As US troops prepare to leave Iraq in six months time, the country will be left with no effective defence from external threats.
The army is ill-equipped, with no Iraqi pilots train to fly modern jet fighters and no missile defence system. Iraq currently does not possess any such aircraft, and if it were to purchase such planes it would take two to three years to fill a single squadron of pilots.
Al Jazeera's Josh Rushing reports from Tikrit, Iraq.