The Middle East The crisis in the Gulf occupies the headlines on a daily basis and believe me, I'm following the situation closely. What is most interesting, is the large array of air power that has been assembled to counter the ground power of Iraq. A full analysis is in the works and will be covered in Air Power soon. We're holding off to see if war is going to break out. If it does, and I for one pray that it doesn't, it will be an opportunity to see just how well high technology airplanes perform in actual combat. To date, the US and its UN allies have deployed F15C's, F-15E's, F-16C's, F-117A's, F-1117's, A-10A's, AV8B's, F-18A's, Jaguars and Tornado F-3's into Saudi Arabia. Offshore on carriers, the US Navy has more F-18's, F-14A's, A-6E's and A-7E's. The UAE and other gulf states allied to the cause have a smattering of Mirage V's, Mirage 2000's, Mirage F-1's, Alpha Jets and Hawk trainers. The Saudi's have F-15's and F-5B's. Against them, Iraq can muster about 60 Mirage F-I's, some two hundred MG-21F's, MiG21MF's, and MiG-23BN's fighters; a squadron of export MiG-29's and SU-24's; and close to 100 or more SU-7, SU-22 attack planes. For air defense they have SA-2, SA-3, SA-6, SA-7, SA-8, SA-9, SA-14 and Roland missiles plus ZSU-234 and numerous other guns of all calibres. Aren't you glad you bought Air Strike; you've got date cards for just about every possible match up. Well, that's it for this issue's current events. See you soon! FLASH! 2400 01 JUL90 ORIGINS - MESSAGE FOLLOWS - STOP YANKS DOWN IN FLAMES! ANOTHER CANADA DAY TRIUMPH FOR MAPLE-LEAFED FLYBOYS! VETERAN CANADIAN PILOT RAY LAMENT CLAIMS FIRST PLACE. FOURTH SUCCESSIVE AIR SUPERIORITY TOURNAMENT WIN FOR CANUCKS! STOP. OBSERVERS NOTE CLOSE COMPETITION! YANK LEADER EARNS FRUSTRATING SECOND PLACE IN NO-HOLDS BARRED FINAL DOGFIGHT. NATIONAL ENQUIRER CLAIMS TOURNAMENT DESIGNER BRIBED, PITCHED IN WITH DASTARDLY CANUCKS AFTER GIVEN FREE T-SHIRT. STOP. FILM AT ELEVEN! Greetings fans, the big news from ORIGINS, as you can tell, is that the Canadians managed to hang on to the Air Superiority Tournament Trophy for another year. This year's contest however was no milk run! The playing field consisted of 26 determined pilots, only four of whom could be called new guys. For the other 22 players, it was like a fraternity reunion. Most had been in several of the previous years' tourneys and almost everybody knew each other. Suffice it to say, competition was stiff, and as a matter of fact; a little too serious at times (see tournament report). This year's events included a beginner's tourney on Thursday morning, the multiround main tourney over Friday and Saturday, a Friday night seminar followed by a Canadian ran Air Superiority game with miniatures, and a Saturday evening Air Strike scenario showcasing some 2nd edition rules. There was also plenty of open gaming in between tourney rounds. Fun was had by all as usual and if you've never competed, but wanted to, make plans to be at ORIGINS "91" in Baltimore early. Test your mettle against the now famed Canuck Legion, or the Fabulous "Baker Boys" from California, or worse, just sit across the table and wither under Roger "Woof' Taylor's steely eyed stare (actually, Roger's about die most mellow Air Sup. gamer I've ever seen). New Products ORIGINS had very little to offer the air enthusiast. The only full-fledged Air game to appear was Nova's modern Jet air combat picture book game: "Jet Eagles". A review of it and last year's release, Wing Leader, will be forthcoming. A solitaire game of carrier battles in the Pacific is in the works by Jon Soughard (Tokyo Express Designer) and will be produced by TAHGC for release around Christmas time. Another solitaire game, "Iron Hand", is about the Air War over North Vietnam and is currently in the final stages of rewrite. This one's by Gary Morgan (Flight Leader/Tac Air Designer) and I got a peek at it during ORIGINS. It's operational level in scale and looks good. According to Gary, It will also be useful for generating Air Sup. battles for the real fanatics. Miniature Jets are gaining appeal and the number of 1/300 and 1/285 scale models now available is slowly increasing. Two Air Power subscribers have designed useful and functional wire stands for mounting the miniatures and if you're interested, they are willing to sell ready made stands or the plans for them. The two designs are different and Air Power hasn't fully evaluated either, so we can't tell you which is better. Your best bet is to write these guys and get the info yourselves. Richard Kurtin 1768 Orchard St Des Plaines, IL 60018 Stephen Madjanovich 247 St Andrews St Cambridge, Ontario N1S 1N6 CANADA Back to Table of Contents -- Air Power # 10 Back to Air Power List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by J.D. Webster This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com