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.

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