- Okay, Brett, just wanna make sure you can hear us,
and we can hear you.
- I can hear you just fine.
How do you hear me?
- Got you loud and clear.
Just at the outset, for anybody watching on channel two,
I did wanna point out the farewell ceremony
that's taking place right now
for Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James
occurring at Joint Base Andrews
is being live-streamed on a separate channel
on defense.gov.
You can watch it there.
This is being carried in the building here on channel two
as well as also being streamed on a separate channel
on defense.gov.
I'd like to introduce to you Colonel Brett Sylvia.
He's the current commander
of the Second Brigade Combat Team,
101st Airborne Division, Task Force Strike,
which is the roughly 1,700 person unit
responsible for the advise and assist mission in Iraq.
Task Force Strike advisory teams have successfully advised
the Iraqi Security Forces through operations
in Fallujah, Sharqat, Qayyarah,
the occupation of Qayyarah West Airfield,
and they're currently advising during operations
to retake Mosul.
I set that out for you
because I want you to, please,
as you engage in discussion today with Colonel Sylvia,
to keep in mind that's what his role is.
I know we have a lot of other good questions
about things happening in Syria, happening in the skies,
happening with Russia and Turkey and other players.
That's actually not his responsibility,
so I will humbly ask your understanding of that
at the get-go.
We're happy to field those questions for you separately,
either here or with Colonel Dorrian in Baghdad.
Task Force Strike's role is critical
in setting the conditions
for the inevitable military defeat of Iraq,
of ISIS in Iraq, excuse me.
And with that, I'll open it up to you, Colonel Sylvia.
- Good morning.
So, as stated, I'm Colonel Brett G. Sylvia,
the commander of Second Brigade Combat Team
101st Airborne Division, Air Assault.
Here in Operation Inherent Resolve,
I am the commander of Task Force Strike.
We are the one-brigade combat team
deployed forward here in Iraq.
Our primary mission these past nine months
have been to advise and assist
the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces
in the fight to defeat ISIL in Iraq.
I'd like to make a brief statement
about some of the tremendous accomplishments
we've achieved together since our arrival here in May,
and then open it up to your questions.
So, as Lieutenant General Townsend described last month,
2016 has been characterized by the counteroffensive.
Over the course of this year,
this task force found ways to deepen our involvement
with our Iraqi counterparts.
Their success has been our success
as we have been working very closely with one another.
I've gotten many questions
about what the advise and assist mission
actually looks like on the ground.
I'd like to give you a short vignette
to answer this particular question.
We were recently visiting
one of our forward advisory teams
at their joint command post on the outskirts of Mosul.
Captain Dan Fitzgerald and his team advised the commander
of the Iraqi Emergency Response Division.
When we arrived,
they were in the middle of processing a strike.
Inside this small command post,
I saw Iraqi officers and coalition soldiers
huddled around a very small monitor.
The Iraqis were talking on their communication devices
and we were on ours.
They had identified a threat
with a coalition ISR platform,
and together, they were working a strike
to eliminate that threat
before it reached the friendly forces.
The division commander walked in,
verified the threat,
and authorized the strike.
The threat was immediately destroyed.
That is our advise and assist mission in a nutshell.
The Iraqis do the ground maneuver, and we support them
with all the capabilities at our disposal.
We work as one team to accomplish the mission.
We employ this model at various echelons,
from this company commander
all the way to me and my three-star partner.
This model, in my opinion,
has gotten more effective over time
and has yielded greater and greater success.
Over the course of the past nine months,
great things have been accomplished here in Iraq.
It has been our partnership that has achieved these things.
Hundreds of villages and cities have been liberated,
to include Fallujah, Qayyarah, Sharqat, and Qaraqush.
Assistance has been provided
to almost 250,000 displaced persons
and almost 100,000 of these departed their IDP camps
and headed back to their homes.
An assault bridge was put over the Tigris River under fire,
and then three more bridges were constructed
over the Tigris and the Qaza Rivers.
A major airfield was liberated and then restored at Q West,
and we have measurably reduced the effectiveness
of ISIL's primary weapon system, the vehicle-borne IED.
And we've assisted in the targeting of ISIL's drones,
bringing down almost a dozen.
We've done these things together.
The Iraqis have been on the ground,
and we have enabled them both with effective advice
and timely assistance.
This has been a partnership between these Iraqi formations
and Task Force Strike.
As I said, their success has been our success.
We operate as one team.
Before I close, I'd like to tell one story.
On Christmas Day, I attended a service
at the Marahana Church in Qaraqush.
It was the first Christmas service in this church
in over two years.
I sat in a pew next to the operational commanders
currently fighting in Mosul.
They represented each of the Iraqi security forces
and all of whom are Muslim.
The commander of the federal police,
who used his own funds to renovate the church
to have it ready in time for Christmas mass,
pulled me aside just before the service and said
that this was his Christmas gift to me and to my soldiers
for our contributions leading to the liberation
of this area.
Since our arrival in Iraq,
we assisted in the liberation of a patch of Iraq
larger than the state of West Virginia,
but this one event represented much more
than the liberation of physical terrain.
It was a symbol of the cooperation
of all the Iraqi security forces,
a symbol of the contrast between
the tolerance of the real Iraqis
and the intolerance of ISIL,
and a symbol of optimism of what Iraq can be in the future.
In closing, let me say that I am extremely proud
of every member of Task Force Strike
and all they have accomplished these past nine months.
We've provided training, equipment, intelligence,
fire support, and advice to our very capable Iraqi partners.
Everywhere I go and talk with Iraqi leaders,
they go out of their way to talk about their partner,
a strike leader standing side by side with them,
enabling them with coalition expertise and effects,
compelling success, and defeating an enemy
of all people everywhere.
They have truly lived up to our brigade motto:
I am a strike soldier,
I fight where I'm told,
and I win where I fight.
That's all I have for an opening statement.
I'd be happy to take your questions at this time.
- We'll start with Idrees Ali from Reuters.
- Speaking about the capabilities of the ISF in general,
where do you see some of the deficiencies
that they need more work in?
Because as we've seen in the operation to retake Mosul,
other than the CT forces,
there are some serious deficiencies and issues.
So what specifically do you think needs more work
in terms of training and advising them?
- One of the things that we've had the great fortune
of doing over the course of these last nine months
is being able to witness
a great transformation in the Iraqi Security Forces.
When we first began these operations,
the first village that we liberated together
was a small village.
It was called Qarbadon.
And when they went to seize this particular village,
there was no more than 30 to 40 ISIL fighters
that existed in that village,
and they sent an entire brigade
to attack that particular village
because that's what they felt was the combat power
that was required in order to be able to seize that village.
But what we've witnessed now over time
since that day way back in May
is that they have increased their ability
to conduct combined arms maneuver.
It has been a growing capability.
I'm sure you all have heard the stories about Ramadi,
where it was only the counterterrorism services
that were leading the fight
and it was the Iraqi army that had to move in behind them.
They were the only offensive maneuver.
But today, in Mosul, what you'll see is
you'll see the Counterterrorism Service
advancing on one axis,
you'll see the federal police advancing on another axis,
and you'll see the Iraqi army
advancing on a third axis,
each one of them now able to operate
inside of a dense urban environment
and be able to continue to make gains every single day,
make progress every single day against ISIL.
And so it’s not like it was back nine months ago
where they struggled to get true combined arms maneuver
in order to be able to defeat the enemy.
And today, they're doing that.
And every day, they're getting better at that.
As they continue to gain more experience at this,
they gain more confidence.
Their leaders gain greater competence.
And so they continue to make progress,
and it's actually, it's very impressive to see.
- Next, we'll go to Michael Gordon of the New York Times.
- Sir, I was out around Mosul
at the early, first few weeks of this operation.
It's been reported there are is significant attrition
that Iraqi forces have suffered, including the CTS.
What steps have you taken to help the Iraqi forces
deal with this attrition?
What adjustments have been made?
Has it affected plans, training and equipping plans,
replenishment plans for the forces,
and what is the end-strength of the CTS and ISF
in light of these operations?
What's the projected end-strength you'd like to have?
- So, as we're talking about casualties within the ISF,
you know, specific numbers and all,
I'm sure, as you know, we address those
to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.
But what I will talk about is,
as we are looking at what happened
in those early days in the attack in Mosul,
like you said, you were there.
You saw it.
What we witnessed was we saw all the, you know,
Daesh's, ISIL's primary weapon system
was that vehicle-borne IED.
And they used it actually with pretty good effectiveness.
One out of every two VBIED attacks
resulted in some type of, some type of casualty,
whether it was vehicles, equipment, or personnel.
And what we have done over time, working together,
is to be able to bring some of our capabilities
and match it with their capabilities.
So within the last couple of weeks,
what we've seen is that effectiveness of the VBIEDs
go down to one in nine or one in six of their VBIED attacks
result in any type of damage,
and that damage is certainly much less than it was before.
And so for both of us,
our involvement with them and our partnership with them,
it has certainly been an evolution
as we have figured out how to be
more effective in our strikes,
more effective in the counter-mobility fight
in order to be able to support them
against each one of the threats that exist in Mosul.
As you know, it's a three-dimensional fight.
They're, you know, ISIL is in the basements of buildings,
on the roofs of buildings,
and around the corners.
And they've had two years to build this defense.
But over time, they've gotten much more effective.
And it's not just the CTS.
It's all the forces
that are much more effective there today.
And they continue to build their own combat power.
And the three-axis advance that you see now,
and really in particular when it began on December 29th,
has taken a lot of pressure off the CTS,
because in the beginning there was,
a lot of the brunt of the attack was on the CTS.
And so that in and of itself has been
a great force protection mechanism for them.
- Next, we'll go to Courtney Kube of NBC News.
- Hi, Colonel.
I wanted to ask you just one thing
from your opening statement.
You mentioned that the task force has been involved
in taking down more than a dozen ISIS drones.
Can you give us, describe what those drones are like, size?
I'm assuming that they were unarmed, but what were they,
what was sort of the mission that they were doing,
and how did the task force assist in taking them down?
- Yeah, the ISIL drones has been something
that has evolved over time.
It is a capability that they've had
for pretty much the duration
of the time that we've been here.
It's commercial, off-the-shelf,
you know, just UAVs that they purchase.
And in the beginning, they had some of these,
they were little bit larger fixed-wing,
you know, no bigger than a five-foot wingspan,
but (audio garbled) up and used for reconnaissance.
As we've made our way into Mosul now,
what we've seen is that they use the smaller drones,
the, you know, quad copters and things,
with a much shorter ability to project them out.
You know, they're up for 45 minutes, an hour, so,
and even that evolution has transitioned
in the beginning of the Mosul campaign
from just reconnaissance
to they are actually putting munitions in them
and dropping munitions on the ISF,
on the Iraqi security forces and their positions.
And so, while I won't go into any of the technical matters,
the technical capabilities that we use on these ISIL drones,
what we have found is that we're able
to bring to bear some of our technical capabilities
and then the Iraqis are able to couple that
with much of their direct fire weapon systems.
And as a result of us working together hand-in-hand,
we've been able to bring down these ISIL drones
and have made them much less effective
than they were in the beginning.
- Could you give us a little bit,
describe a little bit more about the munitions
that they've been putting on them?
And then are you aware that any of these munitions
have resulted in the deaths of any Iraqi security forces?
- Yeah, like I said before,
you know, we don't talk about the ISF casualties.
That's, again, something to take
to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense
for them to be able to address.
I can tell you it has resulted
in the damage to some equipment
and damage of some structures
as well as to some civilian casualties, because certainly,
they're not concerned about whether or not
any of the civilians in Mosul are killed or wounded.
So there has been that.
You know, they are small drones
with small munitions that they've been dropping,
just, you know, akin to
a small little grenade that drops on the ground,
enough for them to be able to do what Daesh does,
and that's just indiscriminate killing.
That's what they do.
But like I said,
their effectiveness has significantly waned
as we have, you know,
worked this counter-UAS fight together with the Iraqis.
- One more.
You haven't seen them trying to deliver
any kind of chemicals or any kind of,
anything like that with these drones, or have you?
- We have not.
We have not, no.
- Next, to Barbara Starr from CNN.
- Colonel, thank you for doing this.
I wanted to follow up a bit
on what Courtney just asked you.
Just so I understand,
you're saying that ISIS has now achieved the ability
to aerial-drop the munitions from the wings of these UAVs?
And do the UAVs go down on the ground,
and then sometimes Iraqis may approach them
and they explode at that point?
Is it both cases?
Or have they, I mean, it sounds fairly concerning
that they would've achieved this capability
to drop this stuff off the wings.
And also, have any of your U.S. troops been wounded,
either by this or in any other circumstances?
- Yeah, so it is, I do want to make sure
that I capture a little bit more accurately
kind of what it is that we're talking about
with regard to these armed UASs.
I'm not sure if you're familiar
with these small quad copters.
You know, probably no bigger than,
you know, a couple of feet in diameter.
So, it's not as if it is a large armed UAV
that's dropping munitions from the wings,
as you described,
but literally a very small quad copter that, you know,
drops a small munition in a somewhat imprecise manner,
in a somewhat crude manner out there on the battlefield.
And that's really what we've seen up to this point.
And, like I said, indiscriminately targeting,
going after Iraqi security forces.
We certainly, to address your question,
there have been no U.S. casualties from any of these UASs.
They're very short-range,
targeting those frontline troops from the Iraqis.
- [Barbara] Any casualties in the time you've been there?
- I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.
Could you say that again?
- Sir, can you just bring us up to date?
Has your unit suffered any wounded during your deployment?
- No, we have had no combat-related injuries,
no combat-related deaths within Task Force Strike.
You know, our advisory role as we partner,
so like I talked about with Captain Fitzgerald
in my opening statement.
You know, Captain Fitzgerald,
his partner is an Iraqi two-star general.
The lowest that we go is one-star generals
who we are partnering with.
So it's one-, two-, three-star generals.
And much like you would imagine,
they are behind the lines.
They're in their command posts, in their headquarters,
and that's where we do our advising.
We are there to assist them
with situational awareness tools.
We're there to help bring precision fires
in support of their operations.
And our effectiveness comes from being co-located
with their decision-makers, their general officers.
And so as you can imagine,
their general officers are not on the front lines,
kicking down doors and shooting people.
And that's where our advisers are.
That's where their best place is,
with those Iraqi commanders behind the front lines,
you know, in those headquarters areas.
- I was noticing, though,
I guess what I was referring to in your fact sheet,
you said your fire battalion
has fired more than 6,000 rounds,
the highest number of PTMs ever fired in combat.
Since you say "ever fired in combat,"
over what period of time are you talking about?
Since you were there?
6,000 rounds since you arrived?
- That's right.
That's right. Yes.
So, I'm sure you all remember Fire Base Bell
that was there at the, more than a few months ago.
We fell in immediately on that.
My task force top guns came in, assumed that position.
And from the beginning,
we've been providing precision surface-to-surface,
all-weather fires
in support of Iraqi security force maneuver.
That's been part of our assistance effort to them.
And so, like we talked about,
us bringing strikes forward,
a lot of times people think of that
as just primarily the close-air support,
you know, the Air Force aircraft that are flying overhead.
But there's also an all-weather component.
We've got HIMARS, triple-seven artillery.
We've got Paladins.
All that have been in support
of the Iraqi security force maneuver.
And it is something that we work in concert
with our Iraqi counterparts.
In the beginning when I first got here,
and I talked about Qarbadon, we did,
Qarbadon, Qarbat Jabbar or Hajj Ali.
A series of villages that we went on through.
And my partner, every time that he would want fire support,
he would turn to us and say,
"Can you provide us fire support?"
And I'd say, "Well, you've got your own artillery."
But in the beginning,
as we talk about the maturation of the security forces,
in the beginning they didn't have any trust or confidence
in their artillery forces.
And that's something that
when we talk about our advisory mission,
we've gone forward to co-locate with their artillery
in order to be able to provide
some additional training and instruction
in order to increase the precision of their own fires.
So now, as we are in Mosul,
there is a whole range of kinetic strikes
that could be brought,
some of which are Iraqi and some of which are coalition.
And we've been there in order to support.
Clearly, we have a great precision fires capability,
whether it's air-delivered
or whether it's surface-to-surface.
And so when we talk about the precision fires
that have been delivered,
the greatest number in combat ever,
that's because of new precision-fires capability
that has come to even our own Army
and our ability to deliver very accurate fires,
which is particularly important
as we're fighting in an urban area,
in order to be able to go through
the very deliberate process
to limit any collateral damage.
- [Barbara] How many rounds of ground fire, on average,
what would you say, out of 6,000 rounds,
and it's the highest ever,
how many ground combat rounds a day do you fire?
- I only caught the last portion of your question there.
So, you're asking,
what percentage of these are precision-fires?
Is that your question?
- [Barbara] Sure. Sorry.
I'm just asking, you say you're firing 6,000 rounds
in combat, according to your fact sheet.
So if it's 6,000 rounds, on average,
give me your best calculation.
What would you say you fire,
and maybe it was more in the beginning,
what would you say, how many rounds on average a day
in this ground combat that you describe?
- I'm not prepared to tell you, I guess,
what the daily average is on the rounds that are fired.
I will say that we are firing more today
than we were six months ago.
Today, as we are supporting multiple axes and their maneuver
as they are maneuvering in and around Mosul,
certainly we are firing more today than six months ago,
when we were just supporting, you know,
the maneuver of one division, taking one village at a time.
And so we are.
We are there supporting
as part of a whole range of kinetic strike capability,
precision fires capability,
that we provide to the Iraqis every single day.
- Next to David Martin from CBS News.
- You said you had reduced the effectiveness
of vehicle-borne IEDs
from one in two that cause damage
to, and you said one and nine or one in six.
So just wondering, clarify,
is it one in nine, or is it one in six?
And besides dropping the bridge spans cross the Tigris,
what else have you done
to reduce the effectiveness of VBIEDs?
- I think this is a great new story
in terms of our advisory effort
and really working together with the Iraqis on this one.
So, as you know, the VBIEDs have a tremendous impact,
not only in terms of casualties,
but they've got a great psychological impact
when you've got an explosion of that size
that go off in proximity to soldiers of any kind.
And so really getting after the VBIED fight
has been an important one for us.
And so what we have been working together
with our Iraqi counterparts are a whole range of things
in order to be able to be more effective.
One of them is just increasing
the number of anti-tank munitions
that our Iraqi counterparts have.
There's an equipping program that we do that has allowed us
to increase the numbers of these munitions
in the hands of the Iraqis
that are there on the front lines.
The second thing is working through
even some very rudimentary methods,
like road spikes or hedgehogs,
you know, string and wire out along the roads.
There's a natural pace of operations that occurs each day
where you attack and, at some point,
you gotta kind of establish a defensive line
and then prepare for the next day.
But now, when they slow that advance
and decide this is the point that we're gonna stop,
and kind of refit until we push on again,
they put out these counter-mobility measures,
put these things out there on the ground.
As we've seen, these VBIEDs come in any form
of a sedan or truck or anything,
and some of these elementary methods
help to be able to stop their advance
or slow their advance to the point
where they can be targeted.
And the other thing that we do is we do some terrain denial.
There are at times some high-speed avenues of approach
that are difficult to put some of these road spikes in,
and so we'll put some craters in the roads,
very large potholes that a vehicle would have to slow down
or would have to maneuver around
or potentially even, if it's a heavily-laden vehicle,
would get stuck inside these areas.
And so then the ISF are able to then
engage them much more quickly.
The reason why I said one-to-nine and one-to-six
is because we do it on kind of a two-week average.
And over the course of the last month,
it was one-to-nine, and then we've had one-to-six lately.
Some of that's just dependent
on how fluid the battlefield is,
and so sometimes that percentage changed.
But regardless, going from 50% to these larger percentages
has been a significant win for us.
And at the same time,
even the ones that do have some effectiveness,
the relative effectiveness has been less
in terms of the number of casualties
or the amount of equipment that's been damaged.
- Next to Bill Hennigan with the Los Angeles Times.
- Hey, Colonel.
These dozen drones that you mentioned before,
when did you first start seeing this,
when did you first start taking them down?
And when did they first have the capability
of dropping munitions?
- Well, so, like I said, even after we first got here,
this is a capability that ISIL has had
to be able to fly drones.
It's the same ability
that any 13-year-old kid in the states has.
He can get online and purchase
some type of unmanned aerial vehicle and put it up.
And so that's what Daesh has been doing,
ISIL's been doing for some time.
And even in the beginning when we were first here,
sometimes these things would fly over
and our counterparts would,
through small arms they would shoot them down
and bring them down.
So they've been coming down for a little while.
But it wasn't until we got closer and closer to Mosul
that we really began to see
not only the increase in quantity,
but the frequency of their flights.
And then really that's when we saw them using them
in an armed fashion in order to be able to drop them
on our Iraqi counterparts on their front lines.
And so that has been something that has evolved.
It was, it's almost like popcorn, right?
You know, you see one,
and then you don't see another one for a little while,
and then you see another one, and then you see another one.
And so actually, it has increased in frequency.
Or it did increase in frequency, I guess I should say,
until very recently, both as we have now been more engaged
with our partners in helping out with this fight.
And so now we've seen that, we've seen their use drop off,
and at the same time as the Iraqis have taken more ground
inside of Mosul.
Most recently, elements of the federal police
moved into an area and captured up
what appeared to be kind of a UAV launch and recovery site,
where they collected up a bunch of UAV parts
that when ISIL was in such a hurry to depart the area,
they left all these things there.
And so, obviously, their effectiveness
and the quantities available to them
have certainly decreased over time.
Number one, as they've been shot out of the sky,
brought down, or as these areas have been taken over.
- Thanks.
And as you approach the Tigris here,
what challenges do you see going west
as you push into the districts west of the river?
- Yeah.
So I'm sure you've heard,
I think it was in an Iraqi press release yesterday.
They believe they're between 70% and 80% complete
with eastern Mosul.
And really,
in terms of kind of the doctrinal definition of defeat,
you can say that there has been a defeat there
because they have certainly broken their will to fight,
to continue to really fight in earnest in eastern Mosul.
And so the Iraqi security forces
continue to make great progress there.
And so, naturally, the fight is not over.
There's a lot of fight that's left to do in western Mosul.
There has been an extensive defensive work
that has been done in western Mosul.
They have certainly been working on that area,
and even in some cases have greater defenses built
in western Mosul than they did in eastern Mosul.
And I think you’ve seen recently, they completed,
not the complete destruction,
but have certainly even done more destruction
to a couple of the bridges lately
to ensure that they could try to delay the advance
of the Iraqi security forces over to the west side.
But I'll tell you that the Iraqi security forces,
as I said, they have a tremendous capability.
That capability has grown.
They've gotten better at this urban fight.
They know what they're getting themselves into.
And they know that they have, in many cases,
broken the will of many of these Daesh fighters.
And we hear a lot more and more
about many of them running away.
And certainly when ISIL hears
that they've got fighters running away,
they execute them.
So I don't know what incentive that gives to people
to continue to fight for them,
but certainly that's just another indication
of how they operate.
But, the ISF have more than enough capability
to get around to the west side and to begin that fight.
They certainly don't need those bridges
in order to be able to get over there.
They've demonstrated in the past
that they can build bridges.
You know, like I talked about earlier,
we have provided advising at multiple echelons.
One of the things that we've done is bridge advising.
And so when they first put in
that first bridge over the Tigris,
we were there to advise them
and provide some technical capabilities
in putting that bridge in.
And then they put a second bridge in,
and we were there to advise them on that second bridge.
But then they put in a third and a fourth bridge
without us there, without us advising.
They've grown in their capability to do these things.
And I'm confident that they'll be able
to continue to do that
as they bring forces from the east side to the west side
when they're ready to do that.
- Okay. Next to Corey Dickstein, Stars and Stripes.
- Hey, sir, appreciate your doing this.
I wanted to see, you said, obviously,
that the vehicle-borne IEDs
have been less effective recently.
Do you have maybe an estimate
of how often they're using them?
I'm sure it's daily,
but can you say how often ISF
is coming into contact with them?
And are they becoming more crude
as territory is taken and things are cleared
that they've held for a while?
- Today, to be honest with you,
I read an article today,
Major General Maan, who is one of the commanders
of the Counterterrorism Service,
I think he said it best.
He said in the beginning,
we would see as many as 10 VBIEDs a day
against our frontline troops,
and today, we see no more than one or two,
and on some days, we don't see any.
And you're right, they have become much more crude.
When we were fighting on the outskirts of Mosul
before we even got into the city proper,
we like to call them those Mad Max-looking VBIEDs.
They had taken vehicles,
they had put steel plating all around these things
and just had a small little porthole
that the driver would be able to see through.
They would try to ram these things into the Iraqi defenses.
And today, we don't see those anymore.
Like you said, they are much more crude.
To some degree, that's good,
because they have less capability
to break through barriers.
In some cases,
it does make it even a little bit more difficult
because they look like every other sedan
that's on the street,
and so sometimes, it can be difficult,
(audio garbled) the Iraqi security forces
have shown great restraint and great care
in being able to safeguard not only the people of Mosul,
the civilians that are still there in Mosul,
but even their property.
And so that has, in some cases,
even made it just a little bit more difficult on them.
- And then on the artillery,
you said your artillery battalion
has worked directly with the Iraqi artillery forces.
Can you talk at all to how the Iraqi artillery has advanced?
Are they able to strike with similar precision
to our artillery soldiers?
And then can you kind of also tell
how precise can a Paladin or a triple-seven get?
Can you take out a VBIED with an artillery strike like that?
- So, first of all, I'm not gonna go into the specifics,
as you could imagine,
on exactly how precise our artillery is,
given some of the specifications
on the rounds and things that we have.
But what I will say
is that they have been able to strike VBIEDs,
they have been able to take out a mortar team,
which is two guys standing around a mortar tube
and been able to strike them with great precision.
They have been able to put rounds in some places
that have allowed us to destroy Daesh,
and at the same time,
safeguard structures or even civilians
that may have been close,
not too close, but close.
Can the Iraqis do that?
They don't have the same type of equipment.
While they do have some Paladins,
they have an earlier version of Paladins.
They don't have the same kind of rounds
and things that we do.
But they have become much more precise
in terms of what they've been able to do.
They don't necessarily have
the same precision that we do, though.
- Okay.
Next, we'll go to Kasim Ileri with Anadolu News Agency.
- Sir, thanks for doing this.
During your operations around Mosul,
have you had any interaction
with the forces trained by Turkey in Bashiqa?
- Yes, I have.
So, there are some Sunni tribal fighters
that were trained in Bashiqa.
And they are currently fully integrated
in with the Iraqi army,
and with the 16th Iraqi Army Division on the northern axis.
They have been used as a hold force.
So after the 16th Iraqi Army Division
has pushed through certain areas,
has cleared those areas of ISIL,
they were able to move some of these tribal fighters
and to hold that ground
to prevent any infiltration of ISIL behind them.
So I have had that limited interaction with them
only through the 16th Division.
- What was your impression about their capabilities?
Are they trained well?
- They've proven that they were able to hold that ground
behind the Iraqi army.
Certainly, I'm getting my information second-hand
from the commander of the 16th Iraqi Army Division.
And they are fully integrated.
Those tribal fighters are not there by themselves.
They're there with the Iraqi army soldiers
who really do kind of provide the overall backbone
for the security forces in that area.
So that's really the only assessment
that I can provide on them.
- And finally to Luis Martinez from ABC News.
- Hi, Colonel.
Thanks for doing this briefing.
I want to ask you about the federal police.
How are they being utilized in the fight in Mosul?
Are they a holding force now?
Are they being used as a combat force?
How many of them are there?
What's your role in advising them as they operate in Mosul?
- First of all, I'll say the federal police
has proven to be a critical portion
of the overall Iraqi security forces
that are engaged in this fight.
And if I could just step back just a little bit
and frame what we're talking about
when we talk about the police.
I know some of you are aware of this,
but I just want to make sure
that we kind of frame it appropriately.
We have local police who are those
who grow up in that area,
work for the ministry of interior,
and they are, if you will, cops on the beat.
We have Nineveh provincial police
who are kind of a little bit of a step above.
They're not tied to a checkpoint on the street or anything.
They're the ones that are able to move around
and more along the lines of,
if you will in the United States,
kind of the state troopers who have some mobility there.
And then you've got the federal police,
who are trained by the Italian carabinieri.
They're a gendarmerie.
They are, really, a high-end force
who has the capability for offensive maneuver.
They have vehicles and equipment and weapon systems
that make them much more than police
and really kind of straddle the line.
They're more like an army unit with policing authorities.
And so the federal police,
in kind of a little partnership
with the emergency response division,
who is currently falling under the federal police,
they have proven to be a very effective fighting force.
I know that in the past,
they served perhaps a little bit different role
in places like Fallujah.
But here, they have, this is the first time
that we have advised them.
And it has been really a fruitful partnership
in all regards.
And so, as a result, what we have seen
and I talked about that day in the church
where we had all of the Iraqi security forces together.
When I think about the greatest achievement
or the greatest accomplishment of my time here
has been the integration
of each one of these Iraqi security forces.
And so today, you'll see that the CTS,
the Counterterrorism Services
have given forces up to the Iraqi army,
to the northern access,
in order to be able to facilitate their clearance.
You've got fed pol forces and Counterterrorism Services
that meet each day in order to be able to synchronize
and coordinate maneuvers
as they are in support of one another
in their clearance operations.
Something that I don't think we've ever seen before,
that degree of synchronization and cooperation
amongst these Iraqi security forces.
And I'm very proud to say that Task Force Strike
and our advisers and our adviser teams,
company commanders, battalion commanders,
they've been there with each one of these elements,
facilitating this crosstalk
and this coordination and this synchronization.
And over time, I'd like to say that we played a role
in being able to bring each one of them together.
And so the rapid gains that we've seen since 29 December,
in my opinion, are a direct result
of all of them working together in synchronization
to be able to achieve the effects
and the great success of the last couple weeks.
- If I could follow on real quick.
Around that timeframe, the 29th of December,
I guess there was discussion of a second phase
going inside Mosul.
There was talk about the federal police's role in,
as part of that operation.
Were they always a part of the operation?
Or were they brought in as an add-on
because of the situation, the holding situation
that had taken place in Mosul at that time?
- Yes, so the federal police have always been part
of this Mosul counteroffensive.
On the 17th of October, the federal police were,
they owned one of the axes of advance,
and liberated almost 56 kilometers
of what we used to call MSR Tampa,
between MSR Tampa and the Tigris River.
A very impressive move, multiple villages.
We count villages a little bit different,
but I think if you asked them,
they'll tell you they liberated almost 100 villages
through that particular area.
And then they achieved what it was
that they were initially asked to do.
They met their limit of advance.
They were there to set up some blocking positions
and to support from that side.
And then, and so, like you talked about,
yeah, we did go to a phase two on December 29th,
and there was a reorganization of the combat power.
And so then the federal police then did bring forces
from the west side of the Tigris
over to the east side of the Tigris
in order to be able to add combat power
to the fight there on the east,
as we had seen ISIL move in combat power
from the west to the east as well.
And so that addition of combat power,
the development of a refined plan,
and the ability to move forward in order to be able
to make the rapid gains that we see today.
- And with that, we will call it a day.
Colonel Sylvia, thank you very much for your time
and for coming to Baghdad to do this.
And we wish you all the best of luck
in the fight to re-take Mosul
and look forward to seeing you again soon.
- It's been my pleasure, thank you.