The aerial bombing campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group is "gaining great momentum," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said during an interview on National Public Radio.
"My sense is that the campaign, as it's designed to retake land back from ISIL and diminish their war fighting capability, is actually gaining great momentum," Goldfein said in an interview with radio host Robert Siegel, using an alternate acronym for the group.
Military leaders are seeing indicators the Islamic State group is having difficulty mustering the troops and equipment to launch a complex counter-attack on Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian rebel forces that are closing in on the terrorists’ core territory, the general said.
But there’s a long way to go before true victory can be declared, Goldfein said. He wants to see stability for the people of Iraq and Syria.
"The three fundamental elements eventually come into place, which is rule of law, some semblance of governance that provides services to the people, and eventually some economic base that provides jobs," he said. "By those standards, we're not there."
In Iraq, the U.S. is currently supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces with air strikes and a limited number of military advisors and special operations troops. In the past few months, the coalition has scored a number of victories and is closing in on Mosul, the Islamic State’s Iraqi capital. The terrorist group has held the area since June 2014. Optimistic estimates say the city could be re-taken before the end of the year.
But some military planners are concerned that ISIS is simply shifting resources and troops from Mosul to better defend the city of Raqqa, Syria, the capital of the self-declared caliphate. That’s one reason the long road between the two cities, and towns along the way, have recently become higher priority targets for U.S. air strikes.
ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani was also recently killed in a Syrian town near the Turkish border. The terrorist group confirmed his death Aug. 30 – an unusual public acknowledgement by the group – but the exact date of the airstrike that killed him is unclear.
Al-Adnani was widely regarded as the second-in-command of the group, and advocated for ISIS-sympathizers to carry out so-called "lone wolf" attacks in their own nations.
CNN reported that the airstrike was carried out by a remotely piloted aircraft.
