IRAQ - Fight on Islamic State: News #1

iraqidabab wrote:Is it practical to drop large amounts of air-dropped landmine munition dispensers KMGU | over parts of the main parts of the Iraq-Syria border used by ISIS to make it harder for them to cross ?

flamming_python wrote:

iraqidabab wrote:Is it practical to drop large amounts of air-dropped landmine munition dispensers KMGU | over parts of the main parts of the Iraq-Syria border used by ISIS to make it harder for them to cross ?

I would imagine many ordianry people cross that border and at the same locations too.

What exactly is it you would want to achieve? They will find other places where to cross it; not that it really is that important to 'cross it' as such because at this point they control that whole region and that border exists mainly on paper.

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:Simply defeating IS miliarily will be ineffective. Iraq needs a through demographic shift in disfavor of Sunnis

At best, once you conquer a city, politely ask the Sunni inhabitants to leave and then get them to march 1000 km to the nearest Saudi city, in 45C sun. Oh and don't forget to tell them to pray to Allah for survival.

I would prefer all of them (Shias too) to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy or Lutheranism (Christians don't follow Sharia) but... if it's possible to convert at least some Sunnis to Shiism, it's worth a try.

A "catastrophic" engine failure aboard an A-10 Thunderbolt ....

A "catastrophic" engine failure aboard an A-10 Thunderbolt on a mission over Iraq forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing at the al-Asad airbase where U.S. Marines have been training Iraqi forces in in contested Anbar province, U.S. Central Command confirmed Friday.

Col. Patrick Ryder, a CentCom spokesman, told a Pentagon briefing that the engine failure was "not uncommon" for combat aircraft.

"It was just one of those things that happen when you’re operating high-performance aircraft," Ryder said of the engine failure.

Ryder declined to discuss when the incident occurred and whether the A-10 was over ISIS-controlled territory when it happened, but said the pilot was not injured and the aircraft was repaired and returned to duty.

The forced landing of the A-10 came amid renewed debate in Congress over the Air Force’s plan to mothball the aging A-10 fleet by 2018.

Supporters of the attack A-10s, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., kept funding alive for the A-10 program last year and have pledged to do the same this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for what they call the nation’s premier ground attack aircraft.

In an Air Force release, the 332nd Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron gave a detailed account of the extraordinary effort to repair the plane at the al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad that was not equipped for the fix.

The number one engine on the A-10C Thunderbolt II "suffered catastrophic damage during a routine refueling mission and the pilot was able to safely land the aircraft at the air base," the release said.

The Air Force dispatched a nine-member team to conduct the repairs. "This was a very important mission," said Col. Michael Stohler, the 332nd Maintenancer.

"The aircraft was in a location that was not fully secure and we needed it repaired and flown out of there as quickly as possible," Stohler said. The al-Asad airbase has periodically come under attack from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but there have been no U.S. casualties.

Getting across what he needed done to Army troops and Marines on the ground also presented a problem, Stohler said.

"Communicating fighter aircraft needs to Marine and Army personnel presented many unique challenges," Stohler said.

"There is absolutely no aircraft maintenance equipment, air ground equipment, or any way to tow fighter aircraft" at al-Asad, Stohler. "We had to bring everything we needed and improvise everything else. We worked on the jet in an unused aircraft shelter the Iraqi air force used once upon a time. It had no lights, no power, no phone, and no internet -- just a roof over our heads."

Just getting the A-10 into the makeshift hangar was difficult. "We tried to back it in using the truck -- no joy," Stohler said. "We tried to use a large Marine fork lift to push it in -- no joy. In the end, 12 airmen and two Marines pushed the 40,000-pound aircraft 70 yards uphill into the hangar."

It took five days to repair the plane to the point where it could fly back to its original base at an undisclosed location in the region.

"The pilot did an outstanding job of flying this difficult-to-handle aircraft to a safe landing," Stohler said. "The maintenance team did an awesome job of returning it to the air."

mack8 wrote:Thanks for the heads up Sheytan.

How are things looking over there regarding the operations against the ISIS rats, it's been quiet lately (news i mean, at least for non-arabic speaking peoples). What is this year's outlook?

sheytanelkebir wrote:

mack8 wrote:Thanks for the heads up Sheytan.

How are things looking over there regarding the operations against the ISIS rats, it's been quiet lately (news i mean, at least for non-arabic speaking peoples). What is this year's outlook?

the war is still grinding on.

ISIS made incursions into baiji refinery, tharthar dam and a couple of other spots. they were repulsed from all these, but they still have the ability to marshal and manouver hundreds of men at high speed through the desert and pick weak points in iraqi fixed defences to besiege. Since Iraq has hundreds of factories, bridges, water dams, power stations to protect... advantage ultimately always lies with ISIS since they can pick and choose where to concentrate forces for rapid attacks and hten just as rapidly disappear.

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20150511/1021980507.html

Iraq lacks the ability to monitor large land masses as well as the ability to actively destroy small, loosely travelling groups of terrorists who rarely travel in convoys bigger than 3 vehicles.

But then for some inexplicable reason, the government still allows all three telecom providers in Iraq to continue giving telephony and data services to areas in ISIS rule! they even go and repair masts and lines inside ISIS areas (coincidentaly these telco providers are owned by Kuwait, Qatar and Kurds! make of that what you will!)!

Iraq continues providing electricity to ISIS areas too. the idiocy is breathtaking. but then if Iraq stopped those things the US media would jump on us calling us sectarian / iranians who are oppressing innocent sunnis. and so the charade continues.

Cyberspec wrote:Apparently the Iraqi Army has withdrawn from Ramadi altogether....are there any pro-government Sunis at all??