMAX AT-802 Border Patrol Aircraft. They have already provided CAS (Close Air Support) to their forces in Taiz and Al Baydhah. Targets were weapons storage and vehicles. Therefore, Al Anad air base is officially operational and Yemeni Air Force is being rebuilt. It is most likely, UAE AT-802 will be donated eventually to Yemenis, as some of the UAE military vehicles. The video below shows three of the UAE AT-802 (including serial "2204") piloted by Yemini, carrying two GBU-12 laser-guided bombs, two Roketsan Cirit Launchers with four 2.75" Laser Guided Rockets on four of their six under-wing hardpoints and a FLIR Systems EO/IR (electro-optical/infrared) on the central hardpoint. UAE Air Force has 24 "Air Tractor" in service with Group 22.


Update :

In September 2014, a 41.5 million USD contract was awarded by the US Air Force's 645th Aeronautical Systems Group, but this contract was abandoned due to the current political situation in Yemen. Four of the AT-802s initially earmarked for Yemen will be delivered to Jordan for a 9.78 million USD contract awarded by US Department of Defense on 27 September. So we can suppose UAE gave Yemenite AF some of its own aircrafts temporarily to fill the gap until Yemen receive theirs.

Special thanks to @saikhamk and @muh_Alqahtani

1 comment :

  1. Sur votre article concernant la campagne du Yémen sur le dernier DSi, les tableaux sont vraiment en vrac avec les destructions des avions yemenites compiler avec les pertes de la Coalition arabe-auquel il manque le F-15 saoudien perdu des les premiers jours-. Je me demande si le tableau des pertes des véhicules n'a pas aussi cette erreur avec des T55 Houtis mit dans la colonne pro gouvernementale.
    Sinon, votre article montre bien qu'il s'agit "conventionnel" avec usage de toute la gamme des armements modernes par les divers belligérants.

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