In a report on the situation of the region the Defence and Aerospace military magazine wrote despite the fact that the Kurdistan Region is semi- autonomous and independent from Baghdad since 2003 and has its own forces but the Iraqi Kurds are not capable to achieve any heavy arms and Baghdad doesn't allow the region to gain the arms.
The report further added that the Kurds cooperated with washington in its war against Iraqi toppled President Saddam Hussein in 2003 which made it possible for the Kurds to achieve some Iraqi army's heavy weapons, such as T55 and T62 tanks manufactures during the Soviet Union.
The Iraqi central government succeeded in getting some advanced arms including US Abram Tanks and Russian attacking choppers; but according to the Defence and Aerospace Iraqi Kurds have not been able to equip their forces with new advanced weapons and during the premiership of Nouri al-Maleki they even asked the U.S. not to sell its F-16 jets to Iraq as it is not unlikely for its army to use the jets against the Kurds.
The T55 and T62 tanks aided the Kurds in their war against the Islamic State (IS) but the arms failed to protect the lives of many Peshmerga fighters.
In the war against the IS, the US-led coalition provided the Kurds with many armoured and anti-mine vehicles but stopped short of giving them tanks and some other heavy arms.
The magazine further wrote that the U.S. still stresses on backing the Iraqi central government and has not directly provided the Kurds with heavy arms. Whatever the U.S. has given to the Kurds has been through the central government and it has prevented the Kurds from modernizing the Peshmerga forces.
Paul Aidon further stresses in the article that Kurdish forces of Peshmerga are in sever need of heavy arms and the autonomous region is not capable to supply the forces with heavy arms, a situation that seems unlikely to change in the near future.
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