A senior USA defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the training would be directed to Syrian rebel leaders, as opposed to training entire infantry units – the previous goal.
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The U.S.is going to suspend its faltering Syrian rebel training program, US officials said Friday.
“I remain convinced that a lasting defeat of ISIL in Syria will depend in part on the success of local, motivated, and capable ground forces”, Carter said in a written statement.
Under the new approach, the USA would provide communications gear, for example, to enable established rebel groups to co-ordinate US airstrikes in support of their ground operation, the officials said.
From the beginning of its campaign against the radical group more than a year ago, the US military has said that airstrikes alone will not defeat the militants, who have ambitions of ruling the entire Middle East.
But, as President Barack Obama’s Syria strategy stumbles from one setback to the next, the suspension of the 0 million train and equip effort was an embarrassment.
According to federal officials, the Pentagon strategy to pull fighters out of Syria, teach them advanced skills and equip them to fight ISIS failed because numerous rebel groups were more focused on overthrowing Syria President Bashar al-Assad.
This post has been updated to reflect the fact that the USA has said it will not directly arm Kurdish forces.
The official declined to say how many leaders would be armed and trained, but noted the new effort would get under way “within days”.
But the more than $US500 million program was troubled from the start, with some of the first class of fewer than 60 fighters coming under attack from al Qaeda’s Syria wing, Nusra Front, in their battlefield debut.
Mr Carter also said there were indications that four Russian cruise missiles that crashed in Iran before reaching their targets in Syria had malfunctioned.
To the extent that the United States military provides air support to these militias, it may well come into direct conflict with Russian warplanes that are bombing them.
Washington says Russian air strikes in Syria are targeted primarily not at Islamic State but at other rebel groups, including those that have received US support.
The US has had success working, for example, with Syrian Kurds and Sunni Arab rebel groups in northern Syria.
The Obama administration’s announcement was also preceded by a letter sent to the White House, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency by a bipartisan group of Senate critics of the administration’s Syria policy calling for an end to the “rebel” training program.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a frequent critic of Obama’s Syria policy, said Friday that continuing to insist that rebels fight only against the Islamic State is a “fundamental flaw” of the revised US approach.
He did not, however, clarify which Syrian opposition groups would likely receive supplies.
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“I wasn’t satisfied with the early efforts in that regard, so we’re looking at different ways to achieve basically the same kind of strategic objectives”, Carter said.
