How US drones won a battle against IS

USA TODAY WASHINGTON A handful of drones controlled remotely from bases in the United States and a small force of offshore Marine aircraft played a decisive role last year in defeating Islamic State fighters in Libya, the first time the U.S. military helped local forces win a key battle without civilian casualties by fighting from afar.

The four-month air campaign to drive militants from the densely packed city of Sirte without committing large numbers of U.S. advisers or ground forces is being studied as a model for future U.S. military efforts against the Islamic State as its fighters are ousted from Iraq and Syria and seek refuge elsewhere.

The missiles were sometimes delivered within 30 yards of local allies. “We’re literally talking almost across city streets,” Col. Case Cunningham, commander of the 432nd Expeditionary Wing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, said in a recent interview on the operation.

The Sirte operation will “serve as a model for future U.S. operations in the region,” Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of U.S. Africa Command, recently told Congress.

The U.S. Air Force relied exclusively on three MQ-9 Reapers flown from bases in Nevada, Tennessee and North Dakota. Marines operated from amphibious ships, and a small number of Special Forces were dispatched to work with local ground forces.

The Pentagon had become increasingly alarmed over the growing strength of IS in Sirte, a city on the Mediterranean coast near Libya’s valuable oilproducing operations.

The Islamic State, which had taken over the city in May 2015, expanded to about 6,000 fighters in Libya.

Last summer, it became clear that a militia from Misrata, a coastal city about 150 miles west of Sirte, was willing to take on the militants and back Libya’s newly established government of national accord. That prompted President Barack Obama to authorize military support for the new government last July. “The willingness of the Misrata militia to fight was impressive,” said Col. Todd Simmons, commander of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Still, the challenge was enormous. The U.S. military was asked to provide airstrikes from afar with few contacts on the ground.

The Reapers also fired precise Hellfire missiles and reacted quickly to threats. Nearly 70 percent of the drone airstrikes needed special authorization because friendly forces were inside the blast radius, Cunningham said.

Between August and December, the drones and Marines conducted 495 airstrikes in Sirte. By early December the Misrata militia had pushed out IS and controlled the city.