BAGHDAD — The Iraqis will be unable to handle their own air defenses after all American troops withdraw from the country by the end of 2011, the top commander of American forces in Iraq said Tuesday.

The commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, in comments to reporters traveling here with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, did not directly say that American planes and pilots might effectively have to serve as an Iraqi air force until the Iraqis were ready to defend their country’s airspace on their own. But he said that a United States Air Force team was expected soon in Iraq to assess what the United States could, and should, do.

Iraqis have already asked the United States for new F-16 fighter jets, but General Odierno said it would be impossible to build and deliver them by the end of 2011, even if the Iraqis were able to afford them.

Asked if the Iraqis would be in a position to fly their own defensive air patrols at the end of 2011, when a United States agreement with Iraq calls for all American troops to be out of the country, General Odierno replied, “Right now, no.”

Although the United States has long known that the Iraqis will have no air defenses once the Americans leave, General Odierno’s comments, made at his chandeliered headquarters at one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, were among the most public and blunt assessments of the problem. The trip by Mr. Gates was meant to celebrate the June 30 withdrawal of most American combat forces from Iraqi cities and towns and to highlight the progress that the Americans say the Iraqi security forces have made on their own.

The Air Force team that is coming to Iraq will try to come up with “creative solutions” to the problem, General Odierno said. One answer may be for the United States to lend the Iraqis old F-16s, although “we don’t know if it’s legal; we have to check with Congress,” the general said.

In the meantime, he said, there were plenty of questions: “Will they be able to depend on radar? Is that enough? Will they ask for support? Can they get aircraft from some other country?”

For now, the Iraqi Air Force has helicopters and C-130 transport planes, but no fighter jets, and therefore no way to intercept another jet that invades the country’s airspace. Another major problem, which General Odierno did not address, is the lack of qualified pilots and a large-scale training program.

General Odierno spoke at the end of a long day in Iraq for Mr. Gates, who arrived unannounced in the dust blasts and 115-degree heat to promote what he said was the progress the Americans were making in allowing Iraqi forces to take the lead in security operations.

There have been some tensions since the Americans moved into their new subordinate role after the June 30 withdrawal. General Odierno acknowledged that the situation was “not perfect,” and commanders here said it was frustrating to defer to the Iraqis when they believed that they could handle security issues better themselves. But Mr. Gates sidestepped those problems.

“There is a sense of equal parts in this now, and nobody is the boss, or the occupier, or however you want to put it,” Mr. Gates said on his first stop of the day, Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq, where the United States is assembling its first Advisory and Assistance Brigade, in essence a combat brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers with more officers, sergeants and others to train the Iraqis.

It was Mr. Gates’s first visit to Iraq this year and his 10th since becoming defense secretary more than two and a half years ago, when violence was surging in Iraq and the Bush administration made the decision to add tens of thousands of troops. Although there are still periodic attacks, violence is now generally down across the country. “I will tell you, it is amazingly different from December 2006,” Mr. Gates told American troops at Tallil.

The defense secretary met later with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to talk about preparations for a major reduction of American troops next year. If the schedule holds, 80,000 are expected to leave Iraq between March and August 2010. About 130,000 American troops are now here. Defense Department officials say they anticipate leaving behind a “residual force” of 50,000 by the end of next summer. Under an agreement with the Iraqis, all American troops are to be out of Iraq a little more than a year later, by the end of 2011.

Although Mr. Maliki appeared to suggest during a visit to the White House last week that the Iraqis might want some American troops beyond 2011, both Mr. Gates and General Odierno ruled out any talk of that now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/world/middleeast/29military.html?pagewanted=print

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company