International student pilots keep base trainers hopping

An Iraqi air force pilot looks out of a C-130 in this photograph from 2008, the year Little Rock Air Force Base personnel first began training Iraqis on the cargo planes.

An Iraqi air force pilot looks out of a C-130 in this photograph from 2008, the year Little Rock Air Force Base personnel first began training Iraqis on the cargo planes.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

— On any given day, the C-130 cargo planes seen cutting through the Arkansas sky are flown by foreign pilots, from Iraqis to Tunisians and Poles, as demand for international training continues to outpace capacity at Little Rock Air Force Base.

The base’s 314th Airlift Wing will train more than 1,800 U.S. and foreign students this year in C-130J and H-model cargo planes. Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville is the largest C-130 Hercules base in the world.

Col. Scott Brewer, wing commander, said officials are expecting 200 international students this year, but that number may surge to 300, depending on defense contracts and State Department agreements, which would push the student load above 1,900.

“We have more requirements for foreign training than capacity,” he said, explaining that the demand for training pushed the limits of what the wing can accomplish with its current number of planes and personnel.

The 314th is adding two more C-130Js in the next year to help meet demand. It currently has 10.

The base’s flight simulators already run 20 hours a day with four hours of required maintenance, and the Arkansas National Guard’s 189th Airlift Wing supplements personnel when needed.

The 314th has worked to be more efficient in training, pushing through weekends and using alternative tools, to meet the demand.

“We leverage everything we can,” Brewer said. “We exceed our stated capacity every single year,” he said. “There’s always more demand — it’s a continuous process of improving our methods.”

And it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. More than 60 allied nations fly C-130s and most of them look to the U.S. for training.

Purchases of the C-130J, the current model rolling off the assembly line, have been increasing about 20 percent each year, with 10 nations contracting for 34 C-130Js in the next year alone.

“And that demand will continue to grow as C-130s are needed in the world,” Brewer said.

Training foreign militaries is nothing new for the U.S. or for Little Rock Air Force Base’s 314th Airlift Wing. It has trained troops from more than 40 of the 136 countries currently partnered with the U.S. in training and equipment deals.

And it has become big business over recent years as the demand continues to grow in areas like Iraq, which remain on the fringe of violence as they build their own militaries.

“Having these military-tomilitary trainings allow us to develop diplomatic ties. It’s the connection, the personal bonds that make the program have legs for the country’s diplomatic reaches,” Brewer said. “You can’t have global reach, vigilance or power without global partnerships.”

According to a joint report to Congress issued in January by the Department of Defense and Department of State, the U.S. sold more than $25 billion in equipment and training to foreign allies in 2010, the most recent year available.

Iraq’s training on the C-130 now under way at Little Rock Air Force Base falls under this category. The country is paying the Defense Department for the service as part of its purchase agreement with Lockheed Martin.

This training is essential for Iraq, which is beginning to buy a new fleet of planes and rebuild its military after a decade of war.

When the Iraq war started in 2003, its military dissolved, troops put down their guns, ditched their planes and found jobs as taxi drivers and businessmen. The movement to rebuild the force began in 2004, and many of the former Iraqi airmen returned to help build the new force. But it’s been a slow climb.

Iraq purchased its first C-130J cargo planes and F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin this year. The first C-130J will be delivered fresh from the Lockheed Martin assembly line in December.

“We need this fleet. We need this training,” Iraq Brig. Gen. Muhsin al-Jumaily, head of Iraq’s airlift operations, said during a recent stop at Little Rock Air Force Base to visit some of his pilots training on the new C-130J cargo plane.

“To help fight terrorists, we need planes and operations in Basra and Mosul. And after the air force grows more, then the army needs to grow more.”

Al-Jumaily wore a desert tan flight suit, with his name in Arabic on a patch on his chest and his rank designated with bars and stars on his shoulders. He asked that his picture not be taken, his voice not recorded.

Old fears linger. Memories of wartime threats against cooperating with Americans are still fresh, even as Iraq sets up its new military, funded by its own defense budget rather than U.S. stipends as in the past. Cooperation with America can still be dangerous business in his newly independent country, where sectarian violence continues.

For some, like Col. Aladdin al-Ammari, a C-130J pilot who graduated Sept. 6 from the course at Little Rock Air Force Base, the risk is well worth it.

“The nation of Iraq is something great in my heart,” he said when asked why he returned to the air force amid the danger. “The country is my country. Baghdad is my home, it is my soul.”

Little Rock Air Force Base’s partnership with Iraq goes back to 2008, when al-Jumaily’s squadron at al-Muthana Air Base at Baghdad International Airport had just three 40-year-old C-130Es and a team of C-130 crews from Little Rock Air Force Base’s 314th Airlift Wing training his crews to fly them.

The planes had been set for retirement by the U.S. Air Force and were given to Iraq as a first step toward rebuilding its air force.

Iraq paid the U.S. $29.5 million for military equipment and training in 2010, according to the joint congressional report, sending almost 300 military members to specialty training like C-130 flight school.

In all, Iraq sent 506 military and police members to some form of U.S. security training in 2010 at an overall cost of $32 million.

It costs more than $135,000 per student to train to be a C-130 pilot at Little Rock Air Force Base, according to the congressional report.

It’s a cost al-Jumaily said is well worth it.

“We need armed forces to defend our country,” he said in a thick accent. “We are not going to attack any country unless they attack us, but we need to be able to defend our country against attacks. And we are building it day by day and month by month.”

After a decade of U.S. funding for its military and directing its growth, al-Jumaily said with great pride that Iraq is buying its C-130s, F-16s and all necessary training with “100 percent Iraqi money,” and on its own timeline.

“Now we’re growing in force and in independence,” he said with a smile beneath his considerable mustache. “Support is minimal.”

The U.S. still has a contingent of trainers stationed in Iraq helping train forces there, said Col. Mike Duffy, director of Air Force Security Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He traveled with the generals to visit their students at Little Rock.

Lockheed Martin will deliver the first C-130J to Baghdad in December, with another five arriving off the assembly line next year.

“I will be proud to wave the Iraqi flag from the window [of the J-model] when we land in Baghdad,” said al-Ammari.

Iraq has ordered 18 new F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin, with delivery planned for 2014. There are 13 pilots in F-16 training at Tucson, Ariz., right now. Iraq hopes to have 36 trained pilots by the time the new planes arrive.

“We are eager to receive them,” said Brig. Gen. Abdul Hussein, commander of Iraq’s fighter strike force. “We have no jets, no fighter aircraft at all.”

Iraq uses the few cargo aircraft it has for aerial defense of its borders right now.

“Each day without an operational air force, we can’t do anything,” Hussein said. “It’s an important role, we have to receive more jet aircraft for our own defense.”

Hussein flew Russian MiG fighters before the war — a good aircraft, he said, “But it is not U.S. fighters.”

He joined the Iraqi air force in 1982, dreaming of flying the F-16. He was the first pilot to rejoin the force, signing on to the new Iraqi air force in 2004 to fly security missions along the southern borders.

“It’s a great feeling to be back,” he said.

But there is a challenge in recruiting for the new force.

“A lot of people don’t know about the Iraqi air force,” al-Jumaily said. “We need more pilots, aircrews, loadmasters.”

Hussein added that the challenge is finding younger Iraqis to join the force. The arrival of planes will help visibility and trust, he said.

“We had our dreams, some unfinished before the war,” al-Ammari said. “I was looking for Iraq to be better than it was in the 1970s, when it was the best in the region. I still have my dreams for Iraq to be the best.”

He smiled and looked off through a window as he explained how much he looks forward to the day planes with Iraqi flags painted on their tails arrive in foreign lands to lend a hand.

“This is my dream,” he said, “that people see our planes delivering peacekeeping forces and supplies to help other nations and they say, ‘It will be OK, Iraq is here.’”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/23/2012