By ANN Senior
Contributing Editor Kevin 'Hognose' O'Brien
Everyone remembers the Iraqi Air Force. On paper, it was once
the most formidable force in the Middle East. But it has suffered
several beatings at the hands of the Israelis, one long and bitter
bloodletting against Iran, and the humiliation of having to run and
hide in the skirts of those same Iranians during the first Gulf
War. In the second Gulf War, the demoralized Iraqis did not even
try; most of you have seen the pictures of planes destroyed on
runways or in revetments, or of MiG-25Rs, a sleek Mach 2+ jet,
buried in the desert sands like a dog buries a bone.
The Iraqi Air Force, six feet underground. Says it all. Or does
it?
Iraqis are -- and if you have met any you will agree -- as
bright as any other people in the region. There is no reason they
cannot be trained to be great pilots. Napoleon said, famously, that
there are no bad regiments, only bad colonels, and the Iraqis have
had more than their share of those. I cannot blame the Iraqis for
not fighting hard for Saddam. Would you?
The future of Iraq, the region, and to a lesser extent the West,
depends on what sort of institutions the Iraqis develop. The
kind of military they produce will be of particular importance
because the military has traditionally been one of the few unifying
institutions in multi-ethnic Iraq. The old military was a dreaded
juggernaut that reached into every Iraqi family, spiriting away
unwilling sons, perpetrating horrible crimes. For an Iraqi patriot,
pride in the nation's powerful army was often tempered by
shame.
Iraq's new leaders are determined on a new course. They will
build a military that will be ethical, and subordinate to the rule
of law and the command of elected authority. They will have armed
forces that every Iraqi can look to in pride. Their models are the
British and American volunteer forces, the strength of which Iraqis
have all seen.
Nevertheless, an army cannot exist on a modern battlefield
without an air force. In addition, counterinsurgency -- something
Iraqi soldiers and airmen may still be doing long after American
soldiers and airmen have returned home -- cannot be effectively
waged without aviation. But what kind of aviation? There is not
much left of the old air force to build on: the pilots fled, the
skilled ground personnel scattered to the winds, the machines were
destroyed, and the maintenance shops were looted and
vandalized.
Rather than supersonic jets, the Iraqis are starting small, and
their first aircraft is an interesting choice. The Seeker
reconnaissance aircraft, designed in Australia and built in Jordan,
offers many of the strengths of a helicopter in an economical,
practical fixed-wing platform. The Seekers will patrol, among other
things, the long oil pipelines that are Iraq's economic umbilical
and have been a favourite target for insurgents. Two will be
delivered in July and fourteen more are on order.
The Seeker looks like a hybrid: the nose of a helicopter
attached to a larger version of a pod-and-boom type ultralight,
like a Kolb. It also looks a bit like a landlubber version of a
Republic Seabee. It has a high-mounted pusher engine and a
three-blade propeller, as well as conventional landing gear --
which bodes well for the stick-and-rudder skills of future Iraqi
pilots.
The airplane is simple,
powered by a four-cylinder Lycoming O-360-B2C engine with a fixed
pitch propeller. It is durable, with a steel tube fuselage forward,
forming a roll cage that is hidden behind an unstressed composite
skin. It sports a semi-monocoque alloy tail boom and all-metal
wings and tail surfaces. The performance of the machine is adequate
-- it is not a super-STOL airframe, and it is not fast. It cruises
at around 105 kts, although a 75% power claim is for 115. Military
convoys on the roads are driving faster than that.
Its strength is its ability to, for example, drop 20 degrees of
flap, throttle back to 30% power, and loiter along a powerline or
pipeline at 65 knots and 500 feet for five and a half hours. This
is not only appealing to operators of military surveillance
aircraft, but also to many civilian users of patrol planes: traffic
reporters, powerline inspectors, fish spotters and wildlife
agencies, to name just a few.
The beauty of the Seeker for a nation like Iraq is the ability
to do many "helicopter" missions for distinctly non-helicopter
money. Most helicopters cost millions; the Seeker stands FOB on the
ramp in Jordan for a little over $200,000, not including
surveillance equipment or IFR instruments. I don't suppose they
sell many IFR panels in this visual-surveillance bird.
However, the real
savings is not in the initial cost, but in maintenance. Even the
most economical helicopters like Robinsons and Enstroms require far
more maintenance than the simple Seeker, and have many more parts
that are life-limited -- Robinsons have a TBO on the entire
machine. Indeed, the Iraqis have been promised helicopters for free
from their friendly neighbors, the Jordanians (along with two C-130
cargo planes), but they will need time to be able to maintain such
complex machinery. As mentioned above, not much remains of the old
IAF on which to build. It is presently only 150 men strong,
although it is expected to grow to 500 by year's end.
The designers and makers of the Seeker SB7L-360 believe they
have hit the "sweet spot" between helicopters -- with their high
capabilities and high total cost of ownership -- and fixed-wing
aircraft -- with lower costs and less ability to perform the visual
surveillance - reconnaissance - inspection mission. At least as far
as the nascent Iraqi Air Force is concerned, they have.