In Gulf War 91, the Iraqi pilots were both skilled and combat experienced from the Iran-Iraq war. Although rigorously trained and highly skilled, very few USAF pilots flying operationally had actually previously experienced air-to-air combat.
Apart from technically superior radar and weapons systems, the USAF Weapons School[0] teaches USAF fighter pilots how to engage within the envelope of those weapons.
In the early part of the Vietnam war, the air-to-air missiles kept missing the target due to poor pilot training. The result of the Ault report[1] and subsequent TOPGUN[2] program worked to remedy the shortcoming in the training. The USAF FWS was created after seeing the results of the Navy TOPGUN training.
The last time I watched a documentary about dogfights, two stories about the gulf war ends in the Iraqi pilots losing situational awareness, and consequently dying by crashing into the ground.
It makes me wonder a little bit if their skills are vastly overestimated.
In the same Dogfights documentary, they also mentioned Iraqi MiG-25 pilots evading several AIM-7 radar guided missiles fired at the same jet. In other references, there were a few cases of MiG-25s evading USAF F-15 firing missiles at them, and making it back to base.
Experienced USAF pilots have hit the ground during combat operations. That doesn't mean they were not skilled pilots, just that they made a deadly mistake.
Apart from technically superior radar and weapons systems, the USAF Weapons School[0] teaches USAF fighter pilots how to engage within the envelope of those weapons.
In the early part of the Vietnam war, the air-to-air missiles kept missing the target due to poor pilot training. The result of the Ault report[1] and subsequent TOPGUN[2] program worked to remedy the shortcoming in the training. The USAF FWS was created after seeing the results of the Navy TOPGUN training.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAF_Weapons_School
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ault_Report
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Strike_Figh...