British Typhoon jets demolished a Daesh held building in Iraq.
The Ministry of Defence say that on the 16th of July, two Typhoon jets from RAF Akrotiri, supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, were directed to a remote area of the desert in western Iraq, some 55 miles south-west of Ramadi, where a concealed terrorist stockpile of weapons had been identified.
“Our aircraft delivered an attack with a single Paveway IV guided bomb which scored a direct hit, destroying the stockpiled weaponry.”
The Royal Air Force said in a statement:
“Royal Air Force aircraft, alongside those from other coalition partners, have continued to fly daily patrols over Iraq and Syria following the liberation of the last Daesh-held territory by the Syrian Democratic Forces at Baghuz Fawqani in March.
These missions provide reconnaissance information about any attempts by the terrorists to re-establish an operational presence in the region, and are able to strike any such activity that is detected.”
Background on Operation Shader
This section is intended to provide a bit of background on British efforts in the region and if you’ve read it before, please remember others may not have.
By September last year, the Ministry of Defence had announced that over 1,000 personnel were engaged in theatre and that the Royal Air Force had conducted around 1,000 airstrikes, flying over 2,800 sorties, killing over 3,000 Islamic State fighters.
Last year, it was reported that the Royal Air Force was operating at its most intense for 25 years in a single theatre of operation which far outstripped the UK involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan – RAF jets have dropped 11 times more bombs (1,276 strikes) on Syria and Iraq in the preceding 12 months than they had in the busiest year of action in Afghanistan a decade previously.
why don’t we ever hear allot about how the RAF is doing in Iraq or Syria on the UK news? Scared we might incite British born Muslim terrorists to kill british concert going kids!! Again!.
More that it’s not really news any more I think. Daesh are a spent force and all but gone. Give it a few months and all of Daesh will be able to fit in the same taxi together.
Your words are inciting Cam, racist much?
Since the caliphate fell, I guess its fallen out of the news – its very much yesterday’s news now. Here in the US I saw an article that Daesh are regrouping in areas of Iraq and remoter Syrian areas. I don’t think we can write them off just yet. I think there maybe a need to continue hitting them at a much lower intensity almost indefinitely – though I don’t think this will actually happen due to loss of political will/interests/new threasts elsewhere. Look at the peace process in Afghan with the Talebs – I guess in that case as long as they don’t harbour terrorist groups as they did before they may be tolerated by the west.
My local regiment returning from active service in Afghanistan was given a parade through this city at midday on a Friday.
Probably. The media, which basically for the public is the BBC, are just a bunch of Quislings. The BBC feed the public a diet of dreary heartless drama, bigoted news and tuneless self righteous comedians.
That’s a bit on the harsh side Trevor….although I think that the BBC is a little energetic when it comes to social engineering!
The BBC peddle downright lies and many of its commentators are downright bigoted. You would get more entertaining drama from watching the tellytubbies. Most of its over opinionated comedians are about as funny as sitting on a cracked toilet seat.
Well I wouldn’t go that far! But I do think it is time to look at the role of the BBC and how it is funded. I think the licence fee is an antiquated concept as we move further into subscription tv. However, the BBC does produce some fabulous science and natural history programming that is the envy of many other broadcasters. Not an easy problem to solve!
Always though Noo-Noo was the hero of that show. Just don’t get me started on the Midnight Garden that my nephews are watching.
No, there are no such British born muslim in existance in Britain to attack Britain with home made primitive things but, there are groups of infiltrated young muslims, that are trained by Jewish agencies from israel, posing as hard core islamo-mohamedic, fanatics, as they speak and read the coran by heart and here of course, they kill, bomb and sabotage and all other terrorists acts as instructed by their masters jews in disguise “”muslim terrorists “” more point in world opinions for USrael, the civilised nation!
I love the Typhoon, always wanted to fly one when I was a kid but glasses and colour blind so never would have been let near one.
However, I do keep thinking this would have been a better job for the Tornados. They were originally going to be retired in 2025 so might as well knacker them out on this rather than putting wear and tear on Typhoon airframes.
Should have kept the Tornados until we had enough F35s to replace them. Same as the Harrier really. Shame.
For a medium level bombing role, the Typhoon is more than adequate. It’s operating in a relatively benign environment over Iraq, unless it’s operating over Syria. So, not much strain is being put on the airframe. It is burning through airframe hours though, which hastens its periodical maintenance.
The problem apart from using up airframe hours is that this is excellent training for the crews. I’m including groundcrew and support staff in this as well as pilots. It gives the whole staff realistic training, which is the next step above exercises like red flag.
A more realistic aircraft for this role is the Reaper, as it can stay on station for longer, though carry less of a weapons load.
I believe the early retirement of the Tornado had a lot to do with the increased frequency of maintenance that was being incurred. This increased maintenance tempo costs a lot as not only the aircraft is checked, but a lot of its components are sent away fro refurbishment.
The Tornado is still a better aircraft at low level than a Typhoon, due to the smaller wing area. The Typhoon will suffer more from buffeting than the Tornado. Buffeting at low level is major crew limiting factor due to fatigue which is likened to driving a rally car at speed over a very bumpy course.
The Typhoon itself is a great platform, yeah.
I’d prefer to have limited those airframe flying hours by using the Tornados until 2025; they’re going to be knackered in a few years anyway so might as well have gotten as much use out of them as we could.
The problem with the MoD (caused by the treasury!) is this whole thing about only having 2 combat aircraft types and also purchasing such low numbers.
It’s adding miles on the clocks of the Typhoons for jobs that could have been done more cheaply by the Tornados, which will end up being replaced by F35 anyway. Retiring the Tornados as we’ve done might save money in the immdediate but means down the road we’ll be paying more when we have to do mid-life updates/refits on the Typhoons because they’ll have so many hours on the clock.
Same thing with ships and subs, and HMG never learns.