Year One: Inside the Air War Against ISIS

By Joe Pappalardo

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a17383/year-one-inside-the-air-war-against-isis/

The following is based on publicly released information, interviews with Air Force personnel at the Pentagon and reportage from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas.

Night One: August 8, 2014

Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar—A B-1B bomber has a crew of four. Right now, all four are confused.

There are two pilots, call signs Dash and Astro. Two Weapons Systems Officers (WSOs), Lobo and Biscuit, sit directly behind the cockpit, a partition between them. The two pairs spend missions of up to 14 hours together in a cramped cockpit but never see each other, except when the WSOs head to the crude metal toilet.

Dash is the mission lead, and his crew is ready to take off for combat operations over Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. But just before they take off, the air traffic controllers tell them to stop and wait on the runway.

More than a half hour passes with no updates, and no one will discuss anything on an unsecured radio. "This is bad," Dash tells his crew, part of the 9th Expeditionary Bomber Squadron. "Something's happening."

By the time the squadron commander and intelligence officers come out to the airplane to deliver details of the updated mission, an entirely new operation has been set into motion in Washington D.C. Dash and his crew went to sleep involved in one war in Afghanistan and woke up in time to fight another in Iraq.

This one is called Operation Inherent Resolve. The U.S. Air Force's war against the Islamic State (ISIS) is about to begin.

DASH AND HIS CREW WENT TO SLEEP INVOLVED IN ONE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, AND WOKE UP IN TIME TO FIGHT ANOTHER IN IRAQ.

"The guys at the base said they heard us taking off as they were watching the president's speech," says Lobo, one of the weapons systems officers on board. Indeed, as the jet takes off with its three bomb bays fully loaded and its afterburners roaring, President Barack Obama has taken to the air to announce that he's approved "targeted airstrikes" to secure the thousands of Americans—many of them oil and gas workers—living in the Kurdish city of Erbil, which is in the crosshairs of ISIS' advance across Iraq. Tens of thousands of people are fleeing. If the Kurdish bastion of Erbil falls, a major center of U.S.-Kurdish cooperation will be lost—and hope for a counteroffensive will fade.

So the first night of Inherent Resolve focuses on easing the pressure on Erbil, and as Dash's B-1 flies to Iraq, the Navy is already at work. U.S. warships in the Red and Arabian seas bombard buildings they know ISIS uses as headquarters with nearly 50 BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles. F/A-18 Super Hornets from the George W. Bush aircraft carrier arrive to hammer vehicles and infantry.

The B-1, part of the 9th squadron (the "Bats"), is part of the second wave. Dash is leading the mission. He's 30, but his crew is younger, 26- and 27-year-olds with four deployments between them. For two, this is their first deployment. And they're heading into Iraq with only a thin sketch of a mission plan.

The plane left in such haste that the crew took off without knowing the flight plan, the radio frequencies for Iraqi air traffic controllers, or even who on the ground will give the bomber authority to attack targets. They're trying to piece it together en route. "We didn't know what we were doing," Lobo says.

There's not much time for small talk on the two-hour journey to the Iraqi border. These conditions make the airmen nervous—if they break the rules or make mistakes, they could be grounded. During a lull, Dash asks his most senior colleague onboard for some perspective. "What're you thinkin'?" he asks Biscuit, the lead weapon systems officer, over the radio. The reply is not helpful, but it's honest: "I'm thinking I'm glad I'm not mission lead."

The B-1 Lancer is a supersonic bomber that can carry long-range missiles, sea mines, and unguided "dumb" bombs. But for night one of Inherent Resolve, the crew is focused on close air support against vehicles and infantry, so the plane is packing GPS-guided 500- and 2000-pound bombs. The B-1 has the targeting systems, weapons bays, and gas tank to stay over Iraq for more than 10 hours, making this Cold War nuclear bomber a deadly tool for this kind of work.

But when Dash's B-1 arrives east of Erbil, its has no fixed targets. So they start hunting.

The 146-foot-long Lancer is not designed for intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance. But it's not blind, either. In addition to the pilots' view outside the cockpit windows, the jet can build pictures of the surrounding area with radar pulses. Vehicles can be tracked by measuring the Doppler shift of what's below. Anything that moves appears on a digital map of the area.

That's how the WSOs, Lobo and Biscuit, find trucks racing back and forth from an ammunition storehouse. They pick up a vehicle tearing along a road at more than 80 mph, and then take a closer look at it using the B-1s Sniper targeting pod. The pod, fixed to the underside of the airplane, delivers real-time infrared video imagery of a target, which can guide a GPS-guided weapon dropped from the Lancer. The pod images, broadcast in the B-1's cockpit, make the pilots suspicious. The passengers load the truck with boxes, pass through an ISIS checkpoint on the west side of town, and race away. The B-1 flies in slow racetrack circles to keep the targeting pod fixed on the vehicle until it stops at what appears to be an artillery piece under camouflage. There are stout legs poking out from the netting.

As the truck repeats the route, Dash makes a radio call to Central Command. Convinced they have a valid target, Dash wants the authority to drop bombs on it. But nothing drops without an OK from someone outside the aircraft.

A lot of people can be on the other end of the radio to approve an airstrikes: Military lawyers, intelligence officers, commanders, and sometimes even senior Pentagon or White House officials. But on this night, the air operations began before the government of Qatar (which hosts the base of operations for the bombers) approved them, so the B-1s are told not to engage. Dash's bomber is called away. The aircrew makes the long trip home, its bomb bay doors unopened.

When Dash and his crew land at Al Udeid, they find declassified video footage on TV of a jet destroying the artillery piece they found. "The Navy just came in and dropped on our target," Lobo laments. The crew feels denied a chance to attack ISIS. But in the months ahead, Lobo and the rest of the 9th will have plenty of chances to use their weapons.

A B-1B Lancer prepares for takeoff at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Quay Drawdy/Released

August 2014

Obama's mandate of limited airstrikes lasts one day. ISIS advances have trapped thousands of refugees on Mount Sinjar, and the fear is that they will be massacred as the world watches helplessly. So by the next evening, Inherent Resolve's stated purpose expands to "break the siege of Mount Sinjar."

As military planners assess targets and Air Force planes drop food and water, the promise of action is quickly matched with limits on ground forces. "As commander-in-chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq," Obama says.

Every part the U.S. aerial inventory is getting a piece of the action. The first drone attack of Inherent Resolve is a typical one. Operators from a remote location—possibly from as far away as Creech Air Base in Nevada—spot a mortar position outside Erbil and paste it with a Hellfire missile. When surviving ISIS fighters return to salvage the equipment, the Predator crew kills them all with a second Hellfire. Drones are efficient, patient hunters.

American fighter jets are not as patient. Taking off from airbases in allied countries or aircraft carriers, they don't have the fuel to stay over Iraq for more than half an hour, though the United States has a large fleet of refueling tankers in constant use refueling warplanes. On August 9, pairs of USAF F-15s and F-16s attack eight targets outside Erbil. Given the limits on flight time, the list of targets reveals things that are easy to spot by the air: Command centers, training camps, and combat vehicles. These are clearly armed and advancing on Erbil. They make ideal targets.

The targets near Mount Sinjar are also easy to spot. The fighters and bombers are primarily hunting armored vehicles, like converted pickup trucks and some stolen U.S.-supplied Humvees. American warplanes can catch them in the open, watch their movements, and use lasers to guide precision bombs. GPS-guided weapons use the lasers to follow moving targets, producing updated coordinates of a moving vehicle. Air Force bombers can now do this as easily as fighters. "We've struck cars moving at highway speeds," says Bigzy, a B-1 pilot and veteran of Inherent Resolve missions.

A week after it begins, the air war expands again.

On August 16, Obama notifies Congress that that American air power will now protect Iraqi infrastructure and "degrade" ISIS. The series of pinprick strikes is now an air campaign.

The expansion of air attacks in Iraq brings more targets onto the computer screens of battle planners at Central Command. The million-dollar question becomes how to slow the ISIS advance solely using air power. "We do center-of-gravity target analysis," says one Air Force official who worked in CENTCOM during the start of the campaign. "What is the glue that holds them together?"

One answer: Money. Black market oil from captured oil fields feeds tens of millions of dollars to ISIS coffers every month. The solution: bombing. This is the sort of fight that air power advocates enjoy focusing on—a story of battle damage assessments, economic pressure, and zero pilot casualties. Still, the air war against ISIS oil encompasses only a small fraction of the air campaign. As of May 2015, according to CENTCOM, 152 oil infrastructure targets had been damaged or destroyed, compared to 1,779 buildings and 288 Humvees.

The other ways ISIS makes money depending on holding territory. Kidnapping for ransom and extortion are commonplace in ISIS-controlled areas. In the cities, it charges for commodities like wheat. Between the cities, it makes money controlling the roads. ISIS is not al Qaeda. Instead of establishing networks inside friendly regimes or war zones, it seizes and holds territory. ISIS needs to control cities and major utilities to solidify its power.

The most critical piece of infrastructure the U.S. warplanes need to focus on is the Mosul Dam, a 750-MW facility on the Tigris River. ISIS seized the installation on August 8 and about 500 soldiers are holding it. The Kurdish forces that lost control of the dam are rallying to take it back. American airstrikes could be the linchpin of the effort.

It takes the Bats just under three hours to get from Al Udeid airbase to Mosul. With plenty of fuel remaining, the Bats set up bombing runs. The aircrew can't spot anything and just shoot, and approval can take 45 minutes or longer. So the B-1 circles above, out of sight, tilted at an angle to keep the targeting pod on target.

THE FIVE OF DICE: FOUR 500-POUND BOMBS DROPPED IN A SQUARE, WITH A 2000-POUND-BOMB LANDING SMACK IN THE MIDDLE.

There's no trigger on a B-1. Authority given, the pilot flips up a red, metal guard and flicks the switch below. This is the "pilot consent switch." Under direction of the WSO (pronounced "Whizzo"), the airplane automatically calculates the drop point, opens the weapons bay doors when the target is in range, and lets the bomb loose. As the bomb drops, a metal wire connected to the casing tears free like an enormous hand grenade. Even so, the bomb doesn't arm until a tiny wind vane spins fast enough to ensure that the weapon is falling from altitude.

The Lancer can drop weapons in specific patterns and time sequences. One favorite technique is called the five of dice: four 500-pound bombs dropped in a square with a 2000-pound-bomb landing smack in the middle. It's death and demoralization for any concentration of enemy troops caught within the points of impact.

The Air Force finds the approach to the Mosul Dam thick with targets. The action on one Sunday in mid-August tells the tale. U.S. Central Command announced 14 airstrikes by manned and unmanned warplanes, which "damaged or destroyed ten armed vehicles, seven Humvees, two armored personnel carriers, and one checkpoint."

Meanwhile, Kurdish ground forces push forward, fighting infantry amid ambushes and booby-traps. They drive ISIS fighters from the dam by August 19. Obama calls it "a major step forward."

So far, it seems like air power is the answer that everyone wants it to be. The United States has saved refugees trapped at Mount Sinjar, helped Kurds retake a vital dam, and reduced frontline ISIS fighters in a dramatic fashion, and all without U.S. casualties or committed ground troops. Yes, these are successful battles. But ISIS is still rampaging across the region. Anywhere American warplanes are not flying—in Iraq or neighboring, civil war-torn Syria—ISIS is gaining strength.

The atrocities reported from ISIS-controlled areas are barbaric. They behead foreign journalists and use social media to taunt the world and rally believers. The threat of enslavement, mass rape, kidnapping, crucifixion, and public murder becomes the daily reality for the 10 million people living in ISIS-controlled territory.

On August 19, while praising the retaking of the Mosul Dam, Obama delivers a mixed message. "This is going to take time," he says. "There are going to many challenges ahead, but meanwhile, there should be no doubt that the United States military will continue to carry out the limited missions that I've authorized." He adds, "We are not the Iraqi military—we are not even the Iraqi air force."

Limited or not, the scope and tempo of operations acclerate. By the end of August, the Pentagon reports its warplanes performed 123 airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, an average of 5.2 per day. More expansions lie just ahead as Syria falls to pieces.

September

Despite Obama-era troop drawdowns in the Middle East, the Air Force has had no chance to catch its breath. The United States left Iraq in 2011, but combat missions in Libya and Afghanistan have strained Air Force resources. "We've seen no peace dividend from anything," says one senior USAF official. "We deployed to the desert in 1990 and never left."

To see evidence of the ceaseless tempo, just look to the 9th Bomber Squadron. The ideal downtime between deployment cycles is about 18 months. In 2014, the Bats got going after just six months. In the bomber world, this is considered a back-to-back deployment. The squadron is a mixture of vets and newly minted pilots, a quarter of whom are flying in their first combat deployment. "I had an exhausted squadron," says the commander of the 9th during Inherent Resolve. "They were younger than what we'd want to take out. And they performed amazingly."

The bombing runs in Iraq are seasoning the Bats quickly, but there is yet another phase coming that will challenge them.

In early September, Obama announces that Operation Inherent Resolve will expand to Syria, a country embroiled in a civil war between rebels and the controlling Assad regime—a regime the U.S. has called on to be replaced. On September 22, the air war comes to Raqqa, Syria, a city brutally taken by ISIS in early July and declared the capitol of the group's caliphate. The Bats of the 9th Bomber Squadron are in the thick of it.

"ASSAD'S GUYS HAD ALL THESE MISSILES POINTING AT US. IT WAS A HUGE UNKNOWN. WE DIDN'T KNOW IF WE WERE GOING TO GET INTERCEPTED OR SHOT AT."

The first Syrian operations are radically different than missions over Iraq. For starters, the Bats are flying over the terrain of an unfriendly regime armed with deadly anti-aircraft missiles. In a normal operation, stealth aircraft and long-range missiles would take out many of these threats before more vulnerable bombers arrive. But in Syria, the U.S. can't touch the regime's defenses. This is a war against ISIS, not Assad. Attacking Syria itself would rile Iran during diplomatic wrangling over its nuclear program, and strain a relationship with Russia that's already soured by the annexation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

"Assad's guys had all these missiles pointing at us," says Dash, the B-1 pilot. "It was a huge unknown. We didn't know if we were going to get intercepted or shot at." The B-1s fly with lighter bomb loads to make sure they are nimble enough to deke missiles.

Airstrikes begin at 9 p.m. local time. After another wave of Navy-launched missiles demolishes fixed targets, formations of U.S. fighters and bombers cross Iraqi airspace into Syria.

That first night over Syria is a memorable one for the Bats. One weapons officer, call sign Shrink, thinks his evening is over after the plane is waved off its preplanned target. But on the way home, his B-1 is ordered back to Syria. After receiving targeting information, he programs 16 new "target shells" into the bomber's fire control system, one location for each 2000- and 500-pound bombs they're carrying. The WSOs can set fuses for different blast effects—blowing up in the air, at ground level, or on a delay to let the bomb burrow before it explodes.

Shrink's B-1's crew is uncommonly quiet as they connect with their escorts. It's a moment of aviation history: The F-22 Raptor—the world's premier stealth warplane—is in the air with them, on its first combat operation a decade after coming into service. The Raptor is designed to fly through this kind of hostile airspace. Peerless dogfighters, they would be the counter to any Syrian fighters trying to intercept the bombers. More importantly, the F-22 serves as a scout and communication node for the U.S. effort.

The Raptor draws the first blood of its career on a ground target northwest of Raqqa. The F-22 drops a pair of GPS-guided 1000-pound Joint Directed Attack Munitions (JDAM) on an ISIS building. Pentagon officials will later point out that the precision weapons collapsed only the half of the building where the ISIS command center is located, leaving the other half undamaged.

One B-1 pilot with the Bats watches the declassified video of the Raptor's debut and is unimpressed. "Hey, two 1000-pound JDAMs," he says. "That's cute."

Shrink's sorties are less historically remarkable. They just require more paperwork. On a night like September 22, Shrink's B-1 drops all 16 bombs, bursting tanks, cratering bunkers, and demolishing road checkpoints. In the post-mission briefings, each bomb gets a separate report and battle damage assessment. Then the crew will sleep. In 24 hours they need to be ready to fly again.

Meanwhile, the crew chief tends to the aircraft. Once the mission's bomb drops are confirmed, the chief puts a W on the airplane's side. It means the crew has dropped all its ordnance, or "gone Winchester."

"When they come back empty it makes me feel like I'm part of it," says one B-1 weapon loader who deployed to Qatar during the start of Inherent Resolve.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Quay Drawdy/Released

October

Airmen use one word to sum up Al Udeid air base: Brown. Brown sand, brown skies, brown dust. "It looks like Tatooine from Star Wars," says Jedi, one 27-year-old Air Force intelligence officer. They joke that they expect a second sun to appear on the horizon.

In 2014, there are 350 airmen from the 9th Squadron deployed from Texas to Qatar. Only a couple dozen are pilots; the majority are mechanics, weapons loaders, intelligence officers, and other support staff. They watch TV and see the reports of atrocities from Syria and Iraq. As the world boils in frustration, the airmen are in a rare position to do something about it.

"The Taliban are awful, but they're noting compared to the atrocities ISIS does," says Paddy, a 30-year-old pilot with the Bats. "To me, they are pure evil, and it felt good to be able to vaporize some of them."

In early October, ISIS fighters storm a small, rural town called Kobani near the Turkish border. It's a humanitarian crisis, but the town has little strategic value. "Kobani does not define the strategy for the coalition in respect to [ISIS]," says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on October 13.

Kerry's comment comes off as tone deaf. The Kurds in Kobani, which has operated semi-autonomously for years, are symbols of resistance across the Middle East. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), among the few fighters in Syria actively battling ISIS, are determined to reclaim the town.

Other major parties are watching the action with keen interest. The Turkish government warns that it will create a buffer zone in northern Syria if Kobani falls—a pretext for bold action to stem the refugee crisis, and to neuter the nationalistic ambitions of the Kurds. The U.S. sees Turkish intervention as destabilizing. So liberating Kobani becomes an Air Force priority—especially when it becomes clear that close air support could make a difference. The U.S. military airdrops much-needed weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to the YPG.

But airstrikes, not airdrops, will determine the outcome, and in Kobani the Air Force is in a good spot. There is a clearly defined border between friend and foe, called the forward line of troops. Most of Kobani's residents have fled, so this line exists even when it crosses the city. Anyone on the wrong side of the line is considered an enemy. It's a perfect environment for bombers.

There's also a reasonably reliable ally on the ground to provide intel. YPG fighters have the contact information of tactical air controllers in Combined Air Operation Center in Qatar. The coordinates they generate are passed to the B-1 WSO, who programs them into each smart bomb.

The Bats watch the fighters they are supporting below. "They were nuts," Paddy says. The crew would lay down bombs extremely close to YPG fighters, "and they'd just jump up and run while the bombs were dropping."

The airmen watch as the fight progresses block to block. "We all became familiar with the layout of the town," Lobo says. "They were our landmarks. So I was like, 'Oh cool, they took back that fountain.' "

November

As the year wears on, ISIS adapts to American air power. They disperse into smaller groups whenever possible, stop using cellular phones to avoid detection by U.S. intelligence, and plant decoy black flags on empty rooftops and civilian buildings. ISIS begins to use motorcycles and everyday trucks to move around, and travel in small numbers. And they avoid forming convoys.

There's a reason for this newfound caution: On November 9, ISIS leaders gathered for a strategy session near Mosul. The coalition warplanes waited until the ISIS leaders gathered in their trucks before they struck. The U.S. reported 10 vehicles destroyed, and rumors swirled that the attack wounded ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

But while air superiority terminates ISIS leadership, the Iraqi government struggles on the ground against ISIS' brutally effective terrorist attacks. On November 7, police lieutenant general Faisal Malik is inspecting troops in the town of Beiji when a truck barrels into his convoy. The suicide truck bomb claims eight lives, including the lieutenant.

That weekend, car bombs also kill 19 in Baghdad, more than 100 miles away. The week after, an explosion targets a UN convoy in Baghdad; none are killed. The week after, a carb bomb hits a government building in Kurdish-held Erbil, killing six. ISIS retains control over Mosul and its 2 million inhabitants. Iraqi army promises to retake the city. Those promises fade into brown dust.

January 2015

In late January, the Bats fly their last missions and rotate home. One week after, the Kurds retake Kobani.

The airmen know they've been part of something historic. "Holy crap," says Paddy. "This squadron got a chance to do this mission and save this city for the Kurds."

"HOLY CRAP. THIS SQUADRON GOT A CHANCE TO DO THIS MISSION AND SAVE THIS CITY FOR THE KURDS."

There's no doubt that airpower made the difference. The 9th dropped more than 2,000 bombs and hit more than 1,700 targets during their tour, expending the vast majority of that ordnance in and around Kobani. "I swear by God, their planes did not leave the air, day and night," one ISIS fighter tells the group's Amak information agency. "They did airstrikes all day and night. They targeted everything. They even attacked motorcycles; they have not left a building standing."

The young squadron returns to their home at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas a changed unit. "When they came off that aircraft at the end of the deployment, you could see they were different," says Colonel Michael Bob Starr, Commander of the 7th Bomb Wing. "They weren't newbies anymore."

The 26th Bomber Squadron rotates to Al Udeid airbase. The pace of the airstrikes continues as the B-1s chase ISIS across both countries, but the number of weapons released by warplanes diminishes after Kobani, from 2,308 in December to 1,756 in January and 1,600 in February.

The liberation of Kobani is the clean win everyone wants. Yet this demonstration of air power actually masks the deeper problems plaguing the war against ISIS in both I Iraq and Syria. There are no ground troops organized enough to wrest huge swaths of land from ISIS. No airplane can open local government offices or man a checkpoint.

Even so, a self-congratulatory tone seeps into Pentagon media briefings. "They are changing," Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby says about ISIS. "They are largely in a defensive posture. They aren't taking new ground. They are more worried now about their lines of communications and supply routes."

Such optimism will not last.

March

The United States Air Force prides itself on its global reach. So does ISIS.

At the end of March, ISIS releases a batch of names of active duty military personnel and calls it a hit list. "We have decided to leak 100 addresses so that our brothers residing in America can deal with you," it reads. "Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe."

The list encompassed names from 15 different states, and Dyess personnel from the bomber wing are among them. "ISIS's hit list had a chilling effect," admits one senior officer in the bomber community. It's one reason pilots and others at the base won't give their names to the press. The group that released the list, the Islamic State Hacking Division, claims it broke into military databases to get the IDs. In reality, they seem to gleam information from public records and open source documents.

THE U.S. AIR FORCE HAUNTS ISIS' TERRITORY WITH WARPLANES. WITH A FEW KEYSTROKES, ISIS IS RETURNING THE FAVOR.

But the message triggers very real fear. Most military families don't consider them to be idle boasts. So-called lone wolf attacks by unaffiliated ISIS-inspired members have rattled the nation. FBI Director James Comey calls the ISIS support network in the United States a "chaotic spider web" that exists in all 50 states. (Dread will grow more palpable in May, when two gunmen open fire at a Muslim cartoon contest outside of Dallas.)

The U.S. Air Force haunts ISIS' territory with warplanes. With a few keystrokes, ISIS is returning the favor.

May

The government recaptures Tikrit and the Kurds resist ISIS attempts to retake the Mosul Dam. But Mosul itself remains under ISIS's thumb. Meanwhile, ISIS is eager to nest inside another city where air strikes are more complicated and shakedown money is easy to come by.

Ramadi is the provincial capital of the western Anbar province, 80 miles from Baghdad. On May 17, members of an Iraqi government checkpoint allow a bulldozer to roll steadily toward their position. Inside are suicide bombers, who have packed the bulldozer with explosives. The checkpoint is immolated, and a road into Ramadi is wide open.

The second wave launches. There are 30 vehicles inbound, cars and trucks laden with explosives and driven by suicidal zealots. Some trucks carry enough ordnance to take out a city block. They are essentially guided munitions and utterly devastating. The blasts unnerve the Iraqi troops, who flee the city as ISIS fighters surge inside. They quickly grab weapons caches, stocked with Russian and U.S. weapons, and reinforce the city.

The air campaign has not shattered ISIS in Iraq. It has not even bought the Iraqis the time they need to form a sustainable defense.

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Seth Mansch, 7th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief, stands ready to guide a B-1B Lancer from its parking spot.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Quay Drawdy/Released

June

When U.S. bomber crews talk about preventing civilian deaths, there is a mixture of pride in their precision and defensiveness against the idea that civilians can end up in harm's way. Some pilots, though, decry the U.S. targeting process as being too deliberative. One B-1 bomber pilot calls it "frustrating…you can watch them shooting artillery and still have to wait for authority."

ISIS constantly accuses coalition air strikes of killing civilians. These claims are nearly impossible to verify. While CENTCOM makes good use of its records and sensor footage to refute false claims, it's slow to investigate on-the-ground civilian deaths.

Tragedies are inevitable. On June 2, a U.S. warplane strikes a car bomb factory in the northern Iraqi town of Hawija. The Air Force will only call the ordnance "a fairly small weapon," meaning most likely a 500- or 1000-pound bomb. The bomb hits the facility where Humvees, tanks, and two fuel tankers are stored. The tankers are rigged to detonate in a suicide attack.

THE BOMB SETS OFF A CHAIN REACTION THAT IMMEDIATELY IMMOLATES AN AREA THE SIZE OF AN ENTIRE CITY BLOCK. AT LEAST 70 PEOPLE ARE KILLED, AND SOON REPORTS ARRIVE THAT DOZENS WERE CIVILIANS.

The bomb sets off a chain reaction that immolates an area the size of a city block. At least 70 people are killed, and soon reports say that dozens were civilians. "The secondary explosion, which was caused from a massive amount of Daesh [ISIS] high explosives, was very large," Air Force Lt. Gen. John Hesterman, commander of the coalition air forces, says during a press briefing from Qatar. "It destroyed much of that industrial area."

The Pentagon has launched a formal investigation, but blames ISIS for the casualties no matter what the outcome. "If there're unintended injuries, that responsibility rests squarely on Daesh," Hesterman says, even before the inquiry begins.

These things happen in a typical pattern: Locals report casualties. CENTCOM promises to investigate. But investigations from CENTOM rely mostly on overhead surveillance, which is often not effective. You can't get "a "preponderance of evidence" to start a formal investigation that way. This is how you get CENTCOM's official acknowledgement that only 2 non-combatants have died in airstrikes so far, while an outside investigative group claims at least 459.

The military evaluates blast effects before an airstrike is approved. Someone probably underestimated the amount of explosives inside the facility, and therefore predicted a smaller blast. It's a fatal miscalculation.

July

The yearlong U.S. air campaign against the Islamic State reaches its peak in July.

The month starts with a wave of deliberate airstrikes. Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the coalition against ISIS, announces them on Twitter at 7:45pm Eastern. "Tonight, July 4th, coalition forces launched the most sustained set of airstrikes to date against #ISIL ‪terrorists in ‪#Syria."‬‬‬‬ ‬‬‬‬It amounts to 38 airstrikes that night.‬‬

During the summer ISIS and Kurds wage a series of sieges and counterattacks along obscure villages like Mitras and Jabiriyah. These become vital strategic battlegrounds, subject to waves of infantry, armored vehicles, shoulder-fired missiles, and, of course, occasional airstrikes. Marginal cities like Sarrin become pivotal places where men fight and die. ISIS counterattacks emerge, coalition warplanes are alerted, the precision bombs drop, and YPG infantry push forward. It's ugly, slow work.

On July 17, targets in Syria include bridges and heavy equipment, like excavators. That same day, airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq hammer targets that are more fleeting—sniper nests, tanks, and a couple of boats. The Iraqi Kurds are making the most of their experience calling in airstrikes.

ISIS conducts operations in Iraq on July 17 as well. That day, a car bomb detonates at the marketplace in the city of Khan Bani Saad. It kills 130 people.

For all the death and destruction on the ground, the major prizes elude the coalition. Mosul, Ramadi, and Raqqa remain under ISIS control. Even Kobani is struck, as truckloads of ISIS fighters infiltrate the defensive lines and attack Kurdish troops there.

By the end of the month 2,829 weapons have been dropped on Syria and Iraq. This beats the record by more than 500. Eleven months since Inherent Resolve's campaign of "limited airstrikes" started, the campaign is still escalating.

Airmen from the 7th Maintenance Group perform maintenance on the fuselage of a B-1B Lancer.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Quay Drawdy/Released

August

On August 10, six F-16 Fighting Falcons land at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, touching two rear wheels first in a bloom of burned rubber.

The use of Turkish territory as a staging space for American airstrikes is a diplomatic breakthrough, but brings its own complications: Turkey, incensed by the Kurds' attempts to forge a homeland, also spends the summer bombing Kurds—the same Kurds who are fighting ISIS with U.S. help. Meanwhile, the Middle Eastern coalition nations are war-weary, face internal opposition, and str leery of a diplomatic nuclear deal with Iran. "Our chief objective is to keep the coalition together," says one Air Force general. "If it starts fragmenting, there will be a significant challenges keeping up the momentum on the battlefield."

Tactically, the Turkish base opens new opportunities—and risks. It gives American F-16s more flying time over Syria and Iraq, but is also means more U.S. aircraft will be flying in range of the Syrian air defenses—as one Air Force officer says, they will be flying through "areas that are within threat rings."

The move from Italy to Turkey happens in fits and starts. Paperwork specifying how the U.S. and coalition planes will work together—who to bomb, how to avoid midair collisions, how to keep from being mistaken for a Syrian warplane and shot down—is not ready when the planes and personnel arrive, and the agreement between the Turks and the coalition is not signed until August 24. After that, Turkish airplanes join the fight against ISIS.

More than 5,500 airstrikes have been launched by the coalition during the first year of Inherent Resolve. Nearly 20,000 weapons have been dropped. The Pentagon estimates 10,000 ISIS troops have been killed. And by some government estimates, ISIS has lost 25 percent of the terrain it gained.

But ISIS also survives, adapts, and deepens its roots. The Associated Press digs up some metrics that are not encouraging. One year after the U.S.-led air campaign began, U.S. intelligence estimates ISIS has 20,000 to 30,000 fighters. This is the same number the CIA estimated last year.

IT'S A CATCH-22. FORWARD ADVANCES ON THE GROUND DEPEND ON AIR STRIKES, BUT THE AIR STRIKES DEPEND ON GROUND TROOPS CHASING AWAY ISIS TROOPS SO THEY CAN BE FIRED AT.

Air strikes and ground troops have not removed ISIS from their capital cities. In Ramadi and Mosul, booby traps, destroyed bridges, and human shields have stymied the progress of Iraqi government troops. In Syria, ISIS clings to Raqqa and uses the urban terrain to blunt the impact of air assaults. "Daesh [ISIS] continues this tactic of hiding among civilian populations," says Air Force Lt. Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., Combined Force Air Component Commander. "However, as friendly ground forces advance into an area, Daesh members are flushed out into the open and once again susceptible to our targeting."

It's a Catch-22. Forward advances on the ground depend on air strikes. But to launch air strikes, you need ground troops to chase away ISIS troops so the planes can get a clean shot. "We can help them. We can enable them. We can support them," Brown says. "But we can't substitute for them, because we don't live here."

The air war continues; the refugees flee. The surge of millions of displaced people, heading for refugee camps or asylum in the Middle East and Europe, get increasingly desperate as the Syrian civil war and the battle against ISIS rage on.

On August 9, 2015 CENTCOM releases its usual litany of air strike results—buildings, frontline fighting positions, an anti-aircraft gun, mortar sites, and a battle tank. The last day of the first year of the war against ISIS sees 16 airstrikes.

At airbases across the Middle East, the warplanes and drones return and rearm. Intelligence officers pore over reports, mission planners plot flight routes and known threats. Airmen load bombs onto rotary racks. Pilots awaken and read their special orders, seeing what's new. ​

Year two of the war against ISIS begins.