Why is it that they are/were so ineffective. I dont expect them to be on par with Western standards, but in the 6 Day War, Yom Kippur War, Gulf War, Balkans Wars, ect, theyve been so ineffective they may as well not exist. The Iraqis only got one air to air kill in the gulf war, for example, and in the Yom Kippur War, once the Egyptians left their SAM cover and used fighters instead, they were decimated.
Also, Im curious how effective the north vietnamese airforce was along with the North Korean/Chinese/Russian volunteer airforce was. From what I understand, the 10:1 kill ratio with Sabres and MiGs is heavily skewed.
Also, how effective do you think Iran's airforce would be against the Israelis and possibly americans
Air warfare is not like WW2 ground warfare where the air is full of lead and thousands die on both sides even when one side is winning the battle. Modern air war is a low-density, high-tech war where if you play your cars right you can use even small advantages to totally sweep the enemy aside. Both sides try to leverage the available assets as much as possible to avoid WW2-style dogfights, that means they use missiles that find their targets autonomously, fire them at the maximum distance, using ground-based or airborne radar to extend the sensor ranges or their aircraft way beyond visual range.
In WW2 pilot skills and the capabilities of their airframes were the most important things. A bit like with the knights of old - a pilot was supposed to be a warrior skilled at handling his "horse" (=the airplane) and his "lance" (=the guns, and brave enough to remember his training when the enemy appeared on the horizon or jumped at him with the sun in his back. A good pilot knew his "horse" and his "lance" and worked in a good team with his fellow pilots. His general told him when to take off and where to engage the enemy, and that was basically it.
Modern air combat is nothing like that. Today, a combat pilot is a man who can "drive" his plane to the right place, point the nose in the right direction and fire his missiles at some target that neither he nor his sensors can see. He needs to know his horrendously complex aircraft inside out so he has several years of technical training, almost on par with a bachelor degree in aeronautical engineering. He must be able to interpret confusing data within seconds and follow orders without hesitation because he's part of a team of men and complex machines. He also needs to be brave to the point of insanity, and have nerves of steel, because no matter how good he is at his job, if any part of the team fails him the enemy will blot him and all his colleagues out of the sky within seconds, before any of them even know the enemy is there.
The Iraqi pilots in the gulf wars were all good men and might have been supreme pilots and unflinching warriors, and their planes top-modern fighter aircraft, but that helped them not one bit when their team lost all its advantages on day zero of the war. In the air they were hopelessly outmatched, both in numbers and in the weapons arrayed against them. All that was left to them was to die so their country could boast of at least having tried to fight the enemy.
Basically to fight a successful high-tech air war, you need to be good at half a dozen things, and if any of them fails you, you lose everything.
Iran against the US would depend a lot on how and when this war is fought. Against a Desert Storm type of air offensive, staged from ground bases right on their border, Iran would be powerless. They'd have to hide their planes in caves and try to lure Americans into flying low so their plentiful AA can hit them. However in a stand-up war, where the US has maybe just one carrier task force near by and the Iranians have their entire air force arrayed against whatever the target is (Iraq? Azerbaijan? Afghanistan?), the Iranians might be able to intimidate the USAF into standing off for a week or so (until the rest of the USN /USAF arrives) and in that week they could bomb/attack their targets with some effectiveness.