Iraqi pilot training has also moved slowly amid sharp budget cuts at the
Defense Ministry.
"The maintenance here is a lot more slow paced," Julie Litz, a technical
sergeant, at the U.S. military's 321st Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron,
said.
The U.S. Air Force squadron has sought to train Iraqis to maintain their
fleet of three C-130 air transports. Ms. Litz and other U.S. advisers said
the Iraq Air Force has hampered the training effort by failing to ramp up
transport operations.
"It's a lot of DV missions here, not many cargo missions," Ms. Litz,
who works at the new Al Muthanna air base, said. "It makes it a lot slower
paced. They might fly two to three lines a week, where we might fly six
lines a day. We just turn it into a training situation here."
In some training sectors, progress has lagged behind as much as 50
percent behind schedule. Officials said this included the train-the-trainer
program, which would enable Iraqi officers to take over instruction from
their American colleagues.
For the C-130 program, Iraqi airmen have been instructed on the use of
alternating and direct current power. The next stage would be training in
pressurization and air conditioning.
"I try to teach one main thing a week," Ms. Litz said. "As soon as I get
an opportunity to train hands-on, I try to do it immediately. Anything my
career field has, I plan to pass on so they can fulfill their mission and
become a qualified, full-fledged air force on the C-130."
The Iraq Air Force has also been introduced to power equipment. For
decades,
the Iraqis have used hand tools rather than precision machinery.
On Sept. 27, 23 airmen received their helicopter pilot
wings from the Iraq Air Force, the first such graduates since at least 1997.
Another 12 airmen earned their fixed-pilot wings.
"These new airmen will arrive at their units at a time of rapid growth
as the Iraqi air force increases operations across the country in support of
all Iraqi security forces who are taking full responsibility for the
protection of the Iraqi people," U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert Kane, who
heads the training mission at the Iraq Air Force, said.
Another key area of training has been to identify and neutralize
explosives, including suicide car bombs. The U.S. Army, developing a new
method, has deployed the first of its new explosive hazards teams to train
Iraqis in the Nineveh province to counter explosives.
"A critical part of our mission is training the Iraqi security forces in
everything they need to know to replace U.S. forces as far as conducting
counter-IED operations," 1st Lt. Manuel Orozco, an army detachment
commander, said. "We train the trainers, so the Iraqis can take what they
learn from us back to their own units and teach them how to effectively
counter the IED threat."
The U.S. military has envisioned training the Iraqi military beyond the
2011 withdrawal deadline. Officials said a key effort was the training and
developing of an officers corps.
"We've worked with the Iraqi army and continued to train them, to
professionalize their NCO corps and their officer corps," U.S. Army Gen.
Richard Nash, head of Multinational Division south, said. "And that training
is being asked for still by the Iraqis. It isn't as if once we became
working the out-of-the-city program that they forgot about us."
