Rockets hit Balad. Iraq's F-16 technicians left first.

Lockheed Martin relocated its Iraq-based contractors after attacks on the air base, planning remote support instead. No public count showed how many aircraft were affected or for how long. That uncertainty is precisely why contractor dependence matters: a security threat to civilian specialists can become an availability threat to a combat fleet.

The aircraft remain in-country. The expertise needed to keep them ready may not.

For Iraq, the maintenance contract can ground what the sales contract delivered.

On paper, possession of the aircraft, vehicle or weapon is treated as proof of usable strength. In practice, maintenance crews, diagnostic tools, repair approvals, contractor access, payments and the flow of ordinary spare parts can decide whether the capability arrives, works and remains available. That is the control point hiding behind the headline fact: Rockets hit Balad.

The most dangerous failures are often deniable. A component is unavailable, an approval takes longer than expected or another customer becomes urgent. Each explanation can be reasonable. Together they can reduce availability month by month until an impressive inventory becomes a line of grounded equipment. For Iraq, the warning is captured by what followed: Iraq's F-16 technicians left first.

If you are buying, start with the questions the salesman would rather answer later. What software, manuals and test equipment leave with the contractor? How quickly does fleet availability fall after foreign support stops? Which failures can your own technicians diagnose and repair?

Doing every repair at home would be wasteful. Some foreign support is sensible. The mistake is allowing one inaccessible contractor, tool or approval to determine whether the whole fleet flies. That distinction matters here: Iraq's F-16 technicians left first.

The procurement team should model an interruption lasting six months, not six days. Assume that the mechanism above is unavailable and that friendly phone calls change nothing. Which missions stop first? Which units receive priority? What can be repaired, substituted or borrowed? The exercise will expose dependencies that a normal tender score hides. The exercise has a concrete starting point in this case: Rockets hit Balad.

Then test the fallback. Which sealed units must go back to the original manufacturer? How many months of mission critical spares are held in-country? Can another approved company take over maintenance? A plan that exists only in a slide deck will not become real because the crisis has arrived.

This should affect the score, not only the footnotes. Delivery credibility, substitution time, national repair depth and freedom of use deserve explicit weight in the evaluation. Otherwise the technically impressive bid wins on paper while the operationally usable bid is marked down for carrying the cost of being dependable. The headline fact, 'Rockets hit Balad', should carry that exposure in its score.

The buyer still has options: hold critical spares against a realistic interruption period, qualify a second maintenance route before the first one closes and measure local repair depth rather than the number of local uniforms. These measures are rarely as exciting as the platform. They are often what make the platform usable. That risk is easy to miss when the announcement stops at 'Rockets hit Balad'.

The final test for Iraq is simple: how many aircraft, vehicles or weapons can actually deploy after six months without foreign contractor support? If the honest answer begins with 'provided that somebody else agrees', that condition belongs on the first page of the procurement decision, not in an annex nobody reads.

A grounded fleet still appears in the national inventory. It just does not appear over the battlefield when it is needed. The maintenance contract can exercise more control than the original sales contract. That risk is easy to miss when the announcement stops at 'Rockets hit Balad'.