Knight Ridder Washington Bureau April 1, 2003
Iraqi planes absent from combat
By Dave Montgomery
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia _ The Iraqi Air Force, what there is left of it, has been a no-show thus far in this war, but allied officials don't rule out the possibility of encounters with Iraqi pilots as U.S.-led forces advance on Baghdad.
Iraq's air force, the sixth largest in the world during the 1980s, was defeated easily in skirmishes with allied aircraft during the opening days of the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. It's now composed of a few hundred aging Soviet- and French-made fighters and no more than a half-dozen bombers.
Since the start of the current offensive against Iraq more than a week ago, allied combat planes have destroyed an undetermined number of Iraqi planes on the ground and have yet to encounter a single enemy aircraft in the air.
"They've forfeited," said Maj. Robert Novotny, an F-15 pilot from Miami. "Their air force hasn't done anything since we've started. They know that if they take off, we're probably going to get them."
Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Central Command, said Monday in Qatar that Iraqi flyers weren't willing to risk suicide by tangling with an allied air force composed of more than 1,600 aircraft.
"If they fly, they die," Brooks said. "It's as simple as that. If they come up, we'll destroy them."
Brooks said coalition pilots also would destroy Iraqi airplanes whenever they spotted them on the ground to further decimate Saddam Hussein's already threadbare air fleet.
Iraqi aircraft have been seen _ and destroyed _ near cemeteries and "protected areas," Brooks said.
Group Capt. Jon Fynes of Britain's Royal Air Force said, however, that allied forces were attacking only planes that seemed to be a threat and weren't determined to destroy the country's entire inventory. Iraq will need an air force after Saddam is ousted, he said.
Allied strategists and defense experts cautioned that it would be a mistake to completely disregard the Iraqi air force as a threat, saying Saddam eventually may order his pilots into the air in suicide counterattacks to protect the capital of Baghdad.
"Maybe he's saving them for later on," Fynes said. Iraqi pilots, he said, might try to stage "a real propaganda coup" by attacking noncombat aircraft such as tankers or surveillance aircraft.
A senior U.S. military officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Iraqi aircraft might be used to help ferry the leadership out of the country or to wage a diversionary attack on a neighboring country, such as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.
Iraq also could use light aircraft or unmanned air vehicles to spray toxic chemicals on advancing troops, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
Most of those options, however, are considered remote, since Iraq's military leadership apparently recognizes that the coalition's sophisticated intelligence net of surveillance aircraft and satellites would spot an enemy plane the instant it left the ground.
Moreover, Iraqi pilots and aircraft are considered no match for the vast allied fleet of combat aircraft, most of them equipped with the latest in electronic gadgetry. More than a decade of United Nations sanctions has prevented Iraqi pilots from flying over a large part of the country, diminishing their skills.
Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq had the largest air force in the Middle East, with more than 900 planes. But it lost more than 230 aircraft in the Gulf War, and many of those that survived lapsed into disrepair.
As of 2002, according to Globalsecurity.org, an online military-research organization, Iraq had about 480 aircraft of all types, including tankers, trainers and transports. Its combat arm had 100 to 300 fighters and six bombers.
Before the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi air force operated from 24 main bases and about 30 satellite bases. In subsequent years, Iraqi officials moved planes around and hid them in hardened shelters.
Iraq's inventory of usable aircraft includes French-made Mirage F-1s and Soviet-era MiG fighters and attack planes, some of which first saw service in the 1950s.
Copyright © 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
