The Coalition Air Force Transition Team: rebuilding Iraq's air force

Air & Space Power Journal, Winter, 2007 by Robert R. Allardice, Kyle "Brad" Head

The most difficult challenge in building a credible air force entails quality people. Getting the right people, in the right place, at the right time, with the right training and equipment is critical to the success of rebuilding the force. The effort to recruit, educate, train, and integrate technically competent people from this war-torn nation has proven extremely difficult. More specifically, identifying and grooming quality leaders takes considerable time and concentrated effort. To fill the gap between authorized and assigned positions, IqAF leaders were encouraged to reach out to former IqAF members. Unfortunately, the average pilot who returned to the IqAF was approximately 43 years old, with most flying their last sortie--usually in some variant of a MIG--in January 1991. Clearly, rehiring former pilots was not a viable long-term solution. The only realistic approach to filling the gap--a method that allowed the CAFTT to make a lasting change to the culture of the IqAF--involved recruiting and training to produce a new generation of Airmen.

As recruiting efforts began generating qualified candidates, the herculean task of building an entire training and accessions pipeline fell to the 370th expeditionary Advisory Training squadron at Taji Air Base, home of the Iraqi Air Force Training school. In March 2007, five members from the 370th started the first Air Force officers Course at the Iraqi Military Academy (the country's premier military academy, often referred to as the "Sandhurst in the Sand") at Ar Rustamiyah. To meet the growing demand for young officers, the CAFTT also developed and won approval from the Iraqi minister of defense to initiate a six-month Officer Training School--style commissioning program geared toward university graduates with engineering degrees. In May 2007, a team of military training instructors from Lackland AFB, Texas, ran the first class of basic military training for 62 janood (the Iraqi equivalent of airmen). The instructors also addressed a critical shortage of non commissioned officers (NCO) by creating a program to enable the IqAF to recruit high-quality candidates for direct commissioning as warrant officers--the IqAF's top NCO rank.

With the pieces of the accession pipeline falling into place, another flight in the 370th focused on building the basic technical-training pipeline. (13) A collection of motivated young officers and experienced NCOs drove the process to create the IqAF equivalent of the USAF's Second Air Force. (14) This Basic Technical Training Branch of the Iraqi Air Force Training School offers a myriad of courses ranging from air-intelligence applications to crash/fire rescue. A group of handpicked experts from across the US Air Force began with a baseline curriculum provided by Air Education and Training Command. Before teaching the courses, however, instructors modified them extensively to account for any IqAF-specific equipment and procedures. Instructors faced all the challenges of teaching in a foreign environment: translating slides into Arabic, learning to teach through interpreters, and remaining sensitive to differences in educational systems and learning styles. Additionally, instructors tailored each course specifically to ensure it provided the knowledge, skills, and abilities required by the IqAF. They did this through collaborative efforts and coordination with their functional counterparts on the CAFTT and IqAF staffs and with continuous input from subject-matter experts in the field. Initially conducted on an ad hoc basis, this process eventually became formalized in a regular series of meetings of an organization known as the Training Integration working Group.