U.S. sets sights on last of ISIS

Drones, surveillance jets track remaining fighters in Syria

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar -- Secretive drones and surveillance jets are boring down on an estimated 3,000 remaining Islamic State fighters, who are hiding in Syria along a short stretch of the Euphrates River and surrounding deserts, as the U.S. military campaign against the extremist group enters its final phase.

But the focus on a 15-square-mile enclave near the Iraqi border is complicated by skies congested with Russian, Syrian and Iranian aircraft as rival forces converge on that last main pocket of Islamic State militants in Syria.

"It drives up the complexity of the problem," Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, air commander for Syria and Iraq, said of the increasingly risky airspace and near collisions, in an interview at his headquarters at the sprawling Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha, the capital of the tiny Persian Gulf nation.

With names like Joint Stars and Rivet Joint, the U.S. spy planes are trying to track the last Islamic State fighters and top leaders, eavesdrop on their furtive conversations, and steer attack jets and ground forces to kill or capture them.

[THE ISLAMIC STATE: Timeline of group’s rise, fall; details on campaign to fight it]

The three-year U.S. campaign has largely achieved its goal of reclaiming territory in Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State's religious state, or caliphate, appears all but gone. Still, senior military commanders and counterterrorism specialists caution that the organization remains a dangerously resilient force in Iraq and Syria, and a potent global movement through its call to arms to followers on social media.

At Al Udeid, home to some 10,000 U.S. and other allied troops, commanders are running the air wars not only in Iraq and Syria, but also the campaign in Afghanistan that is expected to increase sharply in the coming months under President Donald Trump's more aggressive strategy for combating the Taliban, the Islamic State and other extremist groups there.

For now, though, the bulk of the 300 combat aircraft under Harrigian's command are concentrating on the Islamic State. "Job One still is to get to the military defeat of ISIS," Harrigian said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. "We need to make sure we stay focused on that."

At the peak of its power three years ago, the Islamic State controlled a swath of territory in Syria and Iraq as big as Kentucky. Now that area has dwindled to half the size of Manhattan and is shrinking fast.

The hunt for the final Islamic State fighters and operatives draws on an aerial armada of combat aircraft based in several Persian Gulf countries -- Jordan and Turkey -- as well as the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, newly arrived in the Persian Gulf.

Warplanes are working with Syrian Kurdish and Arab militia on the ground to track down Islamic State fighters, some of whom have disappeared in Sunni enclaves along the Euphrates River near the Iraq-Syria border. Others have made a dash across deserts west -- through Syrian army lines -- and south into Iraq's Anbar province to avoid capture, or worse.

The United States has doubled the bounty, to $25 million, for information leading to the death or capture of the elusive leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Russia and the United States back separate ground offensives against the Islamic State in eastern Syria, both of which are advancing in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province bordering Iraq.

The assaults are converging on Islamic State holdouts from opposite sides of the Euphrates, which bisects the province. Syrian army troops backed by Russian air power and Iranian militia are advancing along the western side of the river; Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters, supported by U.S. warplanes and Special Operations advisers, are pushing along the eastern river banks.

U.S. Reaper drones armed with intelligence collected from U-2 and other spy planes are hunting Islamic State fighters, alongside Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers. A-10 attack planes, armed with laser-guided rockets and a 30-millimeter cannon, have provided effective air cover for advancing Syrian Kurdish and Arab militias.

Other U.S. warplanes have dropped 500-pound and 250-pound bombs, often timed to detonate split seconds after impact to minimize civilian casualties, air planners said.

"We're piling up a lot of airplanes in a very small piece of sky," said Col. Jeff Hogan, deputy commander of the air operations center at Al Udeid. He said the concentration of unarmed reconnaissance planes, armed fighters and attack planes -- all warily eyeing Russian and Syrian jets nearby -- were converging over Abu Kamal and al-Qaim, towns just across from each other on the Syrian and Iraqi borders.

At the height of the air campaign in Raqqa, Syria, over the summer, U.S. and allied warplanes dropped nearly 200 bombs and missiles each day on Islamic State targets. Now, the warplanes are stalking their prey more selectively, dropping one-tenth of that over a weekend -- and sometimes less, said military officials at Al Udeid.

"We're focused very hard on not letting ISIS escape," said Hogan, 44, from Olympia, Wash. "We've got to annihilate them."

A Section on 12/24/2017

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