"The capability that I am providing comes at less manpower on the
ground," North said.
Despite its growth, the Iraq Air Force remains unable to conduct
close-air support or major reconnaissance missions. The air force conducted
its first combat surveillance missions during the Iraq Army operation in
Basra in March 2008.
Under its new plan, the U.S. Air Force would expand operations of an
advanced UAV. The MQ-9 Reaper, produced by General Atomics, was described as
a large multi-role UAV that could conduct standard reconnaissance as well as
fire missiles toward targets.
"I'm looking at the opportunity to complement our manned airplanes with
an increased amount of unmanned attack platforms — the Reaper — so that I
get persistence overhead at a lower overall cost," North said.
So far, Reaper has not been assigned attack missions, officials said.
They said operations of both manned and unmanned platforms have been tightly
supervised to prevent attacks on civilian areas.
The U.S. Air Force has also enhanced its fighter-jets in Iraq with
reconnaissance pods. Officials said the B-1 bomber fleet would also be
equipped with video sensors.
"Every attack aircraft in the area of operations will have full-motion
video, and this will be a major enhancement of our capabilities," Brig. Gen.
Michael Moeller, commander of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, told the
Times. "This is a nontraditional mission for our fighters and bombers, but
we can do it without losing any of the other capabilities."
