Shafaq News / Forbes magazine published a report about the deteriorating situation of "F-16" aircraft.

 The magazine pointed  in the report, that,  U.S.-Iran tensions escalated with the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad, as well as Iranian missile attacks against Two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. troops in Iraq and Kurdistan.

As a result of those heightened tensions, the U.S. began withdrawing from several bases across Iraq. American contractors were evacuated from Balad Airbase, where Iraq’s F-16s are based.

Those American contractors had previously helped Iraq maintain and keep its F-16s operational.

Since then, several of these jets have stopped operating due to lack of technical support and maintenance. One senior Iraqi official recently went so far  to say that Iraq’s F-16 fleet “is almost gone", Forbes added.

At present, Iraq reportedly can no longer continue the routine combat air patrols its F-16s used to carry out over Iraq’s western province of Al-Anbar, where those jets kept an eye out for ISIS  infiltrations from the Syrian border.

Iraq began receiving its first F-16s in mid-2015 when it was engulfed in the war against Iran . The fighter jets are, by far, the most advanced warplanes the Iraqi Air Force has operated since Saddam Hussein’s rule.

 “Iraq is not likely to write off the significant investment in the F-16 fleet and its pilots", said Michael Knights, a noted Iraq expert and Lafer Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy to Forbes magazine.

“Iraq would not be the first nation to put a segment of its fleet into mothballs or lower the number of flight hours its pilots get due to funding shortfalls: this is happening in all NATO countries,” he added.

"This June, however, Al-Kadhimi’s government took a stand. It arrested 14 members of Kata’ib Hezbollah, the prime suspect in many of those rocket attacks", He said.

Such a firm approach by the Iraqi government against the brigades could help convince American contractors that it’s relatively safe to return to Iraq and continue helping Baghdad keep its F-16s operational.

“Protection of foreign citizens is necessary for the F-16 support to resume,” Knights said, pointing that basing Iraq’s F-16s at Balad Air Base was “always troubling due to the presence of both militias and the Islamic State in the area”.

On the other hand, Balad is also “an ideal location from a range perspective, with F-16s being a short-range aircraft and Iraq lacking air-to-air refueling capability.”

Knights suggested that Iraq could potentially relocate many of its F-16s to other bases in the country. Alternative bases he suggested could include Baghdad Airport or Erbil, the capital of the stable Iraqi Kurdistan region, or Al-Asad Air Base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, situated near the Syrian border.

For now,” Iraq’s F-16s are not instrumental for the continued operations against Islamic State remnants in Iraq”. He added.

“The Iraqi F-16s are presently not very important due to the presence of the international coalition and its airpower,” Knights said.

However, if the U.S.-led coalition were to leave Iraq’s F-16s, “would become the only highly-capable ‘fast air’ in Iraq, capable of reaching a location quickly to strike a target of opportunity, such as an ISIS leader.”

“As time passes, the pressure will grow for all kinetic strikes to be Iraqi, not international, so the need for Iraqi F-16s or other fast jets will grow,” Knights said.

On the other hand, he concluded by suggesting that a number of other “less sophisticated aircraft could eventually fill the role, including the replacement of F-16s with a large number of less expensive counter-insurgency aircraft and drones that are constantly airborne and close to the likely targets"