Tikrit Air Academy formerly COB Speicher (Al Sahra Airfield under Saddam Hussein) was a US Army contingency operating base(COB) captured from the Iraqi Army during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. It was reassigned from a forward operating base to a COB because of its large size. The installation is located near Tikrit in northern Iraq, approximately 170 kilometers north of Baghdad and 11 kilometers west of the Tigris River. The airfield is served by two main runways measuring 9,600 feet (2,900 m) long with a shorter runway measuring 7,200-foot (2,200 m). It has been the location of the headquarters of the United States Division–North (USD-N, formerly Multinational Division, North, (MND-N)) during the ongoing Iraq War. It is named after Captain Michael Scott Speicher, aUnited States Navy pilot who was killed in action in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War when his McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet was shot down by Lieutenant Zuhair Dawood who was piloting a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 Foxbat of the Iraqi Air Force.