Posted on 03/17/2008 5:51:25 PM PDT by SandRat
WASHINGTON, March 17, 2008 – Iraq’s air force, with help from a U.S. transition team, attained a tenfold increase in its number of weekly sorties and doubled the size of its fleet over the past year, a military official said today.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert R. Allardice, commander of the Coalition Air Force Transition Team, said the Iraqi air force in 2007 evolved from flying about 30 sorties a week to 300 by the end of the year. At the same time, the force’s fleet grew from 28 airplanes to 56.
“The Iraqi air force began the movement from just a dream on paper to a force that will eventually become a credible air force serving the nation of Iraq,” Allardice told Pentagon reporters here.
The general also noted that the number of Iraqi airmen grew in the past 14 months from about 700 to roughly 1,350, plus about 450 operators currently undergoing training.
Now in the 12th month under his command, Allardice lauded the “absolutely remarkable” progress of the coalition team responsible to the Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq for standing up the Iraqi air force.
“When I showed up, the Iraqi air force was just barely starting their growth spurt,” he said. “Thanks to your United States Air Force, largely, with an infusion of about a total of 360 people and a lot of hard work on the Iraqi and multinational security transition corps (fronts) here, we've actually seen the Iraqi air force grow significantly in the past 12 months.”
In 1991, Iraq had the world’s sixth-largest air force. But coalition forces largely obliterated the corps during operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Rebuilding Iraq’s air force began recently, the general stated in a previous news conference, with the first serious efforts beginning in earnest in 2005.
In the past year, the transition team has transformed the Iraqi air force from a fledgling corps to an active force that regularly carries out critical transportation, supply and surveillance missions. On the ground in the meantime, the Iraqi air force established an operations command center and a pilot school, plus a technical training school and an academy that has graduated its first class of basic trainees.
Allardice said the current focus is on building an Iraqi air force capable of further supporting the counterinsurgency effort by the end of 2008, with an expected 100 aircraft flown by operators capable of providing three times the current level of surveillance and intelligence. By 2009, Allardice said, he expects Iraqis to be able to defend their air sovereignty, which he characterized as the next strategic milestone.
“We are also focusing on building the institution that can actually perform the management (and) leadership functions of that air force,” he said. “And it's a pretty exciting thing, but it's also a very challenging effort.”
As the Iraqi air force reaches for new heights in counterinsurgency and combat capabilities, the current fleet continues to inspire the citizens of Iraq, the general said.
“The first time I flew on a Huey, it was the look on the face of the Iraqis that I could see as I flew over them that made me fully appreciate the impact of having an Iraqi aircraft in the air visible to the Iraqi people,” he said. “That, in my mind, is more important than shooting somebody from an airplane.”
I think right now I’d rather see their government actually getting the infrastructure working better. I mean, it took them 52 votes to get the stars on (or off) the damn country flag. Can’t we expect a little more out of them to get power and water and sanitation working? Our army is doing it’s end of the deal being a stabilizng presence, but what the hell? They shouldn’t be taking breaks or anything like that.
Very good...
Yea it only took us 300 years to become something. Whats wrong with people give them time it took us from 1776 to 1815 to come up with a standing army and a navy. We did not get a real air force until 1939 for gods sake stop the liberal clap trap
It’s not liberal claptrap. It’s about priorities. They aren’t pulling their weight on the stuff only they can do. Even Petraeus is vented about this.
I am happy that they are training army and police so they can internally help with stability. But it seems like they aren’t doing much of anything to get things back to the levels they were under Hussein. They are spending time on small things and ducking big things that they are responsible for getting done - we can’t do everything for them.
What a joke. Can you imagine these people flying a sortee?? NOT
I understand your sentiment. We can’t wait 300 years for them to take care of themselves. The folks in the late 18th Century in the New World were much more human-like than the backwater Middle Eastern muslim culture we are dealing with. You can’t compare the two. Apples and oranges.
While i do think we need to hang in there a while longer, we must also have an exit strategy. We have other problems to deal with but we need to shore this up so its not a waste. The dimwit democrats don’t seem to understand this principle.
I totally agree with you we have to stay there. But the government there needs to get things going because the people there are only going to hold faith in their government for so long. We’re not going to protect the government from the citizens if they revolt because the govt is sitting around arguing about flag designs.
Would we sit around 5 years if our govt couldn’t get potable water to us for 5 years, or we’d only have power a couple hours a day, if lucky, or sanitation was not working...I know it’s not a totally fair comparison, but eventually if the government doesn’t start getting these things fixed and provided, while we’ve got things relatively stable for the middle east, it’s going to fall apart. And it won’t be OUR fault, it will be theirs, but we’ve got to try to prod them to do only the things THEY can do to get things going...
Just curious. Who did, have a “real” airforce before 1939?
All the Iraqis need is an airlift wing. The ability to ferry troops and materiel. A regional fleet of assault helicopters, and some trainer aircraft. They can buy their own fighters and interdiction equipment. Until they do, we keep a base at Bagram at one near Kirbil to fly CAPs until they purchase enough hardware to defend themselves against their idiot neighbors. Of course we would provide emergency assistance from the Persian Gulf. We always have a carrier there and we have some pretty top notch stuff located in our Gulf Bases. We can’t keep spending money on them, and while we are dealing with an economic downturn, that money would be much better spent at home.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not cut and run. I see a presence in Iraq for at least another 10 years. But we need to start pairing it down.
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