Inventory of Saddams Iraqi AirForce(according to Roy Braybrook on operation desert storm)
-200 MIG-21(Including Chinese F-7)
-50-100 MiG-23MS (some with in-flight refuling capability)
-28 Mig-25 (8 were used for High altitude Reconnaissance)
-48+ MiG-29
-328 Mirage F1
-100 SU-7
-100 Mig-23BN
-60 Su-25
-50 MiG-19
-24 L-39
-50 Gazelle Helicopters
-50 Mi-24 Helicopters
-100 Mi-8
-6 An-12
-18 IL-76
-3 IL-76 modified for AEW role
I was active duty when 91 kicked off. My old squadron was deployed to KSA, and I knew those men... I knew what they were capable of in their brand-new F-15's. At the end of the 1980's, the USAF was at the absolute peak of its strength. Never before or since had the USAF been as potent in numbers and training. All of this came about because Reagan wanted to spend the Soviets into oblivion... So we had all the jets, parts, and fuel we'd ever have dreamed of for training.
If we could have an imaginary war of the 1990 USAF vs. the 2011 USAF, I'd take the 1990 force, purely based upon numbers and training.
Facing the USAF was a bit of a paper tiger. They had some hardware, but we knew they did not have the training and tactics to match. When the Air War kicked off, I told my wife, "If the Iraqis put up a fight, we'll have new jet aces inside of a week." What happened, as we now know, is that they put up a fight for maybe 3 days, and the losses were extraordinary. Nothing will kill a squadron morale worse than seeing 4 take off, and only one (or none) return. Soon, it became (for the Iraqis) "If we fly, we die." They stood down, then decided to run for Iran. We called them "Taco Bell missions" as in "Run for the border", an old Taco bell restaurant advertisement. The Taco Bell missions were all run, no fight, and while a lot of jets made it to Iran, a lot more were shot down enroute.
So in a nutshell, we had both training AND technology on our side, and the air war was very lopsided. That takes nothing away from the Iraqi pilots. It was out of their hands. Without excellent training, there is little they could have done. Kind of like trying to run a marathon but not training for it. You're going to get smoked by the guy who is in shape.