The US-led international coalition’s air power made 16,574 combat sorties during its 842-day long campaign against ISIS terrorist group, according to official numbers provided by Pentagon.
The coalition’s warplanes and combat drones made:
- 10,584 combat sorties against ISIS targest in Iraq
- 5,990 combat sorties against ISIS targest in Syria
The US’ coalition allies made 32,1% of these sorties against targets in Iraq and about 2% of these sorties against targets in Syria.
The area of Mosul in Iraq, areas of the YPG (SDF) operations against ISIS in northern Syria and a few of ISIS oil production centers (like Deir Ezzor) were main areas of the coalition’s airstrikes. De-facto, the US-led coalition ignored ISIS terrorists in other parts of Syria and Iraq, leaving them for the Syrian Air Force, the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Iraqi Air Force.
Let’s compare:
- According to the provided numbers, the US-led coalition’s air force make 19,68 combat sorties per day.
- In general, the Russian Aerospace Forces make about 50 (in critical situation on the ground on Syria) sorties against militant targets per day from their airabase in Latakia.
In total, the US-led coalition has 180 combat aircraft deployes for the operation. This means that in general 1 coalition aircraft makes 0.1 combat sortie per day.
Right now, about 70 Russian warplanes (32-36 warplanes from Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser and 46-48 from the Khmeimim airbase) are involved in the operation in Syria. The involvement of Kuznetsov’s air wing into the operation ups a general number of combat sorties made by Russian aircraft per day to 70-75. So, one Russian combat aircraft makes 1 combat sortie per day.
The Russian Aerospace Forces make 10 times more combat sorties per aicraft than the US-led coalition’s airpower. Despite this the US-led coalition keeps spending tons of dollars to keep all its air power and personnel deployed at the operational theatre.
US-led coalition generals just prefer to make money and dissiminate PR statement instead of fighting ISIS. The recent air raids in Mosul when the US-led coalition bombed allied Iraqi forces are another fact to confirm this conclusion.
