Iraqi air inactivity worries some coalition officials

At an air command centre in Saudi Arabia, American and British commanders watch their radar screens for signs of enemy aircraft.

As recently as two weeks ago, Iraqi jets showed up as high-speed blips, making runs into the "no-fly" zone, then wheeling back to their bases. Now? Nothing.

As far as anyone can detect, not a single Iraqi air force plane has left the ground since the war began.

"We're delighted to see an outbreak of common sense among the Iraqi pilots," British Royal Air Force Group Capt Jon Fynes said at a briefing Monday.

Other commanders aren't so sure. "We're reasonably surprised," a U.S. military official said. "You don't know whether this is a new tactic. You don't know if they are saving up for something else."

In recent days, coalition bombers have pounded airfields throughout Iraq. They have searched for and destroyed planes hidden in fields, cemeteries and beside mosques.

Still, an analyst said, there is reason to be concerned about the ones that have not been found.

"There is no way they could launch a major force without being seen – they'd be dead meat before they left the runway," said Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "But I've always worried that someone might launch a suicide mission."

The Iraqis might be driven to such desperate measures by equally desperate circumstances.

Through the 1970s and '80s, they accumulated an array of Russian and French aircraft, building the world's sixth-largest air force by the start of the 1991 Gulf War.

But they were soundly defeated just the same, Brookes noted. Some planes were lost in combat and some pilots fled to Iran. In the years since, United Nations sanctions and financial hardship have taken a further toll.

Iraqi pilots log less flight time in a year than many of their American and British counterparts get in a month. The air force is in disrepair, dominated by outdated jets such as MIG-23s.

Although exact numbers are hard to come by, estimates suggest that the number of capable Iraqi aircraft has dropped from as many as 750 in 1990 to as few as 100. Only about half of those – the newer MIG-25s, MIG-29s and Mirage F-1s – are considered modern enough to be a threat.

By comparison, more than 1,000 American and British aircraft are conducting 2,000 or more sorties each day.

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