Dozens of airstrikes and hundreds of artillery shells per day, plus ISIS inaccurately lobbing heavy mortar rounds, planting mines everywhere, as well as detonating frequent suicide truck bombs. For the last three months...
Posted on 09/14/2017 9:05:32 PM PDT by BeauBo
The combined partnership of Kurds, Arabs and Christians which make up the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are battling the remnants of the Islamic State in Raqqa, and it is having to be done street by street and house by house. They have surrounded the City's large main hospital, which is believed to be the last major stronghold of IS extremists.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
The city has suffered a high cost in structural damage, but the fight has now drawn in to the City administrative center, where ISIS had their main offices and headquarters. After clearing this central area, the remaining areas become relatively less challenging, but the remaining ISIS garrison will become more elite and desperate (if the former pattern holds).
Estimates of the remaining fight for Raqqa generally run about another month, maybe two. The next (and smaller) battle will be for Dier ez Zour downriver, and it has already begun. The pace of clearing ISIS from territory is increasing, as their strongholds become increasingly small. There are indicators that ISIS is moving toward abandoning territory, and dispersing as an underground guerilla/terrorist organization. This Winter is likely to see the end of their "caliphate".
Sounds like they have a Berlin or Stalingrad type of fight on their hands. God be with the Kurds and Christians and the US soldiers providing support.
Oh no, not the “ancient holy city of Racca!!”
(They are all ancient and holy, of course.) We need to make it into the new and modern parking lot.
The LeMay Doctrine.....
Time to use the MOAB. The troops should pull back at night under heavy artillery cover and once they are far enough back then create a crater in the middle of town.
Dozens of airstrikes and hundreds of artillery shells per day, plus ISIS inaccurately lobbing heavy mortar rounds, planting mines everywhere, as well as detonating frequent suicide truck bombs. For the last three months...
It is definitely tough urban warfare, door to door, room to room.
The US coalition is stepping up to preserve the lives of our allies on the ground, putting very fast and accurrate high explosives on target - pretty much as much as they can target. Our allies also get prompt resupply, while ISIS has been totally cut off for months - there has not even been grid electricity or city water pumping in their areas, and it is hot there in the Summer. The article mentions how stench is rising where they are holed up.
There is no getting around the fact that the terrain favors the defenders, and ISIS has been preparing Raqqa for three years, with tunnels, fighting positions and booby traps. The SDF has paid a stiff price in lives to root out these ISIS monsters, and they have really earned the respect of the US Special Forces who are training and supporting them.
Now they are surrounded, and an official strategy of annihilating ISIS (killing them all) has been announced, and consistently communicated by the chain of command in theater.
Elections have consequences.
Elections have consequences.
Yes they do. I'm so glad to have President Trump instead of that traitor Obama.
Isis might have been granted official state status under a President Hillary...
Then a U.N. Seat...
Troops? These are just other jihadis and a mix of other rebels.
For this reason alone we should support Donald Trump. Eight months since he became President and ISIS is all but gone. Promises kept.
Our offense, including our Kurdish/SDF allies on the ground, have been increasing the pace of operations as they attack into the core.
“Dozens of airstrikes and hundreds of artillery shells per day”
WOW! Dozens!
Desert Storm air campaign launched close to 3000 strikes per day delivering the equivalent of 9,800 five hundred pounders PER DAY.
That’s how wars last a few weeks instead this embarrassment our moron COIN Generals give us. The cool part is that ultimately even fewer people die. And even better, the world gets a very visual lesson in raw power that they badly need.
Raccoon City was totally destroyed by a sterilization operation.
Regardless of their religious proclivities, these YPG and YPJ militias have been effective over the last three years in steadily clawing territory from ISIS, and in administering those areas to clear them of jihadis. They have been reliable in protecting weaponry they were provided from falling into enemy hands, and they have provided excellent security to US personnel, enabling large numbers (~1,000) to safely operate in Syria.
Look, no abayas, no burkas, headscarves optional:
Here is one of their homebrew "Zagros" rifles, named after the mountains of the Kurdish heatland:
Even if that’s all true and not just propaganda, that’s very uncool of our moron generals to force then to endure a 3 year infantry fight and to forgo the mind bending air power we COULD apply.
It’s utterly ridiculous that its taken more than a few weeks to obliterate ISIS.
“Dozens of airstrikes and hundreds of artillery shells per day”
“WOW! Dozens! Desert Storm air campaign launched close to 3000 strikes per day”
Clearly, this is not the Gulf War with Armored Corps in the open Desert. It is urban warfare in a small city with lots of civilian human shields, and it has been going on several times as long in a tiny fraction of the area.
It is basically squad-sized Infantry elements going door to door. Killing fifty enemy in a day, is a big day, 20 or 25 is a more normal operational pace. At that rate of conflict, routinely getting 30 or 50 airstrikes and 300 to 500 artillery rounds (as well as mortars and direct fire from vehicles) is super heavy support. It was not that long ago that Obama was averaging about five air sorties per day - Theaterwide.
It is really preserving our allies lives, but the point that I was making is that this rate of ordnance delivery is also very substantially, pretty deliberately, destroying the buildings and infrastructure as they slowly go block to block. Probably half of the homes have been hit, and most of the public buildings. Road cratering is extensive, with subterranean utility networks extensively destroyed, and aerial utilities near completely destroyed. Power, water, and sewage treatment have been out citywide for months through the scorching Summer heat.
All the hospitals are out of operation. All the bridges have been blown. Lots of unique infrastructure like cold storage, schools, police stations, Government offices, food distrbution and storage facilities, and so on have been destroyed or damaged. Pretty much every block has been fought over with a series of high explosives. A lot of the population will not be able to return, because of the extent of the physical destruction.
“It’s utterly ridiculous that its taken more than a few weeks to obliterate ISIS.”
Come on. Get real.
Mosul alone was the largest urban battle since Stalingrad in WWII. It was also the largest open use of chemical weapons since Saddam’s genocide against the Kurds after the Iran/Iraq War (Mosul’s chlorine supplies were entirely diverted from water purification).
More casualties, and much more destruction, resulted from liberating Fallujah from ISIS, than either of the Battles that the US Marines fought there against alQueda in Iraq (which itself was the Marines’ biggest urban battle since Hue in Vietnam).
ISIS purposefully used civilian populations as human shields. It is a war crime, and a crime under the UCMJ to indiscriminately target non-combatants with mass bombing of cities.
It is also hugely expensive, and the Saudis and Kuwaitis are not paying the bills by the tens of billions this time around.
Every few minutes, day and night, week after week...
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