Our Air Force is still heavily engaged in missions over Iraq:
“Let us be frank, we don’t have the combat or jet fighters or intercepting planes or air defense systems,” Iraqi Air Force commander Staff Lt. Gen. Anwer Hamad Amen Ahmed told the AP in April. “We are still far from an air force’s full potential. We will need the U.S. long after 2011.”
Through the first seven months of 2010, according to statisitics supplied by the U.S. Air Force, American pilots flew 4,620 “close air support” missions over ground troops in combat. The airmen only fired their weapons only 10 of those flights[.]
And we do lots of recon missions as well as air transport.
It is possible that many missions could be flown from bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Oman, or carriers in the Gulf, rather than bases in Iraq, but it would be better to be based in Iraq for timeliness and to help train the Iraqis to take over missions as their air force grows.
