"Mad Dog" Mattis kicks off with 73 airstrikes

http://popularmilitary.com/us-conducts-73-airstrikes-first-weekend-mattis-sec-def/

US conducts 73 airstrikes during first weekend with Mattis as Sec. Def.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis started off his first weekend at work with a resounding bang, complete with reports of over 73 successful coalition strikes against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq on Saturday and Sunday.

Entering the Pentagon with a grin on his face over the weekend, Mattis was greeted with news from both fronts of the war against ISIS.

DoD reports indicate that a slew of attacks were carried out against ISIS targets over the weekend, with 31 strikes on Saturday and 42 strikes on Sunday, collectively carried out in Syria and Iraq.

On the Syrian front, coalition units took out ISIS tactical units, destroying artillery, fighting positions, IED factories, oil facilities, tanks, a UAV tower and more. Sunday’s attack near Raqqa wiped out four artillery units, including a decoy.

In Iraq, the strikes took out 10 boats, several tankers, construction equipment, a menagerie of tactical vehicles, a car-bomb factory, one tank and a command and control node, as well as a variety of other targets.

Reports indicate that all aircraft returned to base safely on both days.

“The destruction of [ISIS] targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the group’s ability to project terror and conduct operations,” the report said. “Coalition nations which have conducted strikes in Iraq include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Coalition nations which have conducted strikes in Syria include Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”

The aircraft in the strikes consisted of a variety of fighters, bombers and unmanned drones, which carried out missions in a wide area over both Iraq and Syria, with extensive action in the ISIS strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa, respectively.

During his campaign, President Donald Trump promised that he would destroy ISIS as quickly as possible, going so far as to suggest a plan within his first month in office to eradicate the Islamic State once and for all.

As the new Defense Secretary, Mattis will likely be front and center in the development of a plan to rid the world of ISIS, at least on the tactical and strategic level.

Although he required a waiver to serve as SecDef due to his still too-recent military service, Mattis was given the green light by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, with President Trump’sfirst signed executive orders sealing the deal on Friday.

 

Good.

 

and 54 of those strikes were Mattis riding on the wing of a AV-8B armed with a flint lock pistol and bag of redman.

 

'Nuff said.

 

Get er done!

 

No problem with wiping all the "hard" targets that they can...eventually the ground forces will have to deal with the remaining forces. When it comes to that, what is the opinion of boots on the ground? Unless the local forces do all the heavy lifting the victory will be short lived. Not saying they aren't involved but do we really want Iran even more in the cat birds seat?

 

When asked what he thinks about General Mattis being sworn in as Secretary of Defense, Rob O’Neill (the man who killed Bin Laden) said :

“General Mattis has a bear rug in his home, but it's not dead. It's just afraid to move.”

 

Uh, wrong. Obama killed Bin Laden. Sheesh.

 

At least that's what I heard on the Al-net.

 

Which bin laden? The CIA employee or the actor?

 

The short one with the colostomy bag.

 

So now we see where the crux of the problem was........

 

Turning up the heat:

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/us-service-member-killed-in-yemen-raid-on-sunday-three-injured

Military: First-known combat death since Trump in office
By: Ahmed al-Haj and Maggie Michael, The Associated Press, January 29, 2017

SANAA, Yemen — A U.S. military service member was killed Sunday during a raid against al-Qaida militants in central Yemen that also left nearly 30 others dead, including women and children. The loss of the service member is the first-known combat death of a member of the U.S. military under President Donald Trump.

"Americans are saddened this morning with news that a life of a heroic service member has been taken in our fight against the evil of radical Islamic terrorism," Trump said in a statement.

The U.S. has been striking al-Qaida in Yemen from the air for more than 15 years, mostly using drones, and Sunday's surprise pre-dawn raid could signal a new escalation against extremist groups in the Arab world's poorest but strategically located country.

An al-Qaida official and an online news service linked to the terror group said the raid left about 30 people dead. Among the children killed was Anwar, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Yemeni-American cleric killed in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011, according to the girl's grandfather.

Nasser al-Awlaki told The Associated Press that Nora was visiting her mother when the raid took place. She was shot in the neck and bled for two hours before she died, he said.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that three service members were wounded in the raid and that a fourth one was injured in a "hard landing" in a nearby location. The aircraft was unable to fly afterward and was "intentionally destroyed, it added.

It said 14 militants from al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, formally known as "al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula," were killed in the assault and that U.S. service members taking part in the raid captured "information that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror plots."

A U.S. defense official said the raid was approved by Trump. President Barack Obama had been briefed on it before he left office on Jan. 20, but for operational reasons it was not ready to be executed before he departed, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss details beyond those announced by the Pentagon and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yemeni security and tribal officials said the raid in Yemen's central Bayda province killed three senior al-Qaida leaders: Abdul-Raouf al-Dhahab, Sultan al-Dhahab, and Seif al-Nims.

The al-Dhahab family, who are the late al-Awlaki's in-laws, are considered an ally of al-Qaida, which is now chiefly concentrated in Bayda. A third family member, Tarek al-Dhahab, was the leader of al-Qaida in Bayda but was reportedly killed in a family feud.

The news service linked to al-Qaida in Yemen likened the raid to a "massacre against Muslims" and said U.S. warplanes were first seen in the sky above the area at 9 p.m. Saturday and that the raid began at 2 a.m. on Sunday, with 16 missiles hitting three houses near Yakla village in Radaa district.

A two-hour gun battle ensued after American service members landed on the ground, it said. About 30 men, women and children were killed in the raid, it added.

The killed and wounded included some Saudis present at the site, according to the Yemeni officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.

The al-Qaida official sent to the AP in Cairo photos purportedly showing the bloodied bodies of several children killed in the raid along with houses showing bullet holes. The official requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Just over a week ago, suspected U.S. drone strikes killed three other alleged al-Qaida operatives in Bayda in what was the first-such killings reported in the country since Trump assumed the U.S. presidency.

The tribal officials said the Americans captured and departed with at least two unidentified individuals Sundsay, but the U.S. official in Washington said no detainees were taken in the raid.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, long seen by Washington as among the most dangerous branches of the global terror network, has exploited the chaos of Yemen's civil war, seizing territory in the south and east.

The war began in 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies swept down from the north and captured the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led military coalition has been helping government forces battle the rebels for nearly two years.

Separately, Yemen's president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi a day earlier called for the remnants of his parliament, many of whom are in exile in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, to convene in the country's southern port city of Aden, where he is struggling to establish government control.