Britain will extend air strikes by RAF Tornados against the Islamic State by an extra year, the UK defence secretary has said.
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“We want to ensure we maintain this crucial operational tempo and so we will extend the lifetime of Number 12 Squadron for a further year to March 2017, ” Fallon added. It is therefore our duty to ensure the UK continues to play its part to defeat this barbaric regime”.
The jets had been scheduled to be replaced with a squadron of Eurofighter Typhoons, but Prime Minister David Cameron last year extended their service to March 2016 after the jets performed their first sorties against IS forces.
The final two Tornado squadrons are due to exit service in 2019, by which time most of the RAF’s Typhoon multirole aircraft fleet should be cleared to carry a similar range of air-to-ground weapons.
ISIL terrorists pose a threat the security of Iraq, Syria, the wider region and to the streets of Britain. The move will help the RAF to stay in the fight despite a shortage of fighter-bombers.
For their current missions over Iraq, the Tornados carry Raytheon Paveway IV precision, guided bombs, MBDA Brimstone air-to-surface missiles, and are equipped with an internal Mauser BK-27 27 mm cannon.
The eight Tornados, based in Cyprus, began air strikes against ISIL positions last September and have carried out 30 percent of the coalition’s intelligence missions against the militants.
RAF head, Air Chief Marshal Andrew Pulford, stressed the need for fast jet precision strike and intelligence gathering “shows no sign of diminishing”.
The Guardian reports the comments of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who announced the change of policy.
Together with the RAF’s unmanned Reaper drones, also operating in the region, they have flown more than 1,100 combat missions over Iraq.
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In 2013, the House of Commons voted against military action in Syria and parliamentary authorisation has so far only been given to UK air strikes against Isis in neighbouring Iraq, but a freedom of information request by the campaign group Reprieve revealed that British pilots, embedded with coalition forces, had taken part in bombings of Isis targets in Syria.
