David Alexander
By David Alexander
President Barack Obama told a recent interviewer he did not want the US military to become Iraq’s air force. But he may have little choice.
Iraq had only a fledgling air force when the United States withdrew in 2011. Washington has agreed to bolster Iraqi air power by selling Baghdad 36 sophisticated F-16 multi-role jet fighters and 24 Apache helicopters.
But lengthy contract negotiations, long manufacturing lead times and slow bureaucracies have taken a toll. The Iraqi planes are just beginning to roll off the production line, four years after Congress was first notified of the planned sale and just as Baghdad is fighting for survival against jihadist militants.
As of August, only two of the $65m Iraqi F-16s had been handed over by Lockheed Martin Corp to the US government and none had reached Iraq. The jets are now held up by payment problems and deteriorating security, which has prevented work needed to prepare Balad air base for the planes.
US strikes this month have helped drive Islamic State back from sensitive Kurdish regions.
The slow delivery of US attack aircraft to Iraq has angered some Iraqi officials and raised questions about whether the Obama administration could have moved more quickly to speed the flow of helicopters and warplanes to Baghdad at a time when it was under increasing threat.
Nouri Al Maliki, who resigned as prime minister last week in the face of widespread criticism over his country’s political fragmentation, and other Iraqi officials have criticised the slow delivery of the F-16 aircraft. They blamed the slow-moving US bureaucracy and said Baghdad expected the planes sooner.
Hassan Jihad Ameen, an Iraqi lawmaker on the security and defence committee in the previous parliament, said he thought the United States had been slow to deliver because of concerns Maliki’s Shia-led government would use the planes in a way that intensified sectarian divisions with Sunnis.
While Iraq is running budget deficits, Ameen said he didn’t see the payments issue as a significant barrier.
Pentagon officials deny any deliberate slowing down of the aircraft deliveries. They note the United States has a $15bn foreign military sales programme with Iraq and has worked to accelerate deliveries of equipment where possible.
Lockheed Martin Corp said production of the Iraqi planes will be completed in late 2017. That is months ahead of the time frame projected in the initial contract announcement.
Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Washington-based Lexington Institute think tank, noted that “on schedule for the Washington bureaucracy is not the same thing as being timely in the war zone.”
“The US acquisitions bureaucracy is not good at getting things quickly to allies who are under threat,” he said. “Whether it’s planes for Afghanistan or planes for Iraq, the system always finds some reason to bog down.”
The kind of air power Iraqis are trying to buy from the United States would be an ideal tool for striking Islamic State militants as they travel in convoys across the country’s vast open spaces, said Michael O’Hanlon, a defence analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “If it becomes an emergency, which it clearly is, then I think there are various ways to get them some limited amounts of air power fairly fast if we decide to make a point of it and go around the usual bureaucratic rules a little bit,” O’Hanlon said.
Iraq’s air force under late dictator Saddam Hussein was one of the mightiest in the region, with about a thousand planes, including Soviet MiGs and French Mirages. It was badly damaged by the first Gulf War and the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the late 1990s.
By the time of the US invasion in 2003, the Iraqi air force had between 100 and 300 combat aircraft in service, most of them poorly maintained and eventually scrapped in the aftermath of the conflict.
Today, Baghdad has about a dozen Russian SU-25 warplanes and a half a dozen Russian-made attack helicopters, analysts estimate.
The remainder is comprised of small- and medium-sized US- and Russian-made helicopters and light, multi-passenger US-made aircraft used for reconnaissance, some of which can launch Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.
Building an air force that can control Iraqi air space has been a long-term project. The Pentagon first notified Congress of plans to sell F-16s to Iraq in September 2010, but the contract for the first 18 was not signed until December 2011. The contract for the second 18 came in April 2013.
The first Iraqi plane was flown in May this year and ceremonially presented to the Iraqi ambassador in early June at an event at the Lockheed plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Even as the initial planes were rolling off the assembly line, Islamic State militants were swarming into northwestern Iraq, pushing close enough to Baghdad to threaten Balad air base, about 80km north of the city.
Lockheed evacuated about two dozen staff who had been working with the Iraqi air force preparing for the arrival of the jets and helping with training.
A second defence official said the decision by Iraq and its contractors to withdraw personnel from Balad meant needed work at the base was not yet complete.
Defence officials said it was still too early even to talk about a delivery date for the Boeing-made Apache attack helicopters.
REUTERS
By David Alexander
President Barack Obama told a recent interviewer he did not want the US military to become Iraq’s air force. But he may have little choice.
Iraq had only a fledgling air force when the United States withdrew in 2011. Washington has agreed to bolster Iraqi air power by selling Baghdad 36 sophisticated F-16 multi-role jet fighters and 24 Apache helicopters.
But lengthy contract negotiations, long manufacturing lead times and slow bureaucracies have taken a toll. The Iraqi planes are just beginning to roll off the production line, four years after Congress was first notified of the planned sale and just as Baghdad is fighting for survival against jihadist militants.
As of August, only two of the $65m Iraqi F-16s had been handed over by Lockheed Martin Corp to the US government and none had reached Iraq. The jets are now held up by payment problems and deteriorating security, which has prevented work needed to prepare Balad air base for the planes.
US strikes this month have helped drive Islamic State back from sensitive Kurdish regions.
The slow delivery of US attack aircraft to Iraq has angered some Iraqi officials and raised questions about whether the Obama administration could have moved more quickly to speed the flow of helicopters and warplanes to Baghdad at a time when it was under increasing threat.
Nouri Al Maliki, who resigned as prime minister last week in the face of widespread criticism over his country’s political fragmentation, and other Iraqi officials have criticised the slow delivery of the F-16 aircraft. They blamed the slow-moving US bureaucracy and said Baghdad expected the planes sooner.
Hassan Jihad Ameen, an Iraqi lawmaker on the security and defence committee in the previous parliament, said he thought the United States had been slow to deliver because of concerns Maliki’s Shia-led government would use the planes in a way that intensified sectarian divisions with Sunnis.
While Iraq is running budget deficits, Ameen said he didn’t see the payments issue as a significant barrier.
Pentagon officials deny any deliberate slowing down of the aircraft deliveries. They note the United States has a $15bn foreign military sales programme with Iraq and has worked to accelerate deliveries of equipment where possible.
Lockheed Martin Corp said production of the Iraqi planes will be completed in late 2017. That is months ahead of the time frame projected in the initial contract announcement.
Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Washington-based Lexington Institute think tank, noted that “on schedule for the Washington bureaucracy is not the same thing as being timely in the war zone.”
“The US acquisitions bureaucracy is not good at getting things quickly to allies who are under threat,” he said. “Whether it’s planes for Afghanistan or planes for Iraq, the system always finds some reason to bog down.”
The kind of air power Iraqis are trying to buy from the United States would be an ideal tool for striking Islamic State militants as they travel in convoys across the country’s vast open spaces, said Michael O’Hanlon, a defence analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “If it becomes an emergency, which it clearly is, then I think there are various ways to get them some limited amounts of air power fairly fast if we decide to make a point of it and go around the usual bureaucratic rules a little bit,” O’Hanlon said.
Iraq’s air force under late dictator Saddam Hussein was one of the mightiest in the region, with about a thousand planes, including Soviet MiGs and French Mirages. It was badly damaged by the first Gulf War and the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the late 1990s.
By the time of the US invasion in 2003, the Iraqi air force had between 100 and 300 combat aircraft in service, most of them poorly maintained and eventually scrapped in the aftermath of the conflict.
Today, Baghdad has about a dozen Russian SU-25 warplanes and a half a dozen Russian-made attack helicopters, analysts estimate.
The remainder is comprised of small- and medium-sized US- and Russian-made helicopters and light, multi-passenger US-made aircraft used for reconnaissance, some of which can launch Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.
Building an air force that can control Iraqi air space has been a long-term project. The Pentagon first notified Congress of plans to sell F-16s to Iraq in September 2010, but the contract for the first 18 was not signed until December 2011. The contract for the second 18 came in April 2013.
The first Iraqi plane was flown in May this year and ceremonially presented to the Iraqi ambassador in early June at an event at the Lockheed plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Even as the initial planes were rolling off the assembly line, Islamic State militants were swarming into northwestern Iraq, pushing close enough to Baghdad to threaten Balad air base, about 80km north of the city.
Lockheed evacuated about two dozen staff who had been working with the Iraqi air force preparing for the arrival of the jets and helping with training.
A second defence official said the decision by Iraq and its contractors to withdraw personnel from Balad meant needed work at the base was not yet complete.
Defence officials said it was still too early even to talk about a delivery date for the Boeing-made Apache attack helicopters.
REUTERS
