Operation:USELESS DIRT II update - New Iraq F-16s to be delivered to Arizona

Such great long-range planning by the DC leadership.

Let Iraq fall to pieces and expect to deliver LM aircraft that have little to do with fighting the existing threat effectively.

What.

A.

Racket.

Iraqi F-16s being delivered to pilots training in Arizona

Starting next month, the United States will begin delivering eight of 36 F-16s that Iraq has on order to an Air National Guard facility in Arizona, officials said.

The Pentagon initially planned to send the jets to Iraq’s Balad air base, but the base has been under threat from insurgents who captured broad swaths of the country during the spring and summer.

“The security situation still does not allow that, so the initial group of F-16s we are now going to deliver to Tucson, Arizona, where there are Iraqi pilots currently in the training pipeline,” Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters.

Fourteen Iraqis have already begun training on U.S. F-16s, four more are flying trainer jets as they prepare to graduate to F-16s and six pilots are awaiting flight training as they study at the Defense Language Institute, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said.

Three Iraqi F-16s will reach the Iraqi pilots in Arizona next month, with an additional plane arriving each month until May, Warren said. The pilots will begin flying the planes in January, he said.

While training in the Iraq-owned jets, the pilots will not be allowed to use live munitions, Stefanek said. But they can do live fire exercises while in the U.S.-owned jets they have been flying, she said.

The training mission in Arizona could last into 2016, Stefanek said.

These aircraft will be the newest F-16s operating on U.S. soil. By many many years.

M-1 tanks and new F-16s. Totally worthless for fighting the threat to the current Iraq government. Or is that puppet government?