An additional 560 U.S. troops will be sent to Iraq where they will establish airfield operations in support of Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State militants.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the personnel increase during a barnstorming visit to Baghdad between the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland, and a stop in Afghanistan.
In Baghdad, Carter spoke to soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division along with Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who commands U.S. troops in the multinational anti-ISIL Operation Inherent Resolve.
Carter listed the “awesome capabilities” U.S. forces have deployed in support of the Iraqi Security Forces, including “airstrikes, special forces, cyber tools, intelligence, equipment, mobility and logistics, training, advice and assistance from those on the ground.”
A campaign to liberate from ISIL its two capitals – Mosul in Iraq and Raqqah in Syria – is building steam. Carter was in town to meet with civilian Iraqi leaders and U.S. military officials on how best to support that next step in destroying the terrorist group.
“I’m pleased to report today in that connection that we agreed for the United States to bolster the Iraqi efforts to isolate and pressure Mosul by deploying 560 additional troops in support of the ISF and especially at the Qayyarah West airfield,” he said. “With these additional U.S. forces I’m describing today, we’ll bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight.”
MacFarland said the troops would establish airfield operations at the base near Mosul and would also bring “concentric circles” of capabilities including logistics support “to facilitate the flow of goods and supplies and personnel through that airfield.”
“We’ll have a security envelope around that,” he said. “We’ll have a communications capability there so that we can talk and command and control or a headquarters element as well. Nothing very sexy in any of that, but all very necessary to keep the campaign moving forward.”
Those 560 troops have already been given the heads up that orders to deploy will be coming within days or weeks, not months, Carter said.
Carter also said he discussed with his Iraqi civilian and military counterparts methods of countering improvised explosive devices (IED) and the people and networks that make them. He offered the Iraqis the help of the “organization that we use and used over the last years in both Iraq and Afghanistan to help U.S. forces cope with the IED threat.”
That unit is the former Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), now called the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Organization Agency (JIDA) with a much smaller footprint but a wider mission than its progenitor.
“The commander of that effort will be coming to Baghdad shortly in order to bring to the Iraqi security forces that substantial experience and tradecraft that we learned by hard experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan,” Carter said.
MacFarland said most of the 560 incoming troops would be housed at the base, but some necessarily would operate outside the wire moving supplies and performing other support tasks. They will be in proximity to enemy activity but not as close as some U.S. personnel have gotten, MacFarland said.
“To make an airfield work, some of the people have to push supplies to that airfield,” MacFarland said. “So some of these folks will be located outside of the airfield, but supporting it. And that will not necessarily be the closest our troops are to the enemy. We’ve had obviously three servicemen killed in action. So we’ve been in contact with the enemy.”