More than 5,000 airmen will remain in Iraq - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

More than 5,000 airmen will remain in Iraq

More than 10 percent of U.S. forces left in Iraq when combat operations officially end Aug. 31 will be airmen conducting close-air support, airlift and intelligence-gathering missions, and working with Iraqi security forces.

In a symbolic end to a seven-year mission in Iraq, the last Army combat unit, the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., left Iraq on Aug. 18 — two weeks ahead of schedule. The mission in Iraq moves into a new, non-combat phase Sept. 1, when the nation’s security responsibilities begin shifting primarily to Iraqi forces. The move will be marked by a name change, as Operation Iraqi Freedom becomes Operation New Dawn.

About 50,000 U.S. troops will stay behind through the transition — about 5,800 of them airmen, said Maj. Gen. Joseph Reynes, director of the Air Component Coordination Element for U.S. Forces-Iraq.

“People ask me ‘How long is the Air Force going to be in Iraq?’ all the time,” he said. “The thing I bring up to them is the security agreement states U.S. forces will be gone by December 2011. That’s where we’re sitting right now.”

Airmen have kept busy this year getting troops out of Iraq. For the past six months, the Air Force has conducted an average of 82 tanker and airlift sorties a day there, Reynes said.

“We’ve continued to execute combat missions and combat support of all their missions while at the same time drawing down our forces from combat to mission support,” he said.

This time last year, about 12,000 airmen were deployed to Iraq. After about 200 leave by the end of the month, about 5,800 will remain there.

Most of them will conduct traditional Air Force missions, such as maintaining F-16 Fighting Falcon, MC-12 Liberty, MQ-1 Predator and C-130 Hercules aircraft in Iraq, with additional assets, including more remotely piloted aircraft and C-17 Globemasters, in the surrounding theater of operations, Reynes said.

About 1,500 of the airmen will work directly with Iraqis as they build their military and police force and their airports. Explosive ordnance disposal technicians and intelligence specialists, for example, will teach counter-explosives skills, while other airmen will guide the Iraqi civilian aviation authority as it assumes control of more of its airspace.

“We have our controllers embedded with Iraqi controllers, working that airspace right now,” he said. “That helps us train them and each day they grow more controllers. We also have [American] liaison officers once we turn over the airspace. We hope that within the next couple years, they’ll be certified in the international community for full air operations.”

As of Aug. 18, all Iraqi airspace above 24,000 feet had been turned over to the Iraqis, Reynes said. On Sept. 1, airspace 15,000 feet and higher in the northern sector of Iraq also will be turned over. Plans call for that airspace in the center and southern sectors of Iraq to be turned over in four to six months, and for all Iraqi airspace to be controlled by Iraqis by the summer or fall of 2011.

Reynes, who has spent 44 months in Iraq since 2003, has watched the Iraqi force grow from 2,800 last spring to almost 7,000.

“When I was first here in 2003, there was no Iraqi air force,” he said. “We’re now bedded down with the Iraqi air force and training with them, going from 28 aircraft four years ago to now well over 100 aircraft.”

Iraqis are doing their own intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and some of their own pilot training and C-130 cargo lift, Reynes said.

“By 2012, I think they’ll be about 12,000,” he said. “They’re moving rapidly to expand their air force, but we can’t just train a pilot overnight, and you can’t build an air base overnight. It takes time.”

Airports in Iraq also are in transition. In 2006 and 2007, military flights made up more than 50 percent of all aviation there. Now that percentage is down to 25 percent.

Last spring, an average of 50 to 80 civilian flights were flying in and out of Baghdad International Airport every day, Reynes said. Today, there are more than 300 flights a day.

Reynes, who is leaving Iraq after 18 months, will move to his next assignment as director for joint experimentation at Joint Force Command in Norfolk, Va. There, he will once again work for Army Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. Forces-Iraq.

“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve over here again,” Reynes said. “The Iraqis are excited and hungry about moving forward, and it is an honor to work with them.”

DISCUSS: AIRMEN IN IRAQ