The US is waging cyberattacks against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, while its newly deployed commandos are carrying out secret missions on the ground, Pentagon leaders said on Monday, in the latest signs of expanding US activity.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said the cyberattacks, particularly in Syria, were designed to prevent the Islamic State from commanding its forces and Washington was looking to accelerate the cyberwar against the Sunni militant group.
“The methods we’re using are new. Some of them will be surprising,” Carter told a Pentagon news conference.
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the cyberattacks were helping lay the groundwork for an eventual offensive operation to recapture the city of Mosul in Iraq from the Islamic State.
Carter and Dunford, the Pentagon’s top civilian and uniformed officials, both suggested the attacks were aimed at overloading the militants’ networks. They declined to delve into specifics.
“We don’t want the enemy to know when, where and how we’re conducting cyberoperations. We don’t want them to have information that will allow them to adapt over time,” Dunford said.
He said that the Islamic State might not know why its computer networks were proving unreliable.
“They’re going to experience some friction that’s associated with us and some friction that’s just associated with the normal course of events in dealing in the information age. And frankly, we don’t want them to know the difference,” Dunford said.
The US in January said that a new, roughly 200-strong US continent of special operations forces was “in place” in Iraq, poised to carry out raids against the Islamic State and other secret missions, both in Iraq and in Syria.
Carter said that the so-called “expeditionary targeting force,” or ETF, was already operating on the ground.
“The ETF is in position; it is having an effect and operating, and I expect it to be a very effective part of our acceleration campaign,” he said, without elaborating.
Its deployment represents increased US military activity on the ground against the Islamic State, exposing American forces to greater risk.
The force follows another deployment last year of up to 50 US special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with US-backed forces battling the Islamic State.
The US military disclosed last week that those US forces helped opposition forces recapture the strategic Syrian town of al-Shadadi from the Islamic State.
The Pentagon said recapturing the town helped sever links between Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the two major power centers in the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.
More knowledge about the group’s operations is expected to be discovered, Carter said.
“As our partners take control of [al-]Shadadi, I believe we will learn a great deal more about ISIL’s criminal networks, its criminal enterprise and what it does to sustain them,” Carter said, using an acronym for the group.
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