Eye In The Sky
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Great article IMO.
Op IMPACT: CAF in the Iraq & Syria crisis
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Eye In The Sky
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Canada punching above its weight in fight against ISIL forces, U.S. military commander say
A Base Somewhere in Southwest Asia — A senior planner closely involved in directing the U.S.-led coalition’s air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant says that Canada had contributed far more to the campaign than the relatively small number of Canadian Special Forces personnel and aircraft might suggest.
“I would submit it is a combination of all the coalition contributions that come together to produce capability. It is the sum of all the parts, if you will, and Canada is a key coalition member,” U.S. Marine Brig.-Gen. Tom Weidley said in an interview at a secret base in the desert where coalition commanders, including some Canadian officers, both collect and analyze intelligence from the battlefields in Iraq and Syria and advise Kurdish and Iraqi forces.
Canada’s deployment of approximately 70 Special Forces advisers with Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq and of 9 RCAF aircraft that have been flying missions out of Kuwait were significant force multipliers, said the general, who commanded a Super Cobra assault helicopter squadron that flew combat missions in Iraq when the U.S. had ground forces there.
Elaborating on the mission of Canada’s elite trainers, whose presence in Iraq has until now largely been clouded in secrecy, Weidley said, “They provide training, education and their experiences to the Kurdish Peshmerga, whether in the conduct of operations, in the integration of aviation fire support or in terminal control advice. They become integral to what the Peshmerga are capable of doing.”
In what were the first public comments from an American general about Canada’s role in the war against ISIL, Weidley added: “Every Peshmerga fighter the Canadians touch enhances a future Peshmerga leader. Those intangibles grow over time. That Peshmerga fighter is going to train his subordinates and it continues to grow as that leader moves up in the chain. Small numbers of trainers have the ability to make a huge impact across the battle space.”
About 6,500 hand-picked Iraqi and Peshmerga security forces had already been trained for between four and six weeks each at five different centres and about 5,000 more were currently in training, according to the general.
The Canadians and mentors from other Western nations such as Britain, France and the Netherlands have been providing training in everything from the law of war, basic marksmanship and counter-IED skills to mine clearing, the integration of aviation fire and squad, platoon and company level attacks.
“We are not looking to create Canadian-equivalent infantry battalion structures,” Weidley said. “The goal is to take those Iraqi units and get them to a level where they can be successful against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIL) in the current fight.”
Although well back from the front lines, Weidley looked very much like a Marine straight out of Central Casting. Barrel-chested with ramrod straight posture, he sported a brush cut that looked as if you could polish shoes with it. Using common Marine parlance, he described the Canadian troops now serving in the Middle East as “brothers.”
Liberal Justin Trudeau has mocked the fighting abilities of Canada’s Hornet fighter jets and the fact that they were more than 30 years old.
While unaware of those remarks, the general said the RCAF’s warplanes were “an absolutely capable platform in this environment. They provide a great deal of flexibility in the ordnance they can carry in order to address different targets. They have a tremendous array of sensors and data sharing capabilities.”
As for the Aurora spy aircraft, “I have seen some of the products that they have provided and they are superb,” he said. “It is the synthesis of that ability to rapidly bring that information to bear that has an operational effect on the battle space. Working in combination with the other intelligence gathering platforms they give us a fused picture of what is actually happening on the ground.”
An area of great interest to Weidley’s headquarters was the Euphrates River Valley, all the way from Iraq to the Syrian city of Raqqa and beyond that to the northwest toward the Turkish border.
“Because they control the lines of communication those have become the focus of a lot of our intelligence collection in order to strike at Daesh’s revenue generating capabilities with oil refineries and wells,” Weidley said. “Coalition ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities including Canadian ones are helping us develop an understanding of the networks that Daesh uses to distribute weapons and move troops from Syria to Iraq. It is a lot of space and takes a lot of dedicated assets to do that.”
While it was difficult to “quantitatively” gauge the success of the coalition and their Iraqi and Kurdish partners “we continue to see progress every day,” he said. Proof of this, he said, was that territory had recently been regained from ISIS after what had been large-scale offensive Iraqi and Kurdish operations.
“This isn’t a near-term fight. It is a fight that is going to take some time.”
Canada punching above its weight in fight against ISIL forces, U.S. military commander say
A Base Somewhere in Southwest Asia — A senior planner closely involved in directing the U.S.-led coalition’s air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant says that Canada had contributed far more to the campaign than the relatively small number of Canadian Special Forces personnel and aircraft might suggest.
“I would submit it is a combination of all the coalition contributions that come together to produce capability. It is the sum of all the parts, if you will, and Canada is a key coalition member,” U.S. Marine Brig.-Gen. Tom Weidley said in an interview at a secret base in the desert where coalition commanders, including some Canadian officers, both collect and analyze intelligence from the battlefields in Iraq and Syria and advise Kurdish and Iraqi forces.
Canada’s deployment of approximately 70 Special Forces advisers with Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq and of 9 RCAF aircraft that have been flying missions out of Kuwait were significant force multipliers, said the general, who commanded a Super Cobra assault helicopter squadron that flew combat missions in Iraq when the U.S. had ground forces there.
Elaborating on the mission of Canada’s elite trainers, whose presence in Iraq has until now largely been clouded in secrecy, Weidley said, “They provide training, education and their experiences to the Kurdish Peshmerga, whether in the conduct of operations, in the integration of aviation fire support or in terminal control advice. They become integral to what the Peshmerga are capable of doing.”
In what were the first public comments from an American general about Canada’s role in the war against ISIL, Weidley added: “Every Peshmerga fighter the Canadians touch enhances a future Peshmerga leader. Those intangibles grow over time. That Peshmerga fighter is going to train his subordinates and it continues to grow as that leader moves up in the chain. Small numbers of trainers have the ability to make a huge impact across the battle space.”
About 6,500 hand-picked Iraqi and Peshmerga security forces had already been trained for between four and six weeks each at five different centres and about 5,000 more were currently in training, according to the general.
The Canadians and mentors from other Western nations such as Britain, France and the Netherlands have been providing training in everything from the law of war, basic marksmanship and counter-IED skills to mine clearing, the integration of aviation fire and squad, platoon and company level attacks.
“We are not looking to create Canadian-equivalent infantry battalion structures,” Weidley said. “The goal is to take those Iraqi units and get them to a level where they can be successful against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIL) in the current fight.”
Although well back from the front lines, Weidley looked very much like a Marine straight out of Central Casting. Barrel-chested with ramrod straight posture, he sported a brush cut that looked as if you could polish shoes with it. Using common Marine parlance, he described the Canadian troops now serving in the Middle East as “brothers.”
Liberal Justin Trudeau has mocked the fighting abilities of Canada’s Hornet fighter jets and the fact that they were more than 30 years old.
While unaware of those remarks, the general said the RCAF’s warplanes were “an absolutely capable platform in this environment. They provide a great deal of flexibility in the ordnance they can carry in order to address different targets. They have a tremendous array of sensors and data sharing capabilities.”
As for the Aurora spy aircraft, “I have seen some of the products that they have provided and they are superb,” he said. “It is the synthesis of that ability to rapidly bring that information to bear that has an operational effect on the battle space. Working in combination with the other intelligence gathering platforms they give us a fused picture of what is actually happening on the ground.”
An area of great interest to Weidley’s headquarters was the Euphrates River Valley, all the way from Iraq to the Syrian city of Raqqa and beyond that to the northwest toward the Turkish border.
“Because they control the lines of communication those have become the focus of a lot of our intelligence collection in order to strike at Daesh’s revenue generating capabilities with oil refineries and wells,” Weidley said. “Coalition ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities including Canadian ones are helping us develop an understanding of the networks that Daesh uses to distribute weapons and move troops from Syria to Iraq. It is a lot of space and takes a lot of dedicated assets to do that.”
While it was difficult to “quantitatively” gauge the success of the coalition and their Iraqi and Kurdish partners “we continue to see progress every day,” he said. Proof of this, he said, was that territory had recently been regained from ISIS after what had been large-scale offensive Iraqi and Kurdish operations.
“This isn’t a near-term fight. It is a fight that is going to take some time.”
Eye In The Sky
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As of 15 April 2015, Air Task Force-Iraq conducted 778 sorties:
- CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 506 sorties;
- CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 131 sorties, delivering some 7,701,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft;
- and CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 141 reconnaissance missions.
- CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 506 sorties;
- CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 131 sorties, delivering some 7,701,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft;
- and CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 141 reconnaissance missions.
daftandbarmy
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BZ CANSOF 
‘The Canadians are among our most important guys': Peshmerga praise elite commandos in fight against ISIL
BASHIQA MOUNTAIN, Iraq — It is clear from talking with front line Kurdish Peshmerga that Canadian special forces have done more on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant than their coalition partners, including the U.S., and are going to play a critical part in the coming action to expel these fanatical hardliners from Mosul.
The silence from Canadian Special Operations Forces Command about this fits with the secretive unit’s habitual reluctance to allow media access of any kind to its commandos when they are forward deployed or after they return from such missions. But it does not fully explain why CANSOFCOM has declined requests by Postmedia since last fall for general information from its operators here on what has been described as a training mission.
In a first, CANSOFCOM opened the door slightly earlier this year when it acknowledged in Ottawa that a few of the approximately 70 advisers it has in Iraq had defended themselves several times by shooting back when they were fired upon by ISIL jihadists. This was revealed before the tragic death of Sgt. Andrew Doiron in a friendly-fire incident with the Peshmerga on March 6 on a barren ridge that has a strategically crucial view of Mosul, one of the places where this war will be won or lost.
During interviews conducted in the autonomous region’s capital, Erbil, and in two location at the front, five Kurdish Peshmerga generals and a slew of junior officers and foot soldiers praised the elite commandos from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and Joint Task Force 2. This was not simply the Peshmerga being polite to a visitor. They stressed again and again how immensely grateful they were to Canada for the unique role CSOR and JTF2 have been playing in the war against ISIL.
An infantry general responsible for a stretch of the front near Kirkuk told me he was envious because the Canadians were deployed with a fellow general he had visited near Mosul. Another infantry general told me “the Canadians are among our most important guys.”
American and French advisers have been on the front lines from time to time, the Peshmerga told me. But the consensus was that Canada has been more willing to go deep into the field to help them than any other country.
The difference between Canada and its partners in this fight against a resourceful, particularly vicious foe, is in how Ottawa has defined its training and mentoring role with the Peshmerga. Like Britain, Australia and New Zealand, among others, Canada has offered a range of courses inside protected training bases on how to fight.
But as near as I can tell — and this is a world where operatives seldom confirm anything — Canada is the only nation in the U.S.-led coalition that has regularly sent teams of military spotters far forward to identify ISIL targets and the only country whose observers have used lasers to pinpoint those targets for coalition warplanes to destroy.
To know what ISIL is doing and to direct air power to try to stop them, Peshmerga serving near Mosul told me that almost every night and sometimes during the day, Canada moves small groups of special forces to within shouting distance of ISIL positions.
Small wonder, then, that Canadians have come under attack or been caught in the crossfire a few times. While admitting that it was Peshmerga troops who killed Doiron, one senior officer told me that on the night that the Moncton, N.B., native died the Peshmerga and ISIL had also exchanged gunfire in the same area.
I know from having stood with the Peshmerga on the same ridge that Canadian forward air controllers have operated from that they have been close enough to ISIL fighters to see their quarry and their black flags and to hear them talk with each other over their two-way radios using their “noms de guerre,” always preceded by the honorific “abu”, which means “father of” in Arabic.
Another noteworthy thing that Canada has done that their Western partners apparently have not, is to have a few of its advisers camp a short distance behind the front, so that the Peshmerga can easily slip away from their heavily fortified bunkers to a nearby staging area to be mentored in a broad range of military skills before quickly returning to the fight. Canada has also been the only country to provide the Peshmerga with high-tech demining robots that work by remote control.
None of this means that Ottawa has taken up a combat mission in Iraq. The special forces it has in Iraq are too few in number and too lightly armed to undertake even modest offensive operations. The weapons the Canadians have with them are only sufficient to defend themselves against attack.
It would compromise operational security for CANSOFCOM to provide specific details about what its troops have been doing on Bashiqa Mountain and elsewhere in northern Iraq. But Canadians should at least be told that their most highly trained, combat-tested warriors have become central to what the coalition is trying to achieve against the most virulent strain of radical Islam yet seen.
Despite CANSOFCOM’s information blackout, the Peshmerga loudly attested to me how highly they value Canada’s presence with them at the front.
Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/within-shouting-distance-of-isil-755418#ixzz3Ye9hhvJm
‘The Canadians are among our most important guys': Peshmerga praise elite commandos in fight against ISIL
BASHIQA MOUNTAIN, Iraq — It is clear from talking with front line Kurdish Peshmerga that Canadian special forces have done more on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant than their coalition partners, including the U.S., and are going to play a critical part in the coming action to expel these fanatical hardliners from Mosul.
The silence from Canadian Special Operations Forces Command about this fits with the secretive unit’s habitual reluctance to allow media access of any kind to its commandos when they are forward deployed or after they return from such missions. But it does not fully explain why CANSOFCOM has declined requests by Postmedia since last fall for general information from its operators here on what has been described as a training mission.
In a first, CANSOFCOM opened the door slightly earlier this year when it acknowledged in Ottawa that a few of the approximately 70 advisers it has in Iraq had defended themselves several times by shooting back when they were fired upon by ISIL jihadists. This was revealed before the tragic death of Sgt. Andrew Doiron in a friendly-fire incident with the Peshmerga on March 6 on a barren ridge that has a strategically crucial view of Mosul, one of the places where this war will be won or lost.
During interviews conducted in the autonomous region’s capital, Erbil, and in two location at the front, five Kurdish Peshmerga generals and a slew of junior officers and foot soldiers praised the elite commandos from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and Joint Task Force 2. This was not simply the Peshmerga being polite to a visitor. They stressed again and again how immensely grateful they were to Canada for the unique role CSOR and JTF2 have been playing in the war against ISIL.
An infantry general responsible for a stretch of the front near Kirkuk told me he was envious because the Canadians were deployed with a fellow general he had visited near Mosul. Another infantry general told me “the Canadians are among our most important guys.”
American and French advisers have been on the front lines from time to time, the Peshmerga told me. But the consensus was that Canada has been more willing to go deep into the field to help them than any other country.
The difference between Canada and its partners in this fight against a resourceful, particularly vicious foe, is in how Ottawa has defined its training and mentoring role with the Peshmerga. Like Britain, Australia and New Zealand, among others, Canada has offered a range of courses inside protected training bases on how to fight.
But as near as I can tell — and this is a world where operatives seldom confirm anything — Canada is the only nation in the U.S.-led coalition that has regularly sent teams of military spotters far forward to identify ISIL targets and the only country whose observers have used lasers to pinpoint those targets for coalition warplanes to destroy.
To know what ISIL is doing and to direct air power to try to stop them, Peshmerga serving near Mosul told me that almost every night and sometimes during the day, Canada moves small groups of special forces to within shouting distance of ISIL positions.
Small wonder, then, that Canadians have come under attack or been caught in the crossfire a few times. While admitting that it was Peshmerga troops who killed Doiron, one senior officer told me that on the night that the Moncton, N.B., native died the Peshmerga and ISIL had also exchanged gunfire in the same area.
I know from having stood with the Peshmerga on the same ridge that Canadian forward air controllers have operated from that they have been close enough to ISIL fighters to see their quarry and their black flags and to hear them talk with each other over their two-way radios using their “noms de guerre,” always preceded by the honorific “abu”, which means “father of” in Arabic.
Another noteworthy thing that Canada has done that their Western partners apparently have not, is to have a few of its advisers camp a short distance behind the front, so that the Peshmerga can easily slip away from their heavily fortified bunkers to a nearby staging area to be mentored in a broad range of military skills before quickly returning to the fight. Canada has also been the only country to provide the Peshmerga with high-tech demining robots that work by remote control.
None of this means that Ottawa has taken up a combat mission in Iraq. The special forces it has in Iraq are too few in number and too lightly armed to undertake even modest offensive operations. The weapons the Canadians have with them are only sufficient to defend themselves against attack.
It would compromise operational security for CANSOFCOM to provide specific details about what its troops have been doing on Bashiqa Mountain and elsewhere in northern Iraq. But Canadians should at least be told that their most highly trained, combat-tested warriors have become central to what the coalition is trying to achieve against the most virulent strain of radical Islam yet seen.
Despite CANSOFCOM’s information blackout, the Peshmerga loudly attested to me how highly they value Canada’s presence with them at the front.
Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/within-shouting-distance-of-isil-755418#ixzz3Ye9hhvJm
daftandbarmy
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Eye In The Sky said:
I have no idea of course, but that sounds like a lot.
How does it compare with Libya?
Eye In The Sky
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Scroll down to the Air Component section for info:
http://www.forces.gc.ca/sites/FORCES_Internet/operations-abroad-past/op-mobile-metrics.page
Hornets 946 sorties
Tankers (combined) 389 sorties
Aurora 181 sorties
http://www.forces.gc.ca/sites/FORCES_Internet/operations-abroad-past/op-mobile-metrics.page
Hornets 946 sorties
Tankers (combined) 389 sorties
Aurora 181 sorties
Eye In The Sky
Army.ca Legend
- Reaction score
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As of 27 April 2015, Air Task Force-Iraq conducted 834 sorties:
CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 542 sorties;
CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 141 sorties, delivering some 8,293,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 151 reconnaissance missions.
CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 542 sorties;
CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 141 sorties, delivering some 8,293,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 151 reconnaissance missions.
Eye In The Sky
Army.ca Legend
- Reaction score
- 3,781
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Article Link
‘The Canadians are among our most important guys': Peshmerga praise elite commandos in fight against ISIL
BASHIQA MOUNTAIN, Iraq — It is clear from talking with front line Kurdish Peshmerga that Canadian special forces have done more on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant than their coalition partners, including the U.S., and are going to play a critical part in the coming action to expel these fanatical hardliners from Mosul.
The silence from Canadian Special Operations Forces Command about this fits with the secretive unit’s habitual reluctance to allow media access of any kind to its commandos when they are forward deployed or after they return from such missions. But it does not fully explain why CANSOFCOM has declined requests by Postmedia since last fall for general information from its operators here on what has been described as a training mission.
In a first, CANSOFCOM opened the door slightly earlier this year when it acknowledged in Ottawa that a few of the approximately 70 advisers it has in Iraq had defended themselves several times by shooting back when they were fired upon by ISIL jihadists. This was revealed before the tragic death of Sgt. Andrew Doiron in a friendly-fire incident with the Peshmerga on March 6 on a barren ridge that has a strategically crucial view of Mosul, one of the places where this war will be won or lost.
During interviews conducted in the autonomous region’s capital, Erbil, and in two location at the front, five Kurdish Peshmerga generals and a slew of junior officers and foot soldiers praised the elite commandos from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and Joint Task Force 2. This was not simply the Peshmerga being polite to a visitor. They stressed again and again how immensely grateful they were to Canada for the unique role CSOR and JTF2 have been playing in the war against ISIL.
An infantry general responsible for a stretch of the front near Kirkuk told me he was envious because the Canadians were deployed with a fellow general he had visited near Mosul. Another infantry general told me “the Canadians are among our most important guys.”
American and French advisers have been on the front lines from time to time, the Peshmerga told me. But the consensus was that Canada has been more willing to go deep into the field to help them than any other country.
The difference between Canada and its partners in this fight against a resourceful, particularly vicious foe, is in how Ottawa has defined its training and mentoring role with the Peshmerga. Like Britain, Australia and New Zealand, among others, Canada has offered a range of courses inside protected training bases on how to fight.
But as near as I can tell — and this is a world where operatives seldom confirm anything — Canada is the only nation in the U.S.-led coalition that has regularly sent teams of military spotters far forward to identify ISIL targets and the only country whose observers have used lasers to pinpoint those targets for coalition warplanes to destroy.
more at link
‘The Canadians are among our most important guys': Peshmerga praise elite commandos in fight against ISIL
BASHIQA MOUNTAIN, Iraq — It is clear from talking with front line Kurdish Peshmerga that Canadian special forces have done more on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant than their coalition partners, including the U.S., and are going to play a critical part in the coming action to expel these fanatical hardliners from Mosul.
The silence from Canadian Special Operations Forces Command about this fits with the secretive unit’s habitual reluctance to allow media access of any kind to its commandos when they are forward deployed or after they return from such missions. But it does not fully explain why CANSOFCOM has declined requests by Postmedia since last fall for general information from its operators here on what has been described as a training mission.
In a first, CANSOFCOM opened the door slightly earlier this year when it acknowledged in Ottawa that a few of the approximately 70 advisers it has in Iraq had defended themselves several times by shooting back when they were fired upon by ISIL jihadists. This was revealed before the tragic death of Sgt. Andrew Doiron in a friendly-fire incident with the Peshmerga on March 6 on a barren ridge that has a strategically crucial view of Mosul, one of the places where this war will be won or lost.
During interviews conducted in the autonomous region’s capital, Erbil, and in two location at the front, five Kurdish Peshmerga generals and a slew of junior officers and foot soldiers praised the elite commandos from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and Joint Task Force 2. This was not simply the Peshmerga being polite to a visitor. They stressed again and again how immensely grateful they were to Canada for the unique role CSOR and JTF2 have been playing in the war against ISIL.
An infantry general responsible for a stretch of the front near Kirkuk told me he was envious because the Canadians were deployed with a fellow general he had visited near Mosul. Another infantry general told me “the Canadians are among our most important guys.”
American and French advisers have been on the front lines from time to time, the Peshmerga told me. But the consensus was that Canada has been more willing to go deep into the field to help them than any other country.
The difference between Canada and its partners in this fight against a resourceful, particularly vicious foe, is in how Ottawa has defined its training and mentoring role with the Peshmerga. Like Britain, Australia and New Zealand, among others, Canada has offered a range of courses inside protected training bases on how to fight.
But as near as I can tell — and this is a world where operatives seldom confirm anything — Canada is the only nation in the U.S.-led coalition that has regularly sent teams of military spotters far forward to identify ISIL targets and the only country whose observers have used lasers to pinpoint those targets for coalition warplanes to destroy.
more at link
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- Reaction score
- 4,625
- Points
- 1,260
More details in attached ....
Eye In The Sky
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As of 11 May 2015, Air Task Force-Iraq conducted 896 sorties:
CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 582 sorties;
CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 151 sorties, delivering some 8,911,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 163 reconnaissance missions.
CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 582 sorties;
CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 151 sorties, delivering some 8,911,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 163 reconnaissance missions.
- Reaction score
- 4,625
- Points
- 1,260
Eye In The Sky
Army.ca Legend
- Reaction score
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As of 20 May 2015, Air Task Force-Iraq conducted 937 sorties:
CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 610 sorties;
CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 157 sorties, delivering some 9,306,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 170 reconnaissance missions.
CF-188 Hornet fighters conducted 610 sorties;
CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 157 sorties, delivering some 9,306,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 170 reconnaissance missions.
Quirky
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Eye In The Sky said:
Great job but it hasn't stopped the advance of ISIS.
Maybe we should just leave Iraq/Syria alone and let fate decide the outcome. IMO, our presence there is nothing more than giving our fast jets something to do besides play peek-a-boo with the bears.
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Quirky said:
Yes and no. There is more going on that what we hear in the media, well all know Ramadi fell, and we all know why. We can only do so much, but I don't think it is as bad as the media would have you believe. If we sit back and let fate decide the outcome, (IMHO) we would be in a world of hurt years from now. What we need (again my opinion) is the Muslim leaders from around the world to step up and start publicly condoning this extreme behaviour. I have yet to hear/see anything from anyone, just the occasional "we are a peaceful religion" quip on the news. If there was a collective stand against extremeism there would be fewer individuals heading to the middle east to fight. We need Iran to stop publishing bullshit news stories, and take a more active role in this fight. We need Turkey to stop sending arms to the rebels in Syria, they could also stop taking ISIS oil too, yeah that'd be great... Finally we need the people of Iraq to stand up and say enough is enough, lets fucking clean house.
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Quirky said:
Ehm.... Actually it has stopped their advance. One year ago they were at the gates of Baghdad, not the case anymore is it? Airpower has given the Kurds and our Iraqi allies an upper hand in this fight. It's now become a war of attrition and the Shiites and Kurds in the area outnumber the Sunni. The war will drag on for awhile but resources and manpower are finite.
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Yeah, Drew....love the completely uninformed rectal plucks from some people...they should be careful with how much they pluck from their brainass, as too much, and they'll drop their IQ below what it is already. :nod:
Eye In The Sky
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Quirky said:
I thought I was reading a CBC article comment for a second, or maybe listening to a dobber talk on the CC patio. ^-^
I'm going to throw out a WAG that you haven't turned wrenches in the ATF-I lines yet. As has been mentioned before, you because you aren't seeing it on CBC or Youtube doesn't mean shyte isn't happening. Air power alone won't win the ground war, and that aspect of it isn't a ATF-I task. The ATF-I task is being carried out and with success, even if limited in some people's view.
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