jhungary
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While I agree, based on that link, Iraq was well equipped, you have to look deeper into Russian equipment. A Pentagon report talked about the deficiencies of Russian equipment like armor sent to foreign countries that lacked proper plating and often used lower-grade material to compensate during production. So you were never getting what you paid for. Also, Iraq had its own in-house manufactured version of the T-72, which was of poor quality and didn't stand up to the Western tanks. Often tanks weren't used properly in maneuvering and instead as artillery pieces.
In addition, the terrain of Iraq wasn't favorable at all, with flat land and desert compared to the AfPak region.
One important aspect we must also consider is the structure of the armed forces; when I talk about depleting, it's not always the equipment but the manpower. During and after the conflict, Saddam murdered many ranking officers; under the pretext, they were gaining in popularity; I have personally met many Iraqis that escaped that vouch for that. In addition, he eliminated many trainers, so while they got leg-up equipment, they weren't as practical due to the brain drain within the armed force
The problem is, 1991 war in Iraq have a lot of tale-tell sign of the 2022 War in Ukraine. But what happened to Iraq does not translate to Ukraine, even when Ukrainian is probably a few step behind Russia than Iraq as to US/Allied back in 1991.
That problem specifically is why Ukraine can optimize their defensive posture and fend off Russian attack again and again, while using on-par/sub-par Russian equipment, when Iraq failed to capitalize on their defensive posture again using on par/sub-par equipment.
What we (or the allied) did to Iraq should be either in whole or in part translated to what the Russian did to Ukraine, but that did not happen. And that have nothing to do with whether or not Iraq equipment is outdated or US equipment is superior, or whether or not Iraq allowed the US/Allied to build up, because all those criteria also happened to Russia. Russia was allowed to build up their force uninterrupted. Russia is using superior equipment than Ukraine, in fact Ukraine was using old Soviet Equipment and with smaller number so there can never be actually on par in reality to the Russian.
The answer to that question is very complicated, and I can probably write 20 pages essay on that, because that would belong to Military Science study (well, i reckon someone probably already did in West Point or whatever) While I am not going to do that here, I am going to offer you a TL;DR version.
It's basically come down to troop deployment. As I said before with Oldman post. You will NEVER know the efficiency of your battleplan until it hit with your enemy, and by then you already cross the line of no return, because everything is committed, there aren't much room for maneuver, in turn that will make the war fighting capability, not just equipment, but as a whole when you combined all the factors and how to use your force, you need a person who have the necessary experience to understand every aspect of that war, you need to be able to expect what enemy action in return, and finally you need to be able to expect or anticipate failure and how you could turn them around in war, all those have to be included in your original battleplan, and that insight can only come from one's person own warfighting experience.
For example, if you put a Captain, 5 years into the rank, with no deployment history, it is going to have a different war plan than me at company level, because I would think of stuff that based on my own experience in war and I know what is practical and what is not because I had seen it happen, those are going to be absent from a person who have the same rank but without the experience,
On the other hand, you may think Allied invasion of Iraq is easy, or smooth, that mostly not because of Iraq is not a near peer enemy to us, but rather it was a direct result of a well thought out battleplan. Because we know what we need to do to inhibit Iraq from the 3 requirements of the battleplan I mentioned above.
A lot of people asked me why I can guess a lot of thing happened in Ukraine before it happened, I mean, for example, I was laughed at by almost everything on this forum by saying Russia is going to have a hard time to hold onto Kherson, and it would be lucky for them to still have control of Kherson by the end of year, and it does goes the way I said, it simply because of that anticipation, you know what is going to happen if the situation did not change, and once something was done, there are not much you can do to reverse it, and that is a clear thought if you actually went thru similar circumstance.