Tornado jets patrolled north of Mosul where they supported advancing Kurdish forces.
A Paveway IV guided bomb destroyed a Daesh heavy machine-gun position when it opened fire on the Peshmerga, while an Enhanced Paveway II demolished a building in which a light machine-gun was sited.
Meanwhile, to the south-east of Mosul, a Reaper provided further close air support to Iraqi troops.
It conducted Hellfire attacks on a mortar team who were spotted firing, and two groups of terrorists, including individuals with rocket-propelled grenades. The Reaper also directed a successful coalition air attack onto a number of terrorists defending a trench network.
Recently the Ministry of Defence revealed that British aircraft have carried out more than a thousand air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
In October 2014, the Ministry of Defence announced the deployment of an undisclosed number of MQ-9 Reaper unmanned combat aerial vehicles to assist with surveillance. However, Michael Fallon stated that the Reapers could also conduct airstrikes alongside the Tornado GR4s, if needed.
The first airstrike conducted by a Reaper occurred in November 2014.
By September 2015 – a full year after the operation first began – Tornado and Reaper aircraft had flown over 1,300 missions against Islamic State.
According to Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, the UK had conducted a “huge number of missions” over Iraq by December 2014, second only to the United States and five times as many as France.
By February 2015, the UK had contributed 6% of all coalition airstrikes in Iraq – a contribution second only to the United States – which the Defence Select Committee described as “modest”.
Wow £50000 pounds of high tech ordnance to take out a few men and a couple of machine guns, no wonder the mod is skint, why don’t they use 27mm cannon and do job for the cost of 40 to 50 cannon shells.