Iraq militants changing tactics, complicating US airstrike mission

FoxNews.com ^ | Published August 12, 2014 | By Jennifer Griffin

[DBCJR]

complicating US airstrike mission Jennifer Griffin

By Jennifer Griffin Published August 12, 2014 FoxNews.com 1.6K Never autoplay videos

Islamic militant forces in northern Iraq appear to be shifting tactics in the face of the newly launched U.S. airstrike campaign, Defense officials say, posing a new challenge to the Obama administration as it seeks to at least slow the terrorists’ advances.

According to officials, until now the Islamic State (IS) was behaving like a well-organized army, moving with strategic intent and pursuing military objectives. Now, officials are seeing at least a partial shift to classic insurgency tactics, as militants begin to blend in among the population, making targeting more difficult.

“One of the things that we have seen with the [IS] forces is that where they have been in the open, they are now starting to dissipate and to hide amongst the people,” Lt. Gen. William Mayville Jr., director for operations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. “The targeting in this is going to become more difficult.”

[struggle]

Remember how the terrorists lost Iraq last time? The residents got pissed off and fought of the terrorists themselves.

[autumnraine]

Or that you plan airstrikes in the first place.

[SunkenCiv]

Nonsense. They’ve been using modern military tactics — spread out, and listen for orders using modern commuication technologies. They scatter as small groups, large and well-armed sufficient to watch each others’ backs, establish and maintain control over every little flyspeck village, and when they get the word, they all swarm to their next objective, arriving at the best possible time of day (or night), have complete numerical superiority (and generally superior firepower, but not always), overwhelm the target, then carry out atrocities against survivors, which makes their next big operation that much simpler — their opponents flee at the first sound of automatic weapons fire.

Islamic State Militants Mass North of Baghdad
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