{"id":1633,"date":"2017-02-28T16:58:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T16:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/?p=1633"},"modified":"2017-02-28T16:58:41","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T16:58:41","slug":"us-general-says-sdf-forces-need-heavy-weapons-to-destroy-isis-in-al-raqqah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/2017\/02\/28\/us-general-says-sdf-forces-need-heavy-weapons-to-destroy-isis-in-al-raqqah\/","title":{"rendered":"US GENERAL SAYS SDF FORCES NEED HEAVY WEAPONS TO DESTROY ISIS IN AL-RAQQAH"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sourced: ARA News<\/p>\n

By: Wladimir van Wilgenburg<\/p>\n

Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, who recently visited the Raqqa frontline said that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces need more than the AK-47s weapons \u2013that will be issued after 20 days of training\u2013 in the fight against ISIS.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnti-tank weapons systems to address the vehicle-born IEDs. Certainly mortars would be something of help,\u201d Votel said. \u201cThings that they would need of a force that\u2019s going to conduct an assault,\u201d he said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The weapons would be flown into a dirt airstrip built for the U.S. by a Syrian engineer, who lost his family to ISIS, that is long enough to handle large cargo planes from the United States, CBS News reported.<\/p>\n

Rony, a defector of the People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG), said that the US until now has failed to equip its ally.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked for heavy weapons. We got nothing. We asked for everything. All we got was ammunition and small arms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rpny added that the United States did not supply flak jackets, helmets, night vision equipment, or mine detectors to the YPG and other SDF factions.<\/p>\n

According to analysts, the US army provided limited support to the SDF forces, fearing tensions with Turkey. Turkey has argued that US-supplied weapons to the SDF were used by the PKK in Turkey, which was never proven to be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US military, out of respect for Turkey\u2019s concerns, has carefully calibrated the types of weapons it provides the SDF and the Syrian Arab Coalition attached to it,\u201d Washington-based analyst Nicholas A. Heras, Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told ARA News.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that it seems likely that it will be the SDF and the Syrian Arab Coalition that will be spearheading the campaign to siege and capture Raqqa, the US military wants to provide its Syrian partner forces with weapons needed to counter the tactics of its ISIS enemy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One American officer told CBS news that he expects the Syrian fighters to suffer heavy losses in the battle for Raqqa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe battle for Raqqa will require brutal, urban combat. ISIS has built up a number of weapons, such as suicide vehicles, that require more than small arms such as assault rifles. They require light weapons such as anti-tank missiles, or mortars to pressure ISIS holdout fighters entrenched in buildings and other structures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. military values its local Syrian partners, and learning from ISIS tactics to defend other urban areas in Iraq and Syria, the Coalition wants to give the SDF and the Syrian Arab Coalition the tools to succeed from the get-go,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

SDF sources suggest that until now the US has only provided ammunition, despite demands for artillery, armored cars.<\/p>\n

Half of the weapons used by SDF troops were captured from ISIS in war spoils.<\/p>\n

Only in January, the US-led coalition provided armored vehicles to the SDF for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost recently, the coalition provided several Guardian armored vehicles to provide the Syrian-Arab Coalition with increased survivability from ISIS\u2019s small arms and improvised explosive device threats,\u201d US-led coalition\u2019s spokesperson Colonel John Dorrian said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Syrian Arab Coalition was the organization that received these. Again the Syrian Arab Coalition is a part of the Syrian Democratic Forces. So it\u2019s a group that includes the Syrian Arab Coalition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sourced: ARA News By: Wladimir van Wilgenburg Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, who recently visited the Raqqa frontline said that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces need more than the AK-47s weapons \u2013that will be issued after 20 days of training\u2013 in the fight against ISIS. \u201cAnti-tank weapons systems to… Continue reading US GENERAL SAYS SDF FORCES NEED HEAVY WEAPONS TO DESTROY ISIS IN AL-RAQQAH<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[792,9,252,793,798,1280,90,641],"class_list":["post-1633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conflict","tag-al-raqqah","tag-isis","tag-middle-east","tag-pkk","tag-sdf","tag-syrian-arab-coalition","tag-turkey","tag-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1634,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions\/1634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}