New counter-ISIL strategy to include ground raids, increased airstrikes

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today that the United States has a new strategy to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that will include more ground raids with U.S. special forces personnel and increased airstrikes.

"We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"From the skies above, we expect to intensify our air campaign, including with additional U.S. and coalition aircraft, to target ISIL with a higher and heavier rate of strikes," Carter continued. "This will include more strikes against ISIL high-value targets as our intelligence improves, and also its oil enterprise, which is a critical pillar of ISIL's financial infrastructure. As I said last Friday, we've already begun to ramp up these deliberate strikes."

Carter's comments come on the heels of a successful operation last week in which U.S. special forces helped the Iraqi military free 70 hostages from an ISIL-controlled prison. However, the mission resulted in the death of Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, who became the first U.S. servicemember to die in Iraq from hostile action since 2011.

"While our mission in Iraq is to train, advise, and assist our Iraqi partners, in situations such as that operation -- where we have actionable intelligence and a capable partner force -- we want to support our partners," he said, referencing the questions raised by whether or nor Wheeler's death amounted to a recommitment to U.S. ground forces in Iraq.

Carter also made it clear the United States was not ceding the battlefield to Russia as it increases its efforts to prop up the embattled regime of Bashar al Assad in Syrian.

"To be clear, we are not cooperating with Russia, and we are not letting Russia impact the pace or scope of our campaign against ISIL in Iraq and Syria," he said.

Carer said the United States would continue its new effort to provide equipment and assistance to the leaders of the Syrian opposition, rather than equip and train individual recruits.

"While the old approach was to train and equip completely new forces outside of Syria before sending them into the fight, the new approach is to work with vetted leaders of groups that are already fighting ISIL, and provide equipment and some training to them and support their operations with airpower," he said. "This approach builds on successes that local Syrian Arab and Syrian Kurdish forces have made along Syria's northern border to retake and hold ground from ISIL with the help of U.S. airstrikes and equipment resupplies."