Posted on 11/20/2015 3:33:06 AM PST by markomalley
U.S. military pilots who have returned from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq are confirming that they were blocked from dropping 75 percent of their ordnance on terror targets because they could not get clearance to launch a strike, according to a leading member of Congress.
Strikes against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) targets are often blocked due to an Obama administration policy to prevent civilian deaths and collateral damage, according to Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The policy is being blamed for allowing Islamic State militants to gain strength across Iraq and continue waging terrorist strikes throughout the region and beyond, according to Royce and former military leaders who spoke Wednesday about flaws in the U.S. campaign to combat the Islamic State.
“You went 12 full months while ISIS was on the march without the U.S. using that air power and now as the pilots come back to talk to us they say three-quarters of our ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us,” Royce said. “I don’t understand this strategy at all because this is what has allowed ISIS the advantage and ability to recruit.”
When asked to address Royce’s statement, a Pentagon official defended the Obama administration’s policy and said that the military is furiously working to prevent civilian casualties.
“The bottom line is that we will not stoop to the level of our enemy and put civilians more in harm’s way than absolutely necessary,” the official told the Washington Free Beacon, explaining that the military often conducts flights “and don’t strike anything.”
“The fact that aircraft go on missions and don’t strike anything is not out of the norm,” the official said. “Despite U.S. strikes being the most precise in the history of warfare, conducting strike operations in the heavily populated areas where ISIL hides certainly presents challenges. We are fighting an enemy who goes out of their way to put civilians at risk. However, our pilots understand the need for the tactical patience in this environment. This fight against ISIL is not the kind of fight from previous decades.”
Jack Keane, a retired four-star U.S. general, agreed with Royce’s assessment of the administration’s policy and blamed President Barack Obama for issuing orders that severely constrain the U.S. military from combatting terror forces.
“This has been an absurdity from the beginning,” Keane said in response to questions from Royce. “The president personally made a statement that has driven air power from the inception.”
“When we agreed we were going to do airpower and the military said, this is how it would work, he [Obama] said, ‘No, I do not want any civilian casualties,’” Keane explained. “And the response was, ‘But there’s always some civilian casualties. We have the best capability in the world to protect from civilians casualties.’”
However, Obama’s response was, “No, you don’t understand. I want no civilian casualties. Zero,’” Keane continued. “So that has driven our so-called rules of engagement to a degree we have never had in any previous air campaign from desert storm to the present.”
This is likely the reason that U.S. pilots are being told to back down when Islamic State targets are in site, Keane said, citing statistics published earlier this year by U.S. Central Command showing that pilots return from sorties in Iraq with about 75 percent of their ordnance unexpended.
“Believe me,” Keane added, “the French are in there not using the restrictions we have imposed on our pilots.”
And the same goes for Russians, he said, adding, “They don’t care at all about civilians.”
The French have been selecting their own targets since beginning to launch strikes on the Islamic State earlier this week, according to a second Pentagon source who spoke to the Free Beacon earlier this week about the strikes.
France dropped at least 20 bombs on key Islamic State targets within two days after the terror attacks in Paris that killed 129. French strikes have killed at least 33 Islamic State militants in the past several days.
In the case of the initial French strikes, the “targets were nominated by the French whose strikes against them were supported by the coalition” fighting the Islamic State, the official explained.
Any coalition member can nominate a potential target.
“Once a target is validated, great care is taken—from analysis of available intelligence to selection of the appropriate weapon to meet mission requirements—to minimize the risk of collateral damage, particularly any potential harm to non-combatants,” the official said.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 22,000 munitions were dropped on Islamic State targets during more than 8,000 sorties, according to information provided to the Free Beacon by the Defense Department.
Some experts questioned whether the administration is handing off portions of the battle to other nations.
“The French airstrikes have been billed as a significant uptick in the battle against the Islamic State, Preliminary data indicate that this is not the case,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism expert at the U.S. Treasury Department. “It appears that the U.S. is simply allowing France to strike many of the targets that would usually be reserved for the U.S. and some of its coalition allies. In other words, this appears to be a redistribution of daily targets in the ongoing campaign, and not a significant change.”
These strikes have forced the Islamic State to evacuate at least 20 to 25 percent of the territories it held one year ago in both Iraq and Syria, according to the Pentagon.
Attacks have focused on the Islamic State’s “staging areas, fighting position, and key leaders,” as well as its “oil distribution chain,” according to the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, a poll released Thursday found that at least 70 percent of American support an expanded fight against the Islamic State, including sending U.S. troops to the region.
That accepts a false premise. If we were to make our hospitals and churches into weapons storage facilities or military headquarters, they would become legitimate military targets. When a minaret goes ballistic from secondary explosions, that wasn't a mosque - it was a strategic target.
Unrestricted warfare against militarily important targets is exactly what is needed.
isn’t it obvious Obama is furthering the expansion of the CALIPHATE....
he has done MORE to spread radical jihad then the muslim brotherhood or al queda or isis...
We would be speaking German.
This is one of those signs our future selves will look back at and wonder wtf drug we were on that made US so blissfully blind to the human caused disaster we allowed to take place.
I wonder what "the usual" rate of ordnance expenditure is. I believe it probably depends on the missions. If you have aircraft that go on planned strikes - take out this infrastructure or that - they should probably expend 100% of their air to ground ordnance. You plan it, fly it, drop it, done.
If they're putting up aircraft on patrol in areas to look for targets of opportunity, or to be on-call to ground forces expecting contact and needing CAS... Ok, I would expect a lower utilization rate. Sometimes the targets/contact just isn't going to happen. But the apparent 25% use rate (maybe even lower if the 75% number was an aggregate of planned and target-of-opportunity missions) seems very low. Tells me they need a new plan. We're not putting them up where they can find those targets of opportunity, not putting ground forces in on real ISIS positions... Of course, with obama and his cohorts in crime that is probably the intent/strategy: make a lot of noise, do no real damage to his friends.
He’s an Islamic enemy agent working undercover. I’ve been saying this since 2009 when on his first day in office he tried to free prisoners from Gitmo. That was his #1 priority above everything else, the cat was out of the bag as far as I was concerned when I heard about that and I’ve been proven right ever since. Democraps in all their idiocy elected the enemy into the nations highest office, not once but twice. Now he is feeling the stress of trying to avoid being completely blatant in his support of ISIS, so he makes pretend he is fighting them, but he really isn’t. It’s like telling someone to go out and shoot rattlesnakes in the desert and instead they shoot into the sand deliberately missing while they look over their shoulder to see if you are looking. That’s him exactly and I predict that pretty soon he is going to slip up and reveal who he truly is, the stress is going to get to him and he is going to slip up. He is going to say or do something so incredibly outrageous and revealing that Congress is going to come under a tremendous amount of heat for allowing this enemy to stay in office for so long and do so much damage.
While Obama supports BLM (black lives matter), his real love is MLM (Muslim Lives Matter). CLM (Christian Lives Matter), not so much.
“As if it is already not apparent, Obama is a incompetent, idiotic fool. I hate this man-child.”
I totally agree. I so much hate it when people give this moron credit for some grand evil “plan” to conquer the country and the world. Obama is not capable of making any sort of plan other than his next golf game or his next BuFu with one of his boyfriends. I seriously believe he is aroused every day in late morning for an appearance for protocol’s sake, then he stumbles out in a drug-addled daze from last night’s debauchery, gets his photo taken and his handlers get him out of sight as quickly as possible.
Someone in another post mentioned his Russian “comrades”. I doubt he has any undercover ties with Russia. I think Putin, and most of the Russian people, despise this disgusting idiotic spider monkey at least half as much as I do.
The possibility of a strike on DC, except for ANC, no longer bothers me.
You read my mind!
For later...
Not one incumbent A55 in congress will move to IMPEACH his sorry A55!
Congress is complicit, in not acting against Obie!
Time to clean House and Senate!
Daesh it is from now on! Or I’ll fall back on ISIS if I don’t remember Daesh.... Thanks for the info!
His personal overseeing the strategy of his forces, worked
so well for him! /s
These are long and dangerous missions that our pilots are flying over hostile territory where they are hated of course.
If these people are going to be sent to put their lives on the line it should be for a purpose not just a milk run.
Today, almost all the politicians are jumping on the band wagon to put “boots on the ground”, a stupid euphemism they don’t even understand. It is just more populist clap trap.
The idiot politicians are so willing to but American Mother’s Sons into the crucible without any idea of what it means or the objective. It is just something for the damn fools to say. I hate them. I hate them all.
Obama’s response was, “No, you don’t understand. I want no civilian casualties. Zero”
Well, Obama, thank you for announcing the strategy that ISIS should use to protect themselves: stake out a few women and children hostages who are easily visible around all facilities they don’t want bombed. (And now I also understand why you won’t share intelligence with Putin because he would have no such compunction against a bit of collateral damage.)
EXACTLY! When it comes to combat, we have to be more efficient terrorists than ISIS until such time they are cinders!
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