I know that a lot of it was destroyed in the air raids and fighting leading up to the actual invasion, and that their actual land fighting equipment never was able to get back up to pre 1991 war levels.
But I have seen footage of US Soldiers coming across an armor lagger, with tanks or armored vehicles, weapons, ammo, and equipment just sitting there, unused. Abandoned.
More recently, I have seen pictures or video of Iraqi police or military travelling around in small trucks, or civilian style vehicles.
I seem to recall the ability to use rotor-powered aircraft was an exception to the no-fly rule (which Saddam then used to put down the post-invasion uprisings of 1991). So, in theory, there should be helicopters.
There was much press given to the fact that several Iraqi jets had been landed and given asylum by Iran.
What happened to this stuff? Wouldn’t the Iraqi police be better off driving around in armored cars?
Why isn’t the Iraqi military doing their own airstrikes? Or helicoptering?
Well the civilian police would never have been a particularly high priority in Baathist Iraq.
The pre-invasion military equipment would have been out of date and any sophisticated equipment (like helicopters and planes) that survived the first war, and sanctions, would have heavily targetted during the invasion. It also had to survive the chaos the followed the invasion and the disbanding of the iraqi armed forces.
Also there was unbelievable fraud in the Defense Ministry during the US-appointed interim administration. Which seriously hampered attempts to equip the Iraqi Army.
Also the police force is heavily infiltrated by Shia militia (to a much higher degree than that Iraqi army) so that may also be a reason behind thier lack of equipment:
As shown in Squink’s link there is plenty of old Soviet armour in the hands of the Iraqi Army. But as demonstrated in Afghanistan and Chechnya that is not always the most effective equipment for anti-insurgency campaigns.
As I said like of Helicopters and Planes would be far less likely to survive the sanctions, invasion, and post-invasion chaos. And seeing as the decision was made to build up the Iraqi army from square one, rather than keep the any of old hierachy it would be MUCH harder to train and equip an airforce from scratch than an army (and we’ve not been too successful with that). One of items that suffered as a result of corruption in the interim government was attempts to rebuild the airforce. From the article I linked to above:
Going back to the Cold War era (and correct me if I’m wrong):
There were two standards for military systems, the Soviet system and the American system (an analogy would be Mac and Windows). The military equipment was meant to integrate to a certain degree. Each system had their clients. Iraq was a client of the Soviets and Iran was a client of the Americans. That is what led to the Iran-Contra scandal. Iran, under the Shah, was buying their equipment from the US. When he was overthrown, the Iran military needed spare parts but could only procure them through American sources. Therefore, in order to raise cash which Congress wouldn’t appropriate for the Contras, the Reagan administration decided to sell parts at highly inflated prices to Iran.
Iraq, on the other hand, was a Soviet client. Therefore, a huge arms supplier like the US would look on that hardware as incompatable, obsolete and bad for the suppliers’ business of selling hardware at highly inflated prices to the US government.
Remember, arms, war, and the military industrial complex are not about politics and philosophy, it’s all about money.