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No peace is in sight in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan in 2016, so airmen will continue to put warheads on foreheads.
The air war against the Islamic State group is expected to last for years, but the head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command expects U.S. and coalition air power to do significant damage to the group in 2016.
“By the time we get to the end of 2016, I hope to be pretty well done with Daesh [the Islamic State group],”said Lt. Gen. Charles Brown Jr. “That’s probably aspirational, but I think we are putting pressure on Daesh.”
In November, the U.S. ramped up airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces in Sinjar and Ramadi in Iraq and al-Hawl in Syria, Brown told Air Force Times in a Nov. 25 interview. The strategy against the Islamic State group now involves attacking tankers that carry the oil that the Islamic State sells.
On a rare visit to the Pentagon Dec. 14, Obama reiterated that his administration remains focused on fighting ISIS on multiple fronts, but revealed little new information about his strategy.

Flanked by top military advisers, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Obama recommitted to the existing strategy and stated that the U.S. is hitting the militant group “harder than ever.”
Although Obama recently authorized the deployment of about 100 special operations ground troops to Iraq, some of which may become involved in direct combat strikes against ISIS, the president continues to show a marked reluctance to authorize any large-scale expansion of ground operations there.
Instead, the expectation is that the U.S-led air campaign will further intensify, with commanders using more airstrikes to target more ISIS infrastructure and weaken the group’s hold on key cities and towns inside Iraq and Syria.
That would leave the bulk of the burden resting on the Air Force and the thousands of pilots and airmen who are running the day-to-day operations of the intense airstrike campaign against Islamic State targets.
But things are more complicated for U.S. aircraft in Syria now that Russia has deployed S-400 surface-to-air missiles in response to Turkey shooting down a Russian bomber, Brown said. The U.S. and Russians have a memorandum of understanding on how aircraft from both countries should interact.
“We have pretty good connectivity with the Russians,” Brown said. “With our MOU, there are things that are in there that talk about ... how we’re not going to show hostile acts or hostile intent from the coalition toward the Russians or from the Russians toward the coalition.”
In Afghanistan, U.S. airmen and other service members are still engaged in combat even though the combat mission is technically over. On Dec. 8, the Taliban were repulsed after attacking Kandahar Air Field, where airmen with Train, Advise Assist Command-Air are mentoring the Afghan air force.
U.S. air power has also been called on to assist Afghan troops and police, but Brown said the U.S. is not supposed to provide routine close-air support to the Afghans.
“Our support for the Afghan security forces is more in an extreme basis to ensure their success and not have a strategic setback,” he said.
However, many U.S. missions in Afghanistan involve U.S. and Afghan security forces partnering together, so the 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron comes to the aid of both, said squadron commander Lt. Col. Michael Meyer.
In November, F-16s from the squadron provided close-air support to a U.S. and Afghan convoy that came under attack, Meyer told Air Force Times in a Dec. 5 interview.
“They came under some pretty effective fire,” Meyer said. “Our fighters … they did an outstanding job of escalating force — going from doing things like shows of force to try to rectify the situation, to going ahead to both employ strafing and bombs to neutralize the threat.”
With the Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan and the Islamic State group entrenched in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force should expect to have a busy 2016