Hill Air Force Base » After serving seven tours of duty since 2003, the scheduled draw down of troops in Iraq might seem to present the men and women of the 729th Air Control Squadron with a welcome respite from war.

But that's likely not the case.

While Iraqi security forces have made great strides in on-the-ground action -- facilitating security for recent national elections, for instance -- the country's military remains woefully ill-equipped to secure the skies.

And so, while the 729th returned home Wednesday evening amid the cheers of family members and friends at Hill Air Force Base, the unit's 170 airmen know their war is not over.

Even as tens of thousands of U.S. ground troops have been sidelined as Iraq's military and police forces take control, the airmen of the 729th found themselves as busy as ever, providing radar air surveillance and command support to over 37,000 sorties during a six-month deployment.

For Thomas Banaszak, there's a silver lining in such a demanding deployment. It makes the time pass faster. Now he's hoping to slow things down -- but he knows another deployment is just around the corner. "This is definitely not my last," he said. "And until we can get the Iraqi military trained up, ready to go, I guess we'll be needed."

There are currently about 96,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. President Barack Obama has pledged to reduce that number by about half before August of this year. And an agreement with the Iraqi government requires all U.S. troops to be out of the country by the end of 2011.

But the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, said last year that Iraq's military will be unable to handle its own air defenses if all American troops withdraw from the country. The Iraqi Air Force has a limited fleet of aircraft, mostly cargo and light surveillance planes. Just this month, the first students began classes at the Iraqi Air Force College, where a total of 10 Iraqi pilots are going through the advanced pilot training program in hopes of one day flying higher-end fighters, bombers and reconnaissance jets. The Iraqi military also has been relying heavily on U.S. helicopters to transport its troops.

Although nothing has been set in stone, members of at least one Utah National Guard helicopter unit have been told to expect orders into Iraq in 2012.

All of that means units like the 729th will continue to be important -- and will likely continue to have to have a footprint in Iraq even after the 2011 deadline.

"The expertise that these airmen provide, on a tactical level, is impossible to duplicate," said Col. Anthony Shaw, deputy commander of the 552nd Air Control Group, which oversees the 729th. "The training put into each and every one of these individuals is extensive."

And the Iraqi military hasn't even gotten started on providing that sort of sophisticated training.

"The Iraqi military is going to take years and years and years to try to build up these kinds of capabilities," said Steven O'Hern, former head of the Multi-National Force-Iraq counterinsurgency effort and the author of The Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad . "Air power is going to be a critical component that they're going to be missing."

O'Hern doesn't like it when military and administration officials promise to have all "combat troops" out of Iraq by August -- he said all military members should be considered combat troops "because all those guys are carrying a gun and they're all targets at some point in time."

He believes the U.S. mission in Iraq is long from over.

And Joseph Herrod reckons so as well. He's completed four deployments since 2007 and this was his third trip to Iraq. With about a half a year to go in his enlistment, "that may be my last one," he said.

After spending so much time apart from his wife, Danielle, "we'd like a chance to be together."

mlaplante@sltrib.com blogs.sltrib.com/military