Mike Kozlowski
BUFF Fan
10/12/03 4:34
I'm off to work for RedTeam again - this is part one of a series that will start in the next week or so about if there should be a new Iraqi Air Force, and if so, how do we put it together?
As always - comment and critique are eagerly sought and welcome!
Mike
THE NEXT IRAQI AIR FORCE
By Mike Kozlowski
Sometime in the next few years, a decision will be made on how – or even whether – to rebuild what had once been one of the most fearsome organizations of its kind in the Middle East: the Iraqi Air Force. From its post-World War one origins as an offshoot of the RAF, it had a fairly solid combat tradition with state of the art aircraft against well-trained and equipped opponents, including the 1967 Middle East War against Israel and the first Gulf War against Iran. However, after Saddam Hussein took power, it became increasingly politicized – and worse, poorly organized and controlled. In its most critical test – Operation Desert Storm (ODS) – it was either wiped out on its ramps or fled to the territory of a former enemy.
Twelve years later, it was reduced to serving as live bait in a futile attempt to draw Coalition aircraft into SAM ambushes. During Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), its few surviving aircraft either never left their runways or were buried in an attempt to hide them from Coalition attacks.
Should the Iraqi Air Force be rebuilt? If so, how? And does Iraq even need an air force? I hope to examine these questions in the following paper.
A Brief History Of the Iraqi Air Force
The Iraqi Air Force (IqAF) is considered to have its beginnings on April 22nd, 1931, when thirty-seven Iraqis – trained by England’s Royal Air Force – arrived back in Iraq after four years of training at the RAF College at Cranwell.
The IqAF was fairly small under British tutelage, but this did not stop them from receiving reasonably up to date equipment and training. The British may, however, have regretted their efforts when the IqAF fought its first combat actions in the May 1941 revolt against Britain. They also participated in the effort to destroy the Israelis in the 1948 war. In the end, the Iraqis do not seem to have been too terribly upset with the British – most of their equipment was British, most notably variants of the DeHavilland Vampire and the Hawker Hunter. Starting in the early 60s, however, the IqAF began to purchase more and more equipment from the Soviet Union, and their next – and final – major purchase of Western aircraft was from France for nearly 100 Dassault Mirage F.1EQ/BQ fighter-bombers.
In the meantime, however – most notably after the rise of Saddam Hussein - the IqAF began to receive aircraft that seem to have been purchased not so much for their tactical utility as for their intimidation or prestige value – for instance, the purchase of Tu-16 Badger/H6-D medium and Tu-22 Blinder bombers certainly gave the Iraqis an advantage – the only long-range bomber fleet in the Middle East/Persian Gulf region. These large, powerful aircraft would certainly give pause to anyone who thought they were outside of Saddam’s reach. However, by the late seventies, every nation bordering Iraq (save Kuwait) had the ability to deal with a mid-50’s era bomber threat quite capably. In the case of the Tu-22s, the choice may have been even less wise – although the Blinder is a large, fast (Mach 1), impressive aircraft with a 20,000-lb payload, even in Soviet service it was notoriously short legged and difficult to maintain. In Iraqi service, it would have been at best a mixed blessing. At worst it would have been a serious drain on resources and manpower.
The purchase of Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft is another example of style over substance. The Fencer gave the IqAF a capability that compared favorably with the midrange models of the F-111 – all weather, day/night, and low-level precision strike. However, there seems to have been little effort to use it to the utmost of its potential, and it was because of its potential that the IqAF had to jealously hoard them, and their crews certainly never got the kind of training that would enable them to pull off the kind of long-range penetration raids that might have done awful damage to the Coalition during the buildup phase of Operation Desert Shield. In the end, it was a powerful capability that the IqAF never had the ability to use. In the end, several were destroyed in their hard shelters in 1991 while most of them were evacuated to Iran – where presumably they still serve alongside their sisters that the Ayatollahs purchased some years later. The purchase of other MiG and Su series aircraft is much less debatable, and even the purchase of MiG-25 Foxbats – both the standard interceptor and recon versions – is reasonable, although the complexity of these aircraft might have been a strain on the Iraqis. But in the end, even though most of these aircraft were inferior in some ways to their Western counterparts, they were still highly capable of putting up a solid fight when used properly. But as the results of the Iran-Iraq war would show, it seems that the IqAF wasn’t at all sure how to use the weapons they had.
On paper, both air forces were configured to fight a Cold War era battle. However, the Iranian Revolutionary Air Force, which was able to boast front-line American equipment, was badly crippled by purges, defections, and parts shortages. The IqAF had aircraft that could take on the IRAF and win, but failed to use them to their full potential. The IqAF was able to pull off some fairly sophisticated, long range strikes against the Iranians, usually with their Mirage F.1s. However, these were relatively few and far between. It is not clear whether or not this was due to a lack of logistic support or a fear of losing an appreciable fraction of the IqAF in one fight. The IqAF did get some very good experience in CAS during the war, and the final Iranian defeat can be in large part credited to the excellent support the IqAF gave to Iraqi forces trying to stop the last big Iranian offensive in early 1989. These two examples alone indicate that the IqAF had the ability to learn and use their airpower in a truly influential capacity.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said in the realm of air-to-air combat. Iraqi CAP and Counter Air were both performed in the same way – at high altitude, high speed, and with little attempt to engage the enemy. The result was that Iraqi air-to-air combat mostly consisted of maximum range missile shots that may or may not necessarily have been within the launch envelope. If an Iranian aircraft should illuminate – or worse, lock on to – an IqAF aircraft, the entire Iraqi flight was apt to leave the area immediately at high speed. For USAF and USN pilots schooled in a tradition of skilled aggressiveness, this would be inconceivable, but for the Iraqis – who hewed to Soviet traditions of tight ground control and little individual initiative – it probably made a great deal of sense. It appears that one of the worst threats the Iraqis faced was the IRAF fleet of Grumman F-14A Tomcats equipped with AIM-47 Phoenix missiles. Before parts shortages grounded most of the fleet, the Tomcats did heavy damage to Iraqi raiders, who had a tendency to fly straight and level – thereby playing to the AIM-47’s strengths. At no time did the Iraqis ever try to overwhelm the Tomcats with sheer numbers, which would have been a practical, if inelegant, solution. The only real response the IqAF ever came up with was to disperse its strikers as far south as Oman so as to make it impossible for the few operational Tomcats to cover the entire reach of Iranian airspace.
The short breathing space between the end of the Iran-Iraq War and the invasion of Kuwait does not seem to have been wisely used by the IqAF. Given the nature of the Saddam Hussein regime, it is not likely that any tough, comprehensive review of tactics or operations was ever done. Since officially Iraq considered itself to have won, there would have been little incentive to do so in any event. There are two other factors that may have militated against any real self-examination.
First, the war with Iran lasted nine years, and sheer exhaustion may very well have won out over any desire to see what could be done to improve the IqAF’s performance. Secondly – and more ominously – the attack on the frigate USS Stark (FFG-31) may have given the IqAF’s leadership a false sense of security about their abilities and equipment. Although it had been a devastating attack, the fact is that Stark was running with her close-in weapons systems down and a badly misplaced sense of security in a war zone where back-shooting civilian vessels was the norm. The have pulled off an attack like that – and then escaped unscathed afterwards – could only have increased the IqAF’s confidence in itself.
There was some work in the area of force multipliers – at least two IL-76 Candid transports were fitted out as tankers, and a three more – renamed the Adnan – were converted into AWACS aircraft, though their French-built radars had nowhere near the capabilities of the USAF’s E-3 Sentries. But for the most part, the IqAF operated in a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mode until the invasion of Kuwait.
The IqAF’s performance during the invasion of Kuwait was not promising. The IqAF – along with Iraqi Army artillery - had been tasked with keeping the Kuwaiti Air Force (KAF) down so that four divisions could roll up Kuwait, and a massive heliborne assault could be launched on Kuwait City with the intent of capturing the Royal Family. The strikes started at 0200 local on 2 August 1990, and every one of them hit their marks on time. Unfortunately, the KAF and its bases were far from destroyed – they were remarkably intact, and they were angry. There does not seem to have been any attempt at all to follow up, and worse yet there was no effort made to even try and degrade the sturdy Kuwaiti SAM and AAA batteries.
When the helicopters – nearly one hundred transports and escorts – went in at dawn, they sailed into a hornet’s nest. Two full SAM batteries brought down at least fourteen helos. But once the Iraqis had gotten past the SAMs, worse was waiting for them. The KAF had gathered over Kuwait City and jumped into a wild dogfight that brought down between sixteen and twenty-one more. The fight, which took place at very low altitude literally among the buildings of Kuwait City, bought enough time for the Royal Family to escape. The IqAF, tasked with flying CAP for the helicopters, was at medium altitude and orbiting safely out of range of the KAF fighters. The KAF’s bases weren’t shut down until later that afternoon, when more air and artillery strikes brought operations to a halt. Between the late afternoon of August 2 and the early morning of August 3, most of the KAF evacuated to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, although some operated from highways near the Saudi border until late on August 4th. The final score – thirteen KAF aircraft and helicopters against between thirty and thirty six Iraqi aircraft and helicopters lost – is telling, especially in light of the fact that the KAF was outnumbered in combat aircraft alone by almost 10:1.
The air war that followed has been detailed to such an extent that I will not review it in depth here. It ended with much of the IqAF dead in its hard shelters or escaping to Iran, and the loss of two thirds of its base to the no-fly zones. In the years that followed, the IqAF slowly faded into obsolescence and irrelevance. Crippled by parts and fuel shortages, the last missions of the IqAF were feints intended to lure Coalition pilots into badly laid SAM traps so as to give Saddam Hussein prisoners to show off and threaten. In this final task they were unsuccessful.
Of their surviving operational combat aircraft when Operation Iraqi Freedom began in March of 2003, not a single one ever left its base. Many – including all of the MiG-25 recon variants – were partially disassembled, then shoved into hastily dug trenches and buried, presumably for reassembly after an Iraqi victory. Whoever was in charge should have saved themselves the fraud – the aircraft were neither properly disassembled nor prepared for burial, and all recovered so far have been beyond repair.
Why Should There Be A New Iraqi Air Force?
It is axiomatic that an enemy cannot be fully and completely defeated without ‘boots on the ground’ – infantry taking and occupying territory. There were many claims after Operation Desert Storm about a cheap and easy ‘aerial occupation’ by way of the no-fly zone. Sadly, they do not hold up. Although twelve years of patrols probably kept Saddam from getting revenge upon Kuwait, it did nothing to protect the Iraqi people. Saddam’s pursuit of advanced weaponry, his mass-murder policies, and his tribal-based kleptocracy did not end until Coalition troops physically occupied his cities, bases, and research facilities.
But if a war cannot be won without boots on the ground, it almost can no longer even be fought without wings in the air, especially with present US doctrine, which often calls for units to go in outnumbered by enemy forces. It has been accepted almost to the point of dogma that an attacker must outnumber the defender 2:1 simply to have a good chance at victory – but US forces went into Iraq outnumbered by at least 2:1, and cut through Iraq in just about a month. The superb training, motivation, and equipment of the ground forces were three parts of the equation, but the fourth was airpower.
Airpower ensured that no Iraqi maneuver units ever got close enough to Coalition forces to launch a counterattack. Airpower insured that Iraqi command and control systems were too disorganized to ever mount a coherent, credible defense. Airpower insured that forces outnumbered and outgunned on the ground could take vital objectives with few – or no- casualties. Airpower was able to strike distant targets in complete darkness, or under weather conditions that the Iraqis believed would shelter them, in order to pave the way for the ground forces. Airpower must be considered a critical facet of defense or offense for any nation that hopes to build modern, capable military forces. It is a priceless asset when everyone around you is A) hostile, and B); has its own air force. It should be remembered that thanks to Saddam Hussein’s adroit diplomatic skills, Iraq fought all-out wars against three of its six neighbors, engaged in blunt intimidation of a fourth, engaged in an uneasy standoff with a fifth, and a wary marriage of convenience with the sixth. An air force is not only a vital part of a military establishment, but in an environment like that described above, it is an insurance policy.
In the Middle East, an air force is in many ways pretty much a requirement for several reasons. First – and foremost – it has the ability to deter an attack completely, or slow one down or stop it entirely (depending on the nature of the enemy attack). Secondly, by its very nature, airpower – by way of recon or ESM - can be used to forewarn of an enemy’s intentions. Now, it helps if you have a powerful patron who can use their airpower to defend you. For instance, Saudi Arabia has a very competent air force, but not a terribly large one, because up until recently it could rely on the United States Air Force to defend it. Iraq – assuming that we will remain dedicated to it as a reasonably democratic and secular state – will probably become the recipient of the efforts that we once expended on behalf of the House of Saud. However, this isn’t the Cold War, and it’s not even the post Desert Storm era. American policy makers are keenly aware that there is little sympathy – and almost as much money - for the Saudis, or any other established Middle Eastern government any more, with the notable exception of the Israelis. It is unlikely that we will maintain huge bases and deployments along the lines of Prince Sultan AB (in area, larger than the District of Columbia) or Operations Northern and Southern Watch. We will stay in the area, but as time goes by these commitments will probably be reduced to the lowest possible level once Iraq begins to stand on its own. The US has already started training a new Iraqi Army – as of this writing (5 October 2003) its first units have stood up under US Army training and guidance. I believe that we must start looking now at what must be done to eventually stand up an independent Iraqi Air Force, geared primarily towards the defense of a democratic Iraq in the absence of a major USAF/USN presence.
An army – in relative terms – is easy to build, and only marginally more difficult to equip. A great deal of civilian technology, from firearms to uniforms and transport, can be used ‘off the shelf’ with little or no modification other than perhaps a coat of paint. And an army, until it passes a certain size and level of technology and training, is of little or no threat to its immediate neighbors. (In the Middle East it can be argued that in nations like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, an army’s primary mission is the suppression of the people it ostensibly defends.) But an air force is a different matter entirely. An air force is capable of extending a nation’s reach with a distance, speed, and precision that no army can ever hope to match. With modern precision weaponry, a sufficiently advanced and well trained air force has the ability to decapitate another nation’s leadership – something that was, without the use of nuclear weapons, unthinkable within recent memory. And in the Middle East, a well-trained, technologically advanced air force has a ‘quantity and quality’ all its own – just ask anyone who has ever faced the Heyl l’Avir, or waited for the brief heartbeat’s worth of warning before a cell of B-52s obliterated an Iraqi position.
But most of all, an air force – a well trained, properly equipped, and combat capable air force – is expensive. Off the shelf equipment is pretty much out of the question except for the most basic applications (light transport, patrol), and even then, airplanes by their very nature cost a great deal of money simply to purchase and maintain, to say nothing of what it takes to train and maintain the aircrews and support personnel. With that in mind, trying to assemble or rebuild an air force from scratch is going to require a good deal of forethought as to what kind of threats one faces, and then how to use the resources one has to meet those threats. When the US gets around to helping Iraq re-establish its air force (and it will eventually, lest we re-establish the deployment merry-go-round in Iraq with USAF units that are being stretched increasingly thin), both the US and Iraq will have to take those points into consideration before deciding what to do and how to do it. With that in mind, I would like to take a look in the next part of this article at a notional Iraqi Air Force – what kind of threats it should be configured to face and what kind of equipment it should have to face those threats.
=============================================================
"...Cry Woe, Ruin, and Decay - but the worst is Death, and Death shall have His day."
--Shakespeare, Richard III, Act II, Scene II