Essentially two stories in one:
[StrategyPage] After the November 13 ISIL attacks in Paris France decided to greatly increase its aerial bombing in Syria. Since France had worked with the United States before in fighting ISIL and both were NATO members, the Americans were asked to help with finding targets to hit.
The French quickly discovered that the Americans had discovered many valuable ISIL targets that they had not hit because there was some risk of hurting civilians. French intelligence officers (in charge of identifying targets) were surprised as it was understood that there was always some risk of hitting civilians but believed that the risk had been vastly reduced with the widespread introduction of precision bombs and missiles.
The French soon discovered that since 2008 American aerial bombing efforts had been continually ordered to reduce civilian casualties more and more. The French discovered that over Syria about 75 percent of American warplanes sent out to attack ISIL targets returned without attacking anything because there had been some risk of civilian casualties. American staff officers told their French counterparts, off-the-record, that there were plenty of critical (to ISIL) targets the U.S. could hit but have not been able to because ISIL keeps civilians in the vicinity.
The Russians, who do not coordinate attacks on ISIL with the Americans, had found many of the same key targets the Americans knew about and bombed them. This caused more damage to ISIL in a few weeks than the Americans had in over a year. The French were free to hit those targets and the French proceeded to do just that. The U.S. government has not interfered with this, at least not yet.
One unpublicized achievement of the American led air campaign against Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Syria has been the remarkably small number of civilian casualties. This bombing campaign began in August 2014 and despite over 8,200 targets hit (with smart bombs or missiles) since then there were only a few incidents of civilians being killed. Pilots and troops on the ground have complained how this was accomplished by putting priority on not hurting civilians rather than on doing the greatest damage to ISIL.
While the Islamic terrorists were hoping for civilian casualties, to use for mobilizing international media criticism of the air attacks in general, they could only muster about 60 seemingly real accusations of civilians being killed. Only ten percent of those survived close examination and the number of civilians killed was miniscule compared to the number of Islamic terrorist deaths and historically extremely low. But the Islamic terrorists were quietly pleased that they had been able to protect their most valuable targets by using civilians as human shields.
For ISIL even the threat of civilian losses to air strikes had proved a valuable asset in Syria and Iraq. In this respect ISIL is benefitting from pioneering work done by the Afghan Taliban to make it more difficult for Western air forces to use their smart bombs and superior sensors to find and cripple Islamic terrorists on the ground. American, Iraqi and other Arab leaders are complaining that the restrictive American ROE (Rules Of Engagement) are and how these rules severely limits the number of targets that can be hit.
As a result ISIL can move around more freely despite the constant presence of coalition aircraft overhead. That is no longer the case now that the French, Russians and most Arab air forces are ignoring the American ROE to go after things ISIL cannot afford to lose. In response the American ROE has been loosened up a bit. |