10,000 airstrikes later and ISIS is still firmly entrenched from Syria and Iraq to Libya.
Via Daily Mail:
US forces have fired so many smart bombs at Islamic State targets that stocks of the sophisticated weapons are dwindling, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday as he previewed the Pentagon’s enormous budget.
American drones and warplanes are at the forefront of an 18-month-old coalition effort to fight the IS group in Iraq and Syria, in a campaign that has so far seen some 10,000 air strikes, many of which the Pentagon says were carried out with pinpoint accuracy.
“We’ve recently been hitting ISIL with so many GPS-guided smart bombs and laser-guided rockets that we’re starting to run low on the ones we use against terrorists the most,” Carter said, using an acronym for the IS group.
“So we’re investing $1.8 billion dollars in 2017 to buy over 45,000 more of them.”
The munitions buying spree — a boon to America’s massive defense contractor industry — is one component of a significantly expanded funding allocation to fight the IS group. In fiscal year 2017, Carter has budgeted $7.5 billion — a 50 percent increase from the previous year — to fund the campaign.