Category ISIL

Raqqa Has Fallen

It would appear that Raqqa has fallen: https://www.yahoo.com/news/islamic-state-raqqa-mounts-last-stand-around-city-083330251.html

  1. This announcement comes from U.S.-backed militias.
  2. It was only a four-month battle (in contrast to Mosul).
  3. “A formal declaration of victory in Raqqa will be made soon”

This does appear to end the current phase of the Islamic State, which exploded out of the desert to take Raqqa and Mosul in the first half of 2014. It lasted less than 4 years. It was an interesting experiment for a guerilla movement to suddenly try to seize power in several cities and establish a functioning state in the middle of a war. Sort of gave conventional forces something to attack. You wonder if this worked to the advantage of ISIL in the long run or not.

I gather now that the state-less Islamic state will go back to being a guerilla movement. Not sure what its long term prognosis is. This is still a far-from-resolved civil war going on in Syria.

Deployed Troop Counts

Well, turns out we have a little more deployed troops in Afghanistan than is previously reported. Previously it has been reported to be 8,400. Turns out we have 11,000. This does not include the 3,900 that have been recently authorized to go there.

We also have officially 5,262 in Iraq and 503 in Syria. These figures are low with a couple of thousand more troops in both countries (not sure if that is supposed to a couple of thousand more in each of these two countries).

So potentially we are looking at around 15,000 troops in Afghanistan and may have around 8,000 troops in Iraq and Syria.

Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-military-idUSKCN1BA2IF

 

 

Defeating an Insurgency by Air II

One of my earliest blog posts, done in December 2015 was on “Defeating an Insurgency by Air.” It was in part inspired by the Republican debate at the time and people talking about “carpet bombing” ISIL.

The post is here: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2015/12/29/defeating-an-insurgency-by-air/

The same article is was posted on the History News Network: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161601

An expanded article was posted on the Small War Journal: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/airpower-just-part-of-the-counterinsurgency-equation

I gather the part of the article that gives people heartburn is: “So, we are left to state that we cannot think of a single insurgency that was defeated by airpower, primarily defeated by airpower, or even seriously undermined by airpower. Perhaps there is a case we are missing. It is probably safe to say that if it has never successfully been done in over a hundred insurgencies over the last hundred years, then it is something not likely to occur now.”

Now, we do go on a hunt for other cases. This led to the follow-up blog posts:

Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?

Air Power Defeating an Insurgency

Chasing the Mad Mullah

Iraq Revolt of 1920

Bleeding an Insurgency to Death

KOSOVO 1999

Bombing Kosovo in 1999 versus the Islamic State in 2015

Of course, we are not the only people talking about this

Bleeding an Insurgency to Death

This last post was actually not tagged as an “air power” subject, but I felt it was particularly relevant….and yes, we do have two blog posts with the same title. But this second one has this cool graph:

 

Battle of Mosul Ends

Looks the Battle for Mosul had ended as of Sunday. A timeline is here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/iraq-battle-mosul-135450223.html

This thing took forever. The offensive started on 17 October. They entered the city on 1 November. It then took 251 days to take the city (over 8 months). This is one of the interesting challenges of urban warfare, it takes 15 days to get to the city and 251 days to take it. As we noted in our three urban warfare studies (and in two chapters in War by Numbers), operations outside of the urban area go so much faster than in the urban areas. The end result is that most urban warfare eventually turns into a giant mop-up operation.

I notice there has been a renewed interest in urban warfare, especially with discussions of fighting in mega-cities. I am not sure that everyone involved in these efforts grasp that these fights are not occurring at the point of the spearhead, but are indeed often a mop-up operation, regardless of the size of the city.

Mosul is in ruins. It is certainly one of the largest cities that ever had an extended urban fight in it. It is larger than Stalingrad.

So…does anyone have some good casualty figures for this fight?

 

P.S.: https://www.yahoo.com/news/isis-driven-mosul-leaves-behind-city-ruins-society-shattered-distrust-113951651.html

 

 

New Details of Shoot Down

Article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/politics/us-syria-russia-dogfight/index.html

Highlights:

  1. It was a pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornets
  2. They were operating from the carrier USS George H. W. Bush
  3. They fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder at half a mile away
  4. Syrian Su-22 deployed defensive flares causing the U.S. missile to miss.
  5. They then fire an AIM-120 AMRAAM which hit the Su-22.
  6. Syrian pilot ejected and probably landed in ISIL-controlled territory. Syria states that he is missing.

According to an email sent to me from sources that I cannot confirm the veracity of:

According to a source in the Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF), Lieutenant Colonel Ali Fahd took off in the afternoon of June 18 from the T4 airbase east of Homs.  We know that the warplane is a Soviet made ground attack Su-22M4 with the serial number “3224”.

According to our source the Su-22M4 was loaded with six general purpose OFAB 250-270 bombs. Ali Fahd’s mission was to strike ISIS fighters and vehicles attempting to withdrew from Rusafah in the province of Raqqah towards Sukhnah in the province of Homs and Oqerbat in the eastern Hama countryside – near Ali Fahd’s home town of Salamyiah. Connection with Ali Fahd was lost after reaching the operation area over Rusafah.

According to Ali Fahd’s relative Al-Masdar News reporter, Majd Fahed, Ali Fahd was captured by the SDF and Tiger Forces Leader General Suheil Al-Hassan is negotiating with SDF in order to free Ali Fahd.

The SDF side has released no official comments on the situation. However, SDF sources confirmed that Ali Fahd was captured by the SDF suggesting that the group will release him in the end.

Anyhow, really don’t want to get into “reporting” as I have books to write.

Economics of Warfare 18

Continuing with the eighteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture discussed the “costs of terrorism.” Now we have never done much work on terrorism, neither at The Dupuy Institute (TDI) or at any of Trevor Dupuy’s older organizations (TNDA/HERO/DMSI).  At DMSI in the 1980s, they looked at doing work on terrorism, as part of the effort to “expand the business” but it was really not our core expertise and there was already a considerable number of people out there working the subject. We (HERO Books) did end up publishing a couple of books on terrorism. We no longer have them in stock: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/booksfs.htm

Now, terrorism is part of many insurgencies, and in some cases, may be a primary tool of an insurgency. This is especially true if it is an international political movement, like for example, the anarchists in the 1870s-1920s, which actually did assassinate one of our presidents (William McKinley in 1901) and bombed Wall Street in 1920 (38 killed and 400 wounded). International terrorism is not exactly new. If I was going to do anything on international terrorism, a comparative analysis to the anarchist movement, and other such movements, would be my starting point.

Slides 2 and 3 provide a list of causes of death for Americans in 2014. Of course, various diseases top the list (like cardio-vascular and cancer), and then there are 136,053 deaths in 2014 due to accidents, 47,055 due to drug overdoses, 42,773 due to  “intentional self-harm,” 37,195 due to “transportation accidents,” 10,945 due to firearm assault, 6,721 due to HIV, 6,258 pedestrian deaths and of course…..19 due to terrorism in 2014 (and 44 in 2015…see slide 4).

I think this is a very valid point, if as a society we are concerned where to focus our time, resources and attention. As he points out on slide 4, even the 3,004 American deaths suffered in 2001 (9/11) is will below the number of pedestrian deaths in 2014.

He then references a book on slide 8 by Alan Krueger that makes an argument that the economic impact of terrorism is actually relatively low overall (slides 9-20), including making the argument that overreaction to terrorism is very costly (see slide 13).

He then addresses other papers on slides 21 and 37. These are interesting to look at as they attempt to measure the cost of terrorism, both microeconomic cost and macroeconomic costs. Probably best to read through it yourself.

The link to his lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2018.pdf

 

Finally going for Raqqa

Well, Mosul has taken a while….and it is not quite over yet. Now we are finally going after Raqqa. Some say it will be quicker (hard to imagine that it could be slower): https://uk.news.yahoo.com/battle-liberate-raqqa-isis-apos-152800876.html

A few highlights from the article:

  1. Awad of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) says it will be quicker. Not sure what his expertise is.
  2. Raqqa has (or had) a population of 300,000 (compared to Mosul which had 1.3 million).
  3. SDF has 45,000 people of which 13,000 are Arab fighters (and most of the rest are Kurds?).
  4. They are 1 km away from Raqqa in the east, and 3 km away in the west and north.
  5. The U.S. estimates 3,000 to 4,000 ISIL fighters in Raqqa.
  6. Turkey is not particularly happy with the SDF.

 

 

Mosul Battle will be finished in days?

By the way, in between all the other rather dramatic news, there is still a battle raging in Mosul. Now, the Iraqi’s are claiming it will be over in days (before 26 May): http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39882257

The statement was made on the 10th, and it is now the 20th.

Just as a reminder, as it is been a while since we looked at the timeline, back around 18 October, they were claiming that it could take two months: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2016/10/18/duration-estimate-for-mosul/

  1. They started the offensive around 15 October https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2016/10/16/its-started/
  2. Arrived to the outskirts of Mosul and started taking parts of Mosul in early November: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2016/11/10/taking-mosul/
  3. Took the Eastern half of Mosul around 22 January: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2017/01/23/east-mosul-taken/
  4. And then they started fighting for the western half of Mosul around 18 February: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2017/02/19/offensive-to-re-take-western-mosul-has-started/

Not the fastest offensive we have seen. For example, the Germans arrived on the outskirts of Stalingrad in August 1942, had taken most of the city by the end of November, and were still there, surrounded and starving, in February 1943.

One final note, remember this prediction in early February: https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2017/02/09/timeline-for-mosul-and-raqqa/

It stated that U.S. commander in Iraq, U.S. Army Lt. General Stephan Townsend, said “within the next six months I think we’ll see both (the Mosul and Raqqa campaigns) conclude.”

So, are we still on track to take Raqqa by the end of July?

10% Part II

With the budget resolution voted in by congress that runs until the September of this year (end of the fiscal year), I gather the defense budget is the Obama proposed 2017 defense budget plus $15 billion (which is half of the additional budget that Trump requested for 2017)….so total budget of around $583 (2017 request) or $596 (actually spent) + $15 billion: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/lawmakers-common-ground-1t-plan-201456675.html

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

The big increase will have to wait for the FY 2018 budget, proposed to be $639 billion (I gather, although the figure $603 was put out when Trump first announced his 10% increase). Of course, they did not fully sort out the FY2017 budget until five months before fiscal year 2017 ended, so I am not giving much of chance that they will get the FY 2018 budget sorted out before the start of the next fiscal year (this coming October), as I gather there a few controversial expenditures and cuts in the next government budget. So defense spending will remain fairly level for some months to come.

…

P.S.: The 15 billion increase is an additional 12.5 billion  for this fiscal year (ends Sept. 30) and “…an additional $2.5 billion contingent on Trump delivering a plan to Congress for defeating the Islamic State militant group.” This last part seems a little odd: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/0501/To-avoid-government-shutdown-negotiators-reach-deal-on-1-trillion-budget