APRIL 16, 2015
Winning today's fights still means reaching an actual victory, focusing on changing players, and heeding history.
It has now been over 250 days since U.S. forces began air strikes on the Islamic State, or ISIS,. U.S. warplanes have conducted 2,893 air strikes that have hit 5,314 targets ranging from 1,425 buildings to 58 boats, according to the most recentU.S. Central Command figures for Operation Inherent Resolve. The cost has reached roughly $8.5 million per day, summing just under $2.5 billion so far.
Peter W. Singer is a strategist and senior fellow at New America, consultant for the U.S. military and Defense Intelligence Agency, author of multiple bestselling books including Corporate Warriors, Children at War; Wired for War; Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know and the ...Full Bio
History is written by the victors, it is said, and this conflict is certainly far from over. But surely some lessons of battle can be learned in the midst of war. For example, by the 250th day mark of World War I, it was clear that trench warfare had changed the flow of battle and new technologies like the machine gun and submarine would play a bigger role than expected. Or 250 days into the Iraq War, it was clear the U.S. quick takeover of Iraq had devolved into a painful insurgency that was more than a few “small pockets” of “dead-enders,” as infamously claimed by former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld.
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