Iraq's air force, slowly taking shape after years of war, is too weak to take control of the skies and defend the country until at least 2020, the air force chief said in an interview.
The United States formally ended combat operations in Iraq in August but still maintains 50,000 troops in the country to help its fledgling army tackle Islamist insurgents.
Iraq still depends on US forces to scramble combat aircraft to aid its ground forces, and US officials have admitted the country is not yet ready to defend its borders on its own.
In strikingly frank remarks, Staff Lieutenant General Anwar Ahmed told Reuters the fighting strength of his force was too low to take over aerial control any time soon.
"As for the Iraqi air force in its current state, it is not prepared to deter any foreign attack," he said late on Tuesday in his home inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
"In the modern military sense, the Iraqi air force cannot be completed ... before 2020, and until then we would not be able to say that the air force is ready to defend the skies."
Originally founded in the 1930s when Iraq was under British rule, the Iraqi air force is still a shadow of its former self.
Under dictator Saddam Hussein, who was ousted in the 2003 US invasion, it grew into one of the region's biggest forces, consisting of hundreds of mainly Soviet-designed planes. After the invasion, Washington disbanded Iraqi forces altogether.
