Combat aircraft

helicopters  ew daily missions against

the IS positions, allowing the Syrian

ground troops to edge forward to within

a few miles of Deir ez-Zor.

Video clips appeared online showing

devastating low-level attacks by the L-39s

and Su-25s as the battle reached a climax

in the  rst week of September. To protect

the  anks of the advance, a supporting

force of Syrian troops was sent to mop

up a large pocket of IS  ghters in the

mountainous center of Syria. Russian Mi-

28s were  lmed making repeated strikes

against jihadi-held villages, but one was

lost during one of these sweeps in the

 rst week of October after a reported

technical fault.

The race for oil

After Syrian troops punched through

IS lines to Deir ez-Zor, they turned their

attention to pushing southward to secure

a series of valuable oil elds between the

city and the Iraqi border. The Kurdish

Raqqa has become

the center of coalition

operations of late — this is

a section of F/A-18Ds from

VMFA(AW)-224 ‘Bengals’.

Crown Copyright/

Cpl Graham Taylor

A member of the Iraqi Security Forces

establishes a security perimeter

around a US Army HH-60M Black

Hawk helicopter from the 2-149th

General Support Aviation Battalion,

Task Force Rough Riders. US Army/

Capt Stephen James

A Su-34 of the

Russian Special

Purpose Aviation

Brigade at

Khmeimim, Syria.

Russian MoD

http://www.combataircraft.net January 2018

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