Egyptian Armed Forces

[Gomig-21]

@Gomig-21 @Foinikas

Love it! Any time we're having some military or naval exercise with our bros and sists from Greece is awesome. We get to see some great, closeup action and what I love seeing the most is how used to using our Mistrals they are. They land and take off those things like it's no body's business lol. Really great stuff and seeing more of the EAF's Rafales and MiG-29Ms is a bonus. Some more closeups on the ground would be fun.

But seeing the MEKO with one of the Gowinds is exciting! Funny @Foinikas mentioned the MEKO already in service so quickly is true and pretty impressive. I think the year-long sea trials also involved a lot of the selected Egyptian crews that were to take over eventually, making it much easier, smoother and quicker but nice observation by you.

These pics (especially the one below) are a real indication of how large the Gowind actually is. Even though the MEKO is a bit further away in the top pic, the bottom one shows them pretty much side by side and for a corvette to be just as large if not larger than a frigate tells you one thing of the other. Either the Gowind are just huge ships of the MEKO is a smaller than typical frigate. Very exciting.

You can really see the scale in this pic below. I'll have to compare the displacement to get a more accurate sizing although that won't necessarily tell us the size, but give us some idea.

Been a while since we've seen these fellas.

Some of the Hellenic F-16s look like such heavy duty work-horses like this one! Love it! Shiny jet fighters are perfectly fine, but ones like this one that look like they just got back from a 10 hour fight mission are just as great!

And their helo pilots seem to be some of the best we get to see working with the EAF. Like I mentioned before, they land and take off the Mistrals like it's nobody's business! lol.

 

[Foinikas]

Love it! Any time we're having some military or naval exercise with our bros and sists from Greece is awesome. We get to see some great, closeup action and what I love seeing the most is how used to using our Mistrals they are. They land and take off those things like it's no body's business lol. Really great stuff and seeing more of the EAF's Rafales and MiG-29Ms is a bonus. Some more closeups on the ground would be fun.

But seeing the MEKO with one of the Gowinds is exciting! Funny @Foinikas mentioned the MEKO already in service so quickly is true and pretty impressive. I think the year-long sea trials also involved a lot of the selected Egyptian crews that were to take over eventually, making it much easier, smoother and quicker but nice observation by you.

View attachment 900067

These pics (especially the one below) are a real indication of how large the Gowind actually is. Even though the MEKO is a bit further away in the top pic, the bottom one shows them pretty much side by side and for a corvette to be just as large if not larger than a frigate tells you one thing of the other. Either the Gowind are just huge ships of the MEKO is a smaller than typical frigate. Very exciting.

View attachment 900068

You can really see the scale in this pic below. I'll have to compare the displacement to get a more accurate sizing although that won't necessarily tell us the size, but give us some idea.

View attachment 900069

Been a while since we've seen these fellas.

View attachment 900070

View attachment 900071

Some of the Hellenic F-16s look like such heavy duty work-horses like this one! Love it! Shiny jet fighters are perfectly fine, but ones like this one that look like they just got back from a 10 hour fight mission are just as great!

View attachment 900073

And their helo pilots seem to be some of the best we get to see working with the EAF. Like I mentioned before, they land and take off the Mistrals like it's nobody's business! lol.

View attachment 900074

Oh man,great photos! Is that the Mistral-class in the photo? Escorted by the Gowind and the Al Aziz? You're right,the Gowind looks very big. The Egyptian Rafale and the Greek F-16s and Apache look great.

Egypt already has Aster-15/30 right?

 

[Gomig-21]

our IL-76MFs are traveling the world. What is happening.

Looks like we are getting weapons from Serbia and Russia or what hahaha

lol, reading the comment from the twitter handle himself and even he's suspicious loool.

A lot of these people don't realize this is much more of a "merchandize" or "humanitarian" type cargo aircraft, designed to carry humanitarian aid and or transport large and heavy machinery used in the civilian world from country to country and not necessarily weapons all the time lol. Even if it's going to Serbia and Moscow. I bet you it's loaded with grain and not 7.62x39 amo looool!

Amazing shot of our IL-76MF

It really is amazing and if you look closely at length of the fuselage from the trailing edge of the wings to the back end of the tail, you can see this is not the ordinary IL-76, but rather the very rare stretch model. They're quite longer than the typical IL-76s I hope we get to see a pic of them side by side to really see that and usually the reason for that is to carry more shhhttuuufff, usually non-military cargo but foods and all types of humanitarian aid. I think with the EAF, it's the C-130s that are mostly the ones that bring weapons AND aid.

 

[Gomig-21]

Oh man,great photos! Is that the Mistral-class in the photo?

Yep, sure is. A couple of empty landing helo spots available.

Escorted by the Gowind and the Al Aziz?

Yep, very cool how you know the names! It almost looks like they're on a collision course with the Mistral but then it also looks like they're stationary, The propulsion systems on these latest and state of the art military ships is truly impressive. The one(s) on the Mistral I think are the sickest of all. The have 360 degree rotating duo-prop pods with additional jet propulsion and front bow thrusters with a gyro thingy I forget the name lmaooo where it can spin in place, move sideways so never needs a tug to dock between two other ships or come out of the dock and with all those, it can stay stationary in one spot for as long as there is fuel.

You're right,the Gowind looks very big. The Egyptian Rafale and the Greek F-16s and Apache look great.

Egypt already has Aster-15/30 right?

Indeed. Hope to see HAF Rafales and even F-35s at some point soon in the near future in these exercises. Do you know if the US has restriction on the HAF for usage of the F-35 with especially Egypt and other countries that are not allowed to purchase that aircraft?

As far as the Aster 15/30, I think we only saw one footage of one being fired from either one of the Gowinds or it might've been the Aquitaine FREMM Tahya Misr but that was about it. I'm sure that every single ship that fires them has them there. Whether they're already placed on board or are secured in their appropriate storage area, not sure. But yeah, we have quite a few ships that fire between 16 and 32 missiles per and so not to have them would be pretty silly. Did you read somewhere that there aren't allowing the missiles or just curious?

 

[Gomig-21]

These are the containers for shipping the Meteor missile. I think they have ones that carry only 1 missile and others that look like they would carry at least 2 if not 4.

Pretty fancy shmancy,

 

[Foinikas]

Did you read somewhere that there aren't allowing the missiles or just curious?

No,no. I was reading some stuff about Aster-15/30 on wikipedia earlier and I'm confused. The article said that the Aster-30 range is more than 120 km. But then it says the export version (and mentions Singapore) is more than 70 km. So,I was wondering if it's just for Singapore or all the export versions are 70km range.

 

[Gomig-21]

No,no. I was reading some stuff about Aster-15/30 on wikipedia earlier and I'm confused. The article said that the Aster-30 range is more than 120 km. But then it says the export version (and mentions Singapore) is more than 70 km. So,I was wondering if it's just for Singapore or all the export versions are 70km range.

Ah, ok, my bad. See how paranoid we are lmaoooo. Everyting is like "WHAT! THEY DIDN'T GIVE US THE FULL VERSION? THEY DISSALOWED THE MAIN DEFENSIVE CAPABILITIES?" SHUT THE F.....RONT DOOR!?

I think -- and this is only my personal opinion just so we're clear -- is that most of the ships from the different countries and suppliers have supplied the Aster missiles. Now whether they are 15s or 30s, I think the only ones that are 30s are in the two Bergamini FREMM since I read somewhere a while back or it was in one of the videos where president Sisis was making a public visit with MBZ from the UAE at Bernice for the opening. The Egyptian colonel who was giving them the tour was explaining the hatches and I vaguely remember him mentioning they were currently loaded with Aster 30s.

But as far as the other new ships acquired since 2013, the more interesting one is the French Aquitaine because of several reasons. It's ok they had to remove the NATO stuff that goes without saying. And I'm sure there were arrangements made for replacing them with equal or better non-NATO coms mostly etc. But what got me was the explanation on Wiki that says they're only Aster 15 on that ship.

6,000 tonnes
Armament:

• 16-cell SYLVER A43 VLS for 16 Aster 15 missiles.
• 8 × MM-40 Exocet block 3 anti-ship missiles
• 2 x double WASS B-515 launcher for MU 90 torpedoes
• 1 × OTO Melara 76 mm SR gun
• 2 × Nexter 20 mm Narwhal remote weapon systems

- Beyond that it's actually capable of holding and firing 32 missiles with the front 16 operating and the back 16 empty and closed off with a solid cover. I'm not sure if this was intentionally agreed to between both parties or the French had their own reason with Egyptian Navy agreeing that those additional 16 will be future land attack missiles and the French will not supply those, so then decided to have only 16 Aster and they're 15s not 30s. So that's where the Aquitaine stands which is really not a great defensive posture as far as those missiles ranges and quantities are concerned. However, I've always maintained that should a ship end up in a sea combat scenario where it needs to deploy all 16 Aster missiles, be it the Aster 15 or 16, then something planning went terribly wrong and the ship got stuck on its own being swarmed by an enemy in the air that is at least 20 aircraft and with the potential to lose a few of those as a result of the ship's VLS. But these ships are NOT meant to be caught alone in the middle of the vast sea where it could and would be ambushed by an enemy's aircraft to that extent. It should ALWAYS have some type of support, be it another pair of ships with its VLS as well as or immediate access to air power called and intercepted within minutes.

The stuff we've seen in Russia where a single tank with 4 or 5 crewman are trekking open fields completely exposed to simple and ridiculous drones custom attached with mortar shells they would drop and watch the turret come up and take out the drone was ridiculous beyond ridiculous. Such planning is some of the worst we've seen since WWI and trench warfare.

So I think the VLS is a last resort defensive capability where the primary one is that of the escort mechanism that has a series of already practices and organized plans to support several types of conditions to defend these very valuable and expensive ships without a question.

But this does give the Egyptian Navy a great option to install whichever system they'd like in the back half of 16 missiles that is currently empty and covered. We probably won't know about it until a couple of years after they do something to it lol. Just the way they are, they don't announce much of these types of things immediately.

And I think because it is a really high-tech ship filled with incredible stuff and super expensive with very high maintenance needs and cost that the EN decided it was going a different way and chose the Italian Bergamini FREMM and MEKO A200 series as their future needs for now.

I also bet (gentleman's bet) that the back VLS container will have future land attack cruise missiles of some type. It's possible to work something out with the French to supply the SCALP Naval for that perfect spot and capability of that ship will raise it from a 7 to a 9-1/2!

Currently it's entire weapons package for the Tahya Misr.

6,000 tonnes
Armament:

• 16-cell SYLVER A43 VLS for 16 Aster 15 missiles.
• 8 × MM-40 Exocet block 3 anti-ship missiles
• 2 x double WASS B-515 launcher for MU 90 torpedoes
• 1 × OTO Melara 76 mm SR gun
• 2 × Nexter 20 mm Narwhal remote weapon systems

Add 8 or 10 SCALP Navale to the rear container and that thing will be a wild sea monster beast! What do you think about that, Foinikas? @The SC & @Ghostkiller

 

[Gomig-21]

Nice pic of EAF Rafale EM single seater

Egyptian female officer and police corps.

Strike group made up of Gowinds, Oliver Perry Class frigates and I believe a pair of Gowinds if I'm not mistaken protecting the Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Anwar Al Sadat mistrals on an active mission with Ka-52 helicopters on board. Not sure but I do believe this is on their way to Crete for Medusa Exercise with the Hellenic Navy.

Ambassador MK was ahead of its time when 4 of them were specifically built for Egypt. Would've been great if they were able to build 10 or even a dozen of these super fast and specialized escort missile and patrol and escort ships. 4 just doesn't seem close to enough for a navy the size of the EN and the huge shore line and sea assets Egypt has. Wonder if this is/was a project that can be revitalized and started again, even if the design needs to change slightly to accommodate all the new technologies and features that have come along since these were built and get another half dozen or ten of them out there. They certainly are great ships for the EN just a very low number of them.

 

[Ghostkiller]

Strangely, we didn't see Ka-52 in the video while taking off or landing on the Mistral. @joker88 you were there with them hahaha?

@Foinikas when you will start to receive the F-35? Looking forward to see an air exercice with the EAF and the HAF. And maybe to discover some hidden thing of the F-35 because no one has them in the Middle East except Israel.

 

[Foinikas]

@Foinikas when you will start to receive the F-35? Looking forward to see an air exercice with the EAF and the HAF. And maybe to discover some hidden thing of the F-35 because no one has them in the Middle East except Israel.

They haven't signed the deal yet,but the government is crazy about getting F-35s.
We could probably get them around 2028. Maybe earlier if we pressure them.

 

[Gomig-21]

Strangely, we didn't see Ka-52 in the video while taking off or landing on the Mistral. @joker88 you were there with them hahaha?

Nice to see them already throwing out the MEKO A200 into the mix of a major naval exercise. You would've thought since it's only a month old in the EN that they would be still practicing separately and by itself or with just another support ship such as a Gowind or MK Ambassador then maybe after much of that, have them join a major exercise like this Medusa. But they're out there with that superb ship already nice and comfortable and operating it as if they've been at it for years! Eh el halawa de!? Very cool.

Next maybe we'll see it using some of its impressive weapons such as the MICAs VLS on some target practice banshees.

• 1 × Oto Melara 127/64 LW 127 mm main gun (possibly with VULCANO ammunition)
• 2 × Mauser BK-27 27mm guns (possibly SEAHAWK A2 model)
• 16× MM-40 Exocet block 3 anti-ship missiles
• 32 × VLS for MBDA MICA-NG VL surface to air missiles
• 2 × MU90 torpedo launchers
• 4 × Rheinmetall MASS decoy launchers
• 2 × WASS/Finmeccanica MORPHEUS acoustic countermeasures launching systems (on each side of the VLS cells. Navy Recognition originally though these were SAGEM NGDS decoy launchers, but a TKMS representative confirmed this actually is a WASS system

From Wiki.

@Foinikas when you will start to receive the F-35? Looking forward to see an air exercice with the EAF and the HAF. And maybe to discover some hidden thing of the F-35 because no one has them in the Middle East except Israel.

Which is probably why the HAF will most likely never bring them to Egypt or even use them in tandem with the EAF in any part of Greece (usually it's Crete where they perform these air and naval exercises) and no fault of the HAF or Navy. That's just the typical US demands for that aircraft that the countries on the top of the list that they want to keep as far away from seeing anything to do with it -- for obvious reasons -- that I guarantee you it will never happen. Not even the US coming to Egypt in their F-35s whether they're the A air force models or the B's VTOL Marines (probably the rarest that I don't even remember them showing up with their AV8B Harriers or even the USN's F-35C which IMO is the best model of the 3 with its larger body and especially wings). Pizza for whomever thinks the F-35 will ever show up in Egypt under any other flag within the next 5 years at least.

 

[Gomig-21]

Web capture close-ups.

@Ghostkiller, you can really see the stretched part of the fuselage in this pic. From the trailing edge of the wings to the point of the tail end looks a lot longer than most of all the typical IL-76s we usually see. I read somewhere I forget exactly which publication that these were two originally custom stretch designs either the Ukraine most likely or Russia built for Jordan which somehow didn't need them anymore and that's how they ended up with the EAF which is interesting since we just ordered the additional C-130Js, not to mention all the ones we already have as well as the CASA 295s and those Russian Antonov 74 etc. Seems like the EAF already has a large contingency of cargo aircraft but nothing of this size and magnitude which and uniqueness of the only two stretch models.

@Foinikas check out @ minute 50 the arrival of the 1st MEKO A200 to the EN in Alexandria out of a projected 4 purchased although @joker88 says we're getting 6 of these which should be amazing with the last one being built in Alexandria shipyard, but right at that moment you see it firing one of it's MICA NG VLS, different from the Aster 15s or 30s as per request from the Egyptian Navy.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1587711454420946944

While this is just fantastic to see, and the location of the pair of Al-Tariqs on these EAF Mirage 2000s is really outstanding, let's see some form of A2A at some point soon. Let's see what we're capable of doing in that super important aspect of military aviation and we've been super inpressed with all the A2G ordinances the EAF has been able to adopt and use especially between the F-16s and these Mirage 2Ks and of course the most lethal of all of them, the MiG-29s with their complete deadly package as well as the Rafales with their AAMS HAMMERs and SCALPs. All super great and probably working on even more types. But the only A2A we've seen of any new relevance has been that interesting, new and bizarre Sparrow-like missile and nothing else. Would LOVE to see them suddenly mount a Meteor on one of the Rafales. Or even newer MICA EM/ERs on the Mirage 2Ks like the Hellenic AF did with theirs. Granted their Mirages are newer and could absorb the integration of the new MICAs and perhaps ours are just too old to make that happen witout a major change in the avionics and linkage etc. But it really would be so satisfying to see them concentrate a bit more of the A2A aspect of these birds.

 

[joker88]

The Ka-52 is subject to changing the power unit and a filter for sand and heat, along with changing the paint to suit the work environment in the medium and red, and not for all helicopters. It is only 14 pieces.

As for the Mico 200, we are waiting for an official confirmation of the construction after completing the construction of the hull in the arsenal

 

[Ghostkiller]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1596055389111459840

Lots of visits between the 2 countries. So maybe there is something big that is happening.

 

[Foinikas]

@Foinikas check out @ minute 50 the arrival of the 1st MEKO A200 to the EN in Alexandria out of a projected 4 purchased although @joker88 says we're getting 6 of these which should be amazing with the last one being built in Alexandria shipyard, but right at that moment you see it firing one of it's MICA NG VLS, different from the Aster 15s or 30s as per request from the Egyptian Navy.

Great video,beautiful drone views. The ship is top-class. The interior is fantastic! I see the people are excited as well.

Is that in Alexandria? That guy is an Admiral? He could easily pass as Greek

I'll try to find the video on youtube to download it!

Which is probably why the HAF will most likely never bring them to Egypt or even use them in tandem with the EAF in any part of Greece (usually it's Crete where they perform these air and naval exercises) and no fault of the HAF or Navy. That's just the typical US demands for that aircraft that the countries on the top of the list that they want to keep as far away from seeing anything to do with it -- for obvious reasons -- that I guarantee you it will never happen. Not even the US coming to Egypt in their F-35s whether they're the A air force models or the B's VTOL Marines (probably the rarest that I don't even remember them showing up with their AV8B Harriers or even the USN's F-35C which IMO is the best model of the 3 with its larger body and especially wings). Pizza for whomever thinks the F-35 will ever show up in Egypt under any other flag within the next 5 years at least.

The Americans had F-35s at Souda and they didn't even bring them for an exercise to Egypt. They're still afraid of Israeli reactions. I find it ridiculous that they won't even sell you BVR missiles for the F-16s.