Pilots tallying fewer bombings as Iraq hits lullBy Scott Schonauer, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, November 4, 2007
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq — The concrete barriers keep score.
Air Force F-16 squadrons passing through Balad Air Base have used the tall slabs outside their temporary headquarters to tally the number of bombs dropped by pilots over the course of their deployments.
Small, black icons of bombs represent each precision-guided weapon dropped. Tiny, painted guns mark each time a jet has used its 20 mm guns.
The block for the 22nd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron is bare because it still has another two months left in its Iraq tour. But the unit from Spangdahlem, Germany, is far from matching the totals set by its predecessors this past summer.
While the Air Force has already dropped more than four times as many bombs in Iraq in 2007 as it dropped last year, pilots say that trend has surprisingly changed in the past month. Just as the number of U.S. deaths and insurgent attacks in Iraq have hit new lows for the year, the pilots have noticed a lull in the calls for airstrikes.
“We’ve trained as fighter pilots to come out and do the mission, and many of us want to do that part of the mission,” pilot Capt. Nicklaus Walker said.
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