The U.S. gov­ern­ment has stepped in to halt the auc­tion­ing of spare parts for the Northrop Grumman F-​​14 Tomcat fighter jet, Defense News reports:

The sales of all F-​​14 parts were sus­pended on January 26 pend­ing a review, the Defense Logistics Agency said in a state­ment. Dawn Dearden, a spoke­woman for the agency, told AFP the sales were frozen given the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Iran. Iran bought 79 F-​​14s from the United States before the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. The move comes amid grow­ing U.S.-Iranian ten­sions over Tehrans dis­puted nuclear pro­gram and what Washington sees as Iranian sub­ver­sion of U.S. efforts to sta­bi­lize Iraq.

Not to men­tion Iranian agents have been fin­gered in the recent Iraq com­mando raid that killed five U.S. troops, accord­ing to The New York Times:

Investigators say they believe that attack­ers who used American-​​style uni­forms and weapons to infil­trate a secure com­pound and kill five American sol­diers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, accord­ing to American and Iraqi offi­cials knowl­edge­able about the inquiry.

With a con­fronta­tion loom­ing, the U.S. is try­ing to stran­gle the Iranian air force in advance of a bomb­ing cam­paign. As I reported last year at Defense Tech, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force has man­aged to main­tain or even increase its com­bat power despite embargoes:

All told, the IRIAF flies as many as 300 fight­ers. All are older designs, but have been main­tained and, in many cases, upgraded by the indige­nous aero­space indus­try, which has become pro­fi­cient in reverse-​​engineering weapons and spare parts — and per­haps even engines. And the IRIAF has aer­ial tankers too — a force mul­ti­plier only the most advanced air forces maintain.

Iran’s air defense net­work would be a tough nut to crack, even with our F-​​22 fight­ers and air­craft car­ri­ers. We could do it, of course, but prob­a­bly not with­out loss. But then what?

And don’t for­get: there is still no direct evi­dence of state-​​sanctioned Iranian med­dling in Iraq. If there is, our gov­ern­ment hasn’t entrusted us with it.

– David Axe, cross-​​posted at War Is Boring

Three American heli­copters have gone down in Iraq in a lit­tle more than a week. Is there any­thing behind this col­lec­tion of crashes? Or is just lethal coin­ci­dence — part of what hap­pens when troops do some­thing death-​​defying, over and over again? I asked Defense Tech pal ME, a for­mer Kiowa Warrior pilot who served in Iraq, to weigh in with his thoughts.
I haven’t heard of any rea­son as to why we’re los­ing more lately, but we also haven’t lost any in a long time prior to this — I think it’s reflec­tive of some­what of the odds catch­ing up to us and an increased com­bat oper­a­tions tempo.
[That said], I would point out that US heli­copters aren’t that heav­ily armored. [Something David Axe noted about last week’s Blackwater copter crash — ed.] They have blocks of armor pro­tect­ing some key parts of the engine, and crew com­part­ments, but it’s not nearly com­pre­hen­sive. Most don’t have flare sys­tems, and their only active coun­ter­mea­sure against IR mis­siles is an ALQ-​​144 jam­mer. Relatively speak­ing, there is very lit­tle pro­tec­tion from direct small arms hits.
In my opin­ion, our great­est threat was from small arms and RPGs while oper­at­ing at low alti­tude and low air­speed. My troop was under stand­ing orders not to fly above 500 feet AGL (above ground level) or under 60 knots — and never hover unless absolutely nec­es­sary. At low alti­tude — we felt that it was key to min­i­mize the time avail­able to acquire us as a tar­get. We used the ALQ’s but at the time I was there, we didn’t see much threat from SAMs [surface-​​to-​​air mis­siles]. Towards the fall of 2003 we did start get­ting more reports of SAM engage­ments — spi­ral smoke trails arc­ing up, rather than lob shots from RPGs, but in our flight regime, AK’s and RPGs were the biggest threat.
The Kiowa Warrior… has very lit­tle armor [see the pics]. The Blackhawk is sim­i­lar, and the Apache has rel­a­tively more. A friend of mine who was a troop com­man­der in the (in)famous deep strike to kick off OIF said the only pos­i­tive from that mis­sion was that they learned that the Apache could soak up a lot of small arms fire and keep fly­ing. When you look at the armor though, it’s easy to see how a few small arms rounds in the wrong place can bring a bird down.
There are some other issues with the ALQ-​​144. Some of them are clas­si­fied. Some are mun­dane: they’re dif­fi­cult to keep oper­a­tional in the desert, and must be cleaned to be effec­tive. They also must be turned off and on as part of a land­ing check­list (see my next point). The Blackwater birds don’t appear to have them at all. If there are new sup­plies of SAMS com­ing in, they may be much more effec­tive than RPGs and AKs.
Complacency kills, espe­cially in an envi­ron­ment as unfor­giv­ing as Iraq is. With high temps and fly­ing at high gross weights, there is lit­tle per­for­mance mar­gin. Combat maneu­vers take power, and famil­iar­ity (read bore­dom) take their toll, even on expe­ri­enced pilots. After a few months, I could fly from Baghdad to Al Asad with­out a map, and knew every neigh­bor­hood in between — and it made me too casual at times, about mis­sion prep and pro­ce­dures. As pilots go back for repeat tours, they may fall into that even more quickly.
“Since May 2003, the U.S. mil­i­tary has lost 54 heli­copters in Iraq, about half of them to hos­tile fire,” accord­ing to the AP.