In recent years, China's fighter research and development technology has made great progress, not only to meet the defense needs of their own country, but also have spare energy to export to other countries, China's fighters have superior performance, the price is suitable, won the favor of many countries, in addition to Pakistan's "old customer", there are other Middle Eastern countries are interested in purchasing fighters for China, earlier Iraqi media reported that the country has reserved about 600 million US dollars in procurement funds, plans to buy 12 Dragon fighters jointly developed by China and Pakistan from Pakistan.
The dragon fighter can go to the Central Asian market, which is undoubtedly good news for China, which means that our fighter jets are being recognized by more and more countries, and in the future, China's fighters may also become another national business card after "high-speed rail" and "nuclear power". For Iraq, the "Dragon Fighter" fighter equipped with AESA radar will greatly fill the shortcomings of its own air force's backward interception capabilities and greatly improve its air defense combat capabilities.
But the Dragon does not seem to be the only fighter that Iraq has recently considered buying, according to the Global Network reported on February 17, the United States "Defense News" quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Iraq is planning to buy 14 Rafale fighters from France, and plans to pay with oil instead of cash. While planning to purchase the Dragon Dragon, he also looked at the Gust, indicating that Iraq's demand for fighters was very urgent, on the other hand, finding two sellers at the same time was also to ensure the diversification of weapons procurement.
Iraq also threw an olive branch to the Dragon and the Rafale at the same time, leaving a lot of room for reverie, and perhaps the Chinese and French fighters would achieve the first time in the hands of the Iraqi Air Force. There is a precedent for Iraq in terms of "mixing and matching fighters", which purchased a large Mirage fleet from France in the late 1970s, but at the same time, Iraq maintained close defense cooperation with Moscow and purchased MiG-29A fighter jets from the latter.
So when the french chief of staff maurice Schmidt visited Iraq in 1989, he found a very funny scene, a "Mirage" fighter actually hung under the belly of a row of Moscow Kh-29L air-to-surface missiles, these "mixed fighters" also played a major role in the Persian Gulf War that year, so it is not excluded that in the next decade, the Iraqi Air Force is likely to have a mixed fleet of Rafale and Dragon fighters.
If Iraq really purchased China's Dragon fighters, then as to how to use them is their own business, we can't control this, but as long as there is a steady stream of orders sent to us, this is a great thing, and the Middle East region will also have a huge potential sales market for Chinese fighters. In fact, the Middle East region is now in a rare "peace situation", because the strategic direction of the United States is gradually advancing to the Indo-Pacific region, and the military center of gravity of the US military is gradually shifting to China's peripherals.
A month ago, the U.S. Navy almost went out, three aircraft carriers, a nuclear submarine and several destroyers gathered in the Indo-Pacific seas to show their muscles to China, and the provocative implications of this are self-evident. However, while the United States is showing off its force to China, it still does not forget to hype that China will "pose a threat" to the United States, and recently a number of senior US officials have jumped out to remind that the United States should not focus too much on the situation in Russia and Ukraine and forget China's "threat", and should beware of China's actions in the Indo-Pacific region and so on.
For example, Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the US Pacific Air Force, hinted that "Chinese mainland may take advantage of the tension between Russia and Ukraine to carry out operations in the Taiwan Strait." According to the Observer Network on February 17, Wilsbach claimed that because the attention of Western countries is still focused on the tense confrontation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, China may seize the opportunity to take action in the Indo-Pacific region to test the commitment of the United States to partners in the region, in addition to reminding Western countries that Western countries should be wary of the possibility of a military alliance between China and Russia.
After taking such a big circle, it finally returned to the topic of worrying about the Sino-Russian alliance, the reason why the United States is worried about the Sino-Russian alliance, the most important thing is that under the current tense situation, the Chinese and Russian countries cooperate with the action to carry out military adventures, for example, in the Russian-Ukrainian situation and the situation in the Taiwan Strait to engage in a "dream linkage", with the current military capability of the United States can not carry out two-front operations in Eurasia at the same time, so we can see that the United States' current actions in the Russian-Ukrainian situation are quite conservative, only staying in the arch fire stage. He never promised to come down and help himself.
However, in the situation in the Taiwan Strait, the United States has become even more aggressive in its actions; it has not only frequently handed knives to the "Taiwan independence elements" on the island of Taiwan, increased the number of US troops in Taiwan, and also sold weapons to the DPP authorities; it has also cooperated with Japan in many military exercises near the Ryukyu Islands and is pushing its intervention in the Taiwan Strait situation in Chinese the direction of practice.