Middle East@War Series

The Syrian Civil War, (the colloquial name of the ongoing conflict in Syria), has experienced an entirely unexpected transformation during its first two years. It started as unrest within the Syrian population and a series of mass demonstrations within the context of wider protest movements in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, known as the Arab Spring. Contrary to events in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, where oppressive governments were toppled by the end of that year, the government of Syria deployed the full force of its military, its intelligence apparatus, and para-military groups, launching an unprecedented crackdown that resulted in the arrest, detention and killing of many thousands. Despite its brutality, this effort backfired: it provoked mass desertions of the Syrian military and then an armed uprising. The emerging insurgency was generally successful through 2012, although failing to capture Damascus, it did secure more than half of Aleppo and Homs, the provincial capital of Raqqa, and nearly all of northeastern and northwestern Syria under its control. Although propped-up by economic and military support from the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation, the government of Syria was nearing the brink of collapse during the first half of 2013 when, prompted by Tehran, the Hezbollah – a Shi’a Islamic militant group (and political party) from Lebanon – entered the conflict on its side. Soon after, the Hezbollah was reinforced by significant contingents of Iranian-sponsored Shi’a from Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere, and then by volunteers from Iran, including crack units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Meanwhile, already split along the lines of Syria’s complex demography, much of the insurgency transformed from a secular and non-sectarian movement into proxies of various foreign powers, foremost Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but also Turkey and Kuwait. Furthermore, foreign Jihadists motivated by al-Qaida joined the fray, aiming to establish an Islamist state and clandestinely cooperating with the government, they fell into the back of insurgency. Thus, an extremely complex conflict – which meanwhile not only spilled over the border into Lebanon, but is having a major impact upon Iranian-Saudi relations, and relations between the West, Iran and a number of Arab countries – came into being, the outcome of which is presently anything but predictable. Syrian Conflagration is the first installment in the Middle East@War series. Drawing on extensive research, including first hand accounts it provides a compelling overview of the first three years of the ongoing conflict in Syria. The book features around 140 photos, 12-15 artworks and 3-4 maps. Middle East@War - following on from our highly successful Africa@War series, Middle East@War replicates the same format - concise, incisive text, rare images and high quality color artwork providing fresh accounts of both well-known and more esoteric aspects of conflict in this part of the world since 1945.

The development of the F-5 lightweight supersonic fighter in the mid 1950s was almost a gamble for the Northrop Corporation, but ultimately resulted in one of most commercially successful combat aircraft in modern history. Iran was one of its major export customers, yet the long and often violent history of deployment of the F-5 in that country has largely escaped attention of historians. No less than 309 aircraft of five major variants of the jet – the F-5A, F-5B, RF-5A, F-5E and F-5F – have provided the backbone of the front line strength of the Iranian Air Force since the mid 1960s. Additional examples were clandestinely purchased from Ethiopia and Vietnam in the 1980s. The type bore the brunt of combat operations during the long war with Iraq, 1980-1988, and remains a mainstay of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force as of today. This breathtaking account provides a detailed chronological history of the F-5 in combat service in Iran, a history dominated by long-range strikes against some of best defended targets inside Iraq, and by thousands of dramatic close-air-support and reconnaissance sorties, but also fierce air combats against the then most modern fighter types in Iraqi service, including the MiG-23s and MiG-25s. It is completed with practically unknown stories of their combat presence in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the war against drug traffickers in recent years. Good though the F-5 has been, the advances of domestic Iranian aircraft building companies have resulted in attempts to continue the F-5 line with further redesign and developments, resulting in a number of indigenous variants. Combined, this means that the diverse and involved story about one of most interesting military aircraft of modern times is still far from over. The author's detailed text is fully supported by an extensive selection of photographs and color profiles. Middle East@War - following on from our highly successful Africa@War series, Middle East@War replicates the same format - concise, incisive text, rare images and high quality color artwork providing fresh accounts of both well-known and more esoteric aspects of conflict in this part of the world since 1945.

Following the Civil War of 1994, Yemen experienced few years of relative peace. This was rudely interrupted in 2004, when the government opened the first of six campaigns against the movement colloquially known as ‘Houthis’. The Yemeni Air Force – partially re-equipped over the previous years – saw intensive involvement in this conflict, but proved insufficient. In late 2009 and through 2010, the war spread into Saudi Arabia, which reacted with its first military intervention in the country. A host of long-simmering internal conflicts culminated in the second Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, launched in March 2015. Although run along widely accepted Western doctrine of aerial warfare, and highly effective, the campaign in question experienced a number of massive problems – primarily related to unexpected developments and extremely complex relations between multiple parties in Yemen. That the air forces of the Saudi-led alliance involved in the ongoing campaign in Yemen are operating some of most modern combat aircraft and weaponry manufactured in the West is no secret. But, exactly how, why, when, and where are they deploying weapons systems in question and for what purpose remains entirely unknown in the public. Thanks to approach to firsthand sources, this volume is providing answers to precisely these questions and thus providing an exclusive insight into the conduct of operations by such modern aircraft types like F-15S, F-16E/F, EF-2000 Typhoon, and Mirage 2000. Containing over 140 photographs, color profiles, maps and extensive tables, Hot Skies over Yemen is a richly illustrated and unique point of reference about one segment of modern aerial warfare that remains entirely unknown until today.

Since September 1962, hardly a week passed without a major armed confrontation or an outright war in Yemen. The number of long-lasting insurgencies, mutinies, rebellions, or terrorism-related activities that took place during this period is going into dozens. Despite duration of all these conflicts and although they may have caused as many as half a million of deaths, the rest of the world heard very little about them. At best, Yemen is nowadays known as a hotbed of international terrorism, an area that is on the receiving end of frequent US air strikes flown by UAVs, or as 'some place' fiercely bombarded by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia. While at least some details about British aerial operations in what was Southern Arabia of the 1960s were published over the years, next to nothing is known about activities of other, ‘local’ air forces – like those of Egypt – and even less so about that of Yemen. This is even more surprising considering that for nearly two decades there were no less than two, fully developed services of that kind - one operated by what was then North Yemen, another by what used to be South Yemen - and that these were deeply involved in the Cold War, too. Using newly released secret intelligence sources, neglected memoirs, and popular memory, this book is telling the story of military flying in Yemen between 1962 and 1994. It is providing in-depth insights and analysis of campaigns fought by the Egyptian air force of the 1960s, the creation of two Yemeni air forces in the 1970s, an entire series of inter-Yemeni wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Containing over 140 photographs, color profiles, maps and extensive tables, Hot Skies over Yemen is a richly illustrated and unique point of reference about one segment of modern aerial warfare that remains entirely unknown until today.

The Arab-Israeli conflict persisted through two wars and ongoing border tensions. However, the Six-Day War of June 1967 was a cataclysm. Israel emerged victorious in a war with neighboring Arab states and in possession of occupied territory. The Arabs were furious at this outcome and determined to regain their lands and dignity by again making war with Israel. Added to the mix was a resurgent Palestinian liberation movement. Renewed fighting began within weeks. It became a period of sustained combat, casualties, fiscal outlay, and diplomacy on the world stage unlike anything experienced previously. All involved militaries remained very active over these years with more consistent mobilization, intensive training, and action than ever before. Each side deepened their dependence on superpower arms supply. The geopolitical stakes rose and Israel found itself fighting the Soviets indirectly on the borders and terrorists internationally. Adversary forces grew in size, adopted more complex weapons, and trained in new tactics, all in the tumult of combat of escalating intensity. The air forces of especially Israel and Egypt, then Syria, became particularly active, grew in size and capabilities. They employed some of the most advanced weapons the USA and the USSR arrayed in their Cold War confrontation. The air war grew to extensive air defenses and long-range bombing plus deep photo reconnaissance. The danger of this sparking another general war with potential superpower involvement was high. This period is collectively referred to as the War of Attrition. The named War of Attrition on the Suez Canal began on 8 March 1969 and ended with a ceasefire 17 months later. However, combat began even before this period. Egypt built up forces opposite the canal to harass the Israelis and in preparation for an offensive to liberate the Sinai Peninsula. The harassment included heavy shelling, airstrikes, and commando raids. Israel became even more determined to hold the line on the canal east bank and built a string of fortifications supporting this strategy and expanded available forces. Protecting these assets required responding artillery fire and bold commando raids until Israel felt compelled to unleash its air force. Bombing and air-to-air combat grew in intensity and eventually extended to the Egyptian heartland. The Soviet Union assisted Egypt materially until finally intervening with an air defense division consisting of the latest surface-to-air missiles and fighters, operated by USSR combat personnel. Undaunted, Israel fought on in a continuing and dangerous escalation. Both sides approach exhaustion before a ceasefire was arranged. It was an extraordinary time of confrontation, irregular warfare, rising terrorism, and national struggles seldom seen before or since. It became the world’s most violent, costly, and dangerous conflict after that in Southeast Asia. At the center of it, Israel found herself engaged on all sides and isolated as never before. The struggle altered the geopolitical landscape and set the stage for the October 1973 war. Volume 2 focuses on the fighting across the Suez Canal in a manner never before presented in print. Richly illustrated with photographs, maps, charts and tables, the reader will find new details and correction of previously published ‘facts.’ This is the most focused and clear account of the fighting on the Suez Canal during 1968–1970.

During the Cold War, communist Czechoslovakia was one of the largest arms exporters to the Middle East – at least among the Soviet Bloc countries. The fourth volume of this mini-series describes the history of arms export from Czechoslovakia to Iran, Iraq, the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen), and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) between 1948–1989. During the early 1950s, and on demand from Moscow, Prague invested heavily in the development of a domestic arms industry, aiming to supply its products to other members of the Warsaw Pact. Within just a few years, Czechoslovakia launched the license production of numerous Soviet military aircraft and heavy weapons. Accompanied with the massive military build-up of the entire Warsaw Pact, this brought the economy to the brink of collapse, prompting Prague to search for export customers outside the Soviet bloc – at a time when numerous developing countries in the Middle East were on the search for arms. This combination resulted in the use of the spare capacity of the Czechoslovak arms industry for the production of small arms, heavy infantry weapons, artillery and anti-aircraft guns, armored vehicles, huge amounts of ammunition, and training aircraft for the Empire of Iran (later the Islamic Republic of Iran), Iraq, the Imamate (later Arab Republic) of Yemen (North Yemen), and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). Arms exports were accompanied by the training of Iraqi and Yemeni military personnel both in Czechoslovakia and at home. Using declassified original documentation from the archives of the former Czechoslovakia, this is the most comprehensive – and most thoroughly illustrated – account of the Czechoslovak military involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War published to date, and is a unique source of reference.

The Arab-Israeli conflict persisted through two wars and ongoing border tensions. However, the Six-Day War of June 1967 was a cataclysm. Israel emerged victorious in a war with neighboring Arab states and in possession of occupied territory. The Arabs were furious at this outcome and determined to regain their lands and dignity by again making war with Israel. Added to the mix was a resurgent Palestinian liberation movement. Renewed fighting began within weeks. It became a period of sustained combat, casualties, fiscal outlay, and diplomacy on the world stage unlike anything experienced previously. All involved militaries remained very active over these years with more consistent mobilization, intensive training, and action than ever before. Each side deepened their dependence on superpower arms supply. The geopolitical stakes rose and Israel found itself fighting the Soviets indirectly on the borders and terrorist internationally. Adversary forces grew in size, adopted more complex weapons, and trained in new tactics, all in the tumult of combat of escalating intensity. The air forces of especially Israel and Egypt, then Syria, became especially active, growing in size and capabilities. They employed some of the most advanced weapons the USA and the USSR arrayed in their Cold War confrontation. The extent of the air war grew to extensive air defenses and long-range bombing plus deep photo reconnaissance. The danger of this sparking another general war with potential superpower involvement was high. This period is collectively referred to as the War of Attrition. The named War of Attrition on the Suez Canal began on 8 March 1969 and ended with a cease fire 17 months later. However, combat beyond this area began even before this period and extended beyond. Volume 3 focuses initially on the fighting across the Jordan River. This eventually led to a civil war in Jordan and battles between Jordanian and Syrian armored forces. Syria began more actively challenging Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights in summer 1970 and this grew over the next two years to almost periodic combat of increasing severity. The border with Lebanon also heated up with Palestinian attacks and Israeli responses that included a growing number of cross-border incursions and bombing. This brought Syrian reactions and pushed Lebanon towards anarchy. Tensions persisted on the southern front and the Palestinians took their struggle outside the region with a campaign of international terrorism. Both Egypt and Syria prepared to launch a war to liberate their occupied territories with little warning. It was an extraordinary time of confrontation, irregular warfare, rising terrorism, and national struggles seldom seen before or since. It became the world’s most violent, costly, and dangerous conflict after that in Southeast Asia. At the center of it, Israel found herself engaged on all sides and isolated as never before. The struggle altered the geopolitical landscape and set the stage for the October 1973 war. Richly illustrated with photographs, maps, charts and tables, the reader will find new details and correction of previously published ‘facts.’ This is the most focused and clear account of these Arab-Israeli confrontation events.

Volume 9 of the Air Power and the Arab World 1909-1955 mini-series continues the story of the men and machines of the first half century of military aviation in the Arab World. For those Arab nations which had some degree of independence, the political, cultural and economic strains seen during the Second World War continued to have a major impact, not least upon their military forces. In Egypt, newly independent Syria and Lebanon, and to a lesser extent in Iraq, great effort was put into modernizing these forces. Sometimes this achieved success but such efforts nevertheless failed to produce the degree of improvement which had been hoped. In both Egypt and Iraq mistrust of Great Britain may even have deepened while in Palestine the worsening crisis resulted in a full-blown civil war between the Zionist settler community and the indigenous Arab population. The British remained in theoretical control of Palestine, yet it was becoming obvious that a large part of the British government, British military establishment and broader public were desperate to escape from the Palestine Problem. It was also clear that the major Powers which dominated the newly established United Nations Organization had no intention of becoming militarily involved. Then came the official termination of the British mandate over Palestine, the declaration of the State of Israel and the start of official military intervention by the military forces of several Arab states. Volume 9 covers its subject in greater detail than has been done before because the authors had access to previously unpublished official Arab military documents, supplemented by translations of Arabic books and journal articles containing official and personal accounts by those involved. As usual for this mini-series, Volume 9 is abundantly illustrated with photographs from previously unused, or very rarely used, private and official sources.

Sixty years since the tripartite aggression of France, Great Britain and Israel against Egypt, this is the first account about Egyptian military operations during the Suez War of 1956 (or ‘Suez Crisis’, as it is known in the West). Based on research with the help of official Egyptian documentation and recollections of crucial participants, this book provides an unique and exclusive insight into the ‘other side’ of a war that many consider has marked ‘the end of the British Empire’. From the Western point of view, the situation is usually explained in quite simple terms: in retaliation for President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Universal Suez Canal Company - and thus the strategically important waterway of the Suez Canal - France and Great Britain (operating in concert with Israel) launched the operation codenamed 'Musketeer'. Divided into three phases, each shaded into the other; this aimed at obliterating the Egyptian Air Force, occupying the whole of the Suez Canal and toppling Nasser’s government. From the Egyptian point of view, backgrounds were much more complex than this. Striving to modernize the country, a new and inexperienced government in Cairo launched a number of major projects, including one for the construction of a gigantic Asswan Dam on the Nile. The only Western power ready to help finance this project, the USA conditioned its support with basing rights for its military. With the last British soldiers still about to leave the country - and thus end Egypt’s occupation by foreign powers for the first time in 2,000 years - Nasser found this unacceptable. Around the same time, Egypt found itself under pressure from Israeli raids against border posts on the Sinai. Left without a solution, Cairo decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in order to finance the Aswan Dam project, but also to start purchasing arms from the Soviet Union. In an attempt to bolster Egyptian defenses without antagonizing Western powers, Nasser concluded the so-called ‘Czech Arms deal’ with Moscow - resulting in the acquisition of Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia. Little known in Cairo at the time, such moves tripped several ‘red lines’ in Israel and in the West - in turn prompting aggression that culminated in a war. Wings over Sinai is, first and foremost, an account of the battle for survival of the Egyptian Air Force (EAF). Caught in the middle of conversion to Soviet-types, this proved more than a match for Israel, but were hopelessly ill-prepared to face the military might of Great Britain and France too. Sustained, days-long air strikes on Egyptian air bases caused heavy damage, but were nowhere near as crippling as the losses usually claimed and assessed by the British, French and Israelis. The EAF not only survived that conflict in quite a good order, but also quickly recovered. This story is told against the backdrop of the fighting on the ground and the air and naval invasion by British and French forces. Richly illustrated with plenty of new and previously unpublished photographs, maps (and 15 color profiles), this action-packed volume is illustrates all aspects of camouflage, markings and various equipment of British and Soviet origin in Egyptian military service as of 1956.

On 18 July 1981, a Canadair CL-44D Swingtail cargo aircraft of the Argentine company Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense mysteriously disappeared over the Soviet Republic of Armenia while on a flight from Iran via Turkey in the direction of Cyprus. Four days later, on 22 July 1981, the Vremya TV broadcast in Moscow forwarded a report from the Soviet TASS news agency which stated that an aircraft of unidentified origin had entered Soviet territory in the vicinity of the Armenian city of Yerevan. According to the same release, the aircraft had ignored all calls from air traffic control and ended up crashing and burning after colliding with another Soviet aircraft. With this cryptic information began one of the most impressive and least known stories of Argentine civil aviation: the shooting down of the freighter registered as LV-JTN by the Soviet Air Defense Force (V-PVO). The episode, heavily covered up by Moscow, was part of a much larger geopolitical scenario: the clandestine transport of US-made weapons and spare parts that was taking place between Tel Aviv and Tehran by virtue of a secret agreement between the Iranian and Israeli governments. All this at a time when the former was subjected to an arms embargo in revenge for the hostage-taking that occurred in 1979 at the US Embassy in Tehran. The Islamic Republic of Iran, formed as a result of the Islamic Revolution that had broken out that same year, was an avowed enemy of Israel, whom it considered a mere Zionist regime that imposed itself in the occupation of Palestine. The Iranian religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini did not recognize the State of Israel, which he referred to simply as ‘Little Satan’. However, the Iranians desperately needed supplies of US weapons as a few months earlier, on 22 September 1980, they had been invaded by Iraq. The Israelis saw the possibility of carrying out a sideline business and thus embarked on a clandestine supply operation. The intelligence services of the Soviet Union soon became aware of the secret arms trafficking and decided to divert one of the involved aircraft into their airspace then force it to land in their territory with the aim of exposing the operation and all its protagonists. By interfering with radio communications and manipulating navigational aids, the KGB managed to divert the Argentine CL-44D from its route, with it ending up inside Soviet airspace. However, the Sukhoi Su-15TM interceptors of the V-PVO failed in their mission, and thus their ground control ordered the destruction of the target. The Soviet conspiracy of silence began after discovering that its Air Defense Force had destroyed an Argentine-flagged civil plane, with an Argentine crew, which was flying empty. Juliet Tango November explores this incident in detail and is richly illustrated with color images and previously unseen photographs.