It's crazy how good their defense of the country have been all things considered. Then again. I have heard that the UAE is pretty much the only arab country whose military isn't a fucking meme. So that explains alot behind their israel tier handling of drone attacks.
I heard it was Jordan, actually. Out of all the enemies Israel has faced off against, they rated them pretty highly.
iirc its something like
Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran (hard to rate because air war), Palestinians
Source: I was in a freind group with a guy who was incharge of training schools for US mid-east ally pilot school.
Jordan are Egypt - in that that order - had the only competent pilots that were more likely to be a danger to the enemies than their allies.
Jordanian pilots were fairly competent, almost all merit appointments, and basically had what he called "German Problems". That is, small underfundeded airforce with limited missions to conduct. They needed airtime and real training, just not every couple years going to the states.
Egypt selected for loyalty first, competency second. But becasue there are no royal families or Sheiks to appease, they were at least able to fly their planes. He had said one of the guys who was retiring when was starting out said the Egyptians used send really good pilots in the 70s and 80s, and then leadership got worried and started only selecting pilots from politically reliable families.
Number 3 was Occupied Iraq pilots. he said the pilots were reasonably intelligent, dedicated and wanted to learn, they were just extremely, EXTREMELY green. He said they lost a couple of good trainees not because of any issues with skill or discipline, but because they had never been out of their Iraqi villages and when brought to a US base had complete mental breakdowns over how different everything was.
Anywya, this was because again, the selection process was completely merit based while the US was running th ecountry.
When the Iraqi's took over the governemnt, they once again prioritized loyalty to the party and political connections over skill.
edit; I should also add that the training program for the iraqis was retooled and made months not weeks because they understood first they would be dealing with people with more patriotism than skill, and second that their first graduates were going to be expected to develop the Iraqi pilot training program in the future, so more emphasis was put on not just "Can they fly?" but also "can they fly well enough to teach someone else?"
Number was probably a tie between UAE and Pakistan.
UAE Pilots were generally interested in learning - some weren't, and just used it as trip to the US to drink and whore - but many of them were politically connected appointees who had essentially never flown jets before. Many had advanced degrees but were absolute retards who didn't grasp basic aerodynamic concepts. He said if you put all their pilots through 4 years of remedial ground school, they might have turned out alright.
Pakistan, the pilots were book smart and usually able to fly, but were otherwise complete idiots. You would them up, run through the training, and the next day they would usually be able to do all the things you trained them to do.... in that order. If you changed up the sequence or did alteration "Roll left" insead of "Roll Right" they would get flustered and mess up. You could put a Paki on your wing and say "we're doing a bombing run, stay in formation" and he would stay in formation and release his bombs at aroudn the right time. But the minute you tried to have them dogfight, they would come apart because it wasn't something they could memorize.
The restof the minor gulf states were next. They were pretty much lesser versions of the UAR.
But the worse, the absolute worst, was without a question hands down, the Saudi Pilots. There complete fucking idiots and because they were usually some spoiled rich political elite, didn't want to take instruction from kaffir. They just didn't seem to understand how to take and follow orders.
One of his fellow instructors almost resigned over a Saudi Trainee. He refused to fly with the guy, declaring him an actual hazard. The situation was resolved by the Saudis sent over one of their other pilots to fly instructor for the guy, while the actual instructor flew (well, was flown) nearby.
He could not comment on Turkish pilots, IDF pilots, or Syrian pilots.
They’ve got one of those monarchs that still does real shit and he’s a massive spec ops autist. There’s a special operations exhibition and military tech trade show in Jordan every year and when ISIS was running rampant, he was the jumpmaster on the drop for Jordanian troops.
He is also 100% woke to how shit the Palestinians are, having watched them try to launch a coup after being welcomed inside Jordan's
en.wikipedia.org
