Air strikes, small special forces groups, a coalition of local soldiers, agents and military advisers - all this suggests that the American army is trying not to face the enemy directly, eye to eye. For many years, their military was spoiled by PR and the short duration of the operations in which they had to participate.
Coalition stratum
The usual tactic of the Americans is to create an intermediate link between themselves and the enemy, a kind of airbag. In Syria, they formed such an additional layer of Kurdish people's self-defense units and fighters of the Syrian Free Army. This coalition was named the Democratic Forces of Syria. The Americans also use the Kurdish armed forces (peshmerga) as a safety material. The United States is at the forefront of a coalition that includes 10 more NATO countries.
PR
They often give loud and pretentious names to their operations in order to present themselves as heroes and saviors. For example, when invading the island of Haiti in 1994, they had such a noble intention as "Support for democracy." Bosnian Serbs were bombed in 1995 by their planes during Operation Force Deliberate. 1998 - "Fox in the Desert" and bombing attacks on Iraq. Then, however, the tradition of the US military command to give sonorous names to its operations was interrupted for 11 years. But they returned to it in 2011 during the invasion of Libya - “Odyssey. Dawn".
Promotional video:
They don't like to die
In Panama in 1989, about 26,000 soldiers took part in Operation Just Cause, 23 of them were killed and 330 were injured.
In second place in terms of losses is Operation Revival of Hope in Somalia. The result of two days of fighting with militants near Mogadishu was 18 killed and 84 wounded special forces, as well as one prisoner of war.
1999 - Operation Noble Anvil and the bombing of Yugoslavia. NATO forces lost two people killed. In early March 2002, the US fought its largest land battle in Afghanistan, code-named Anaconda. In half a month due to miscalculations of the command, eight people were killed, 80 were injured. Today, there is an American contingent in Afghanistan, consisting of about 9,000 soldiers, of which about 2,000 are taking part in hostilities against the Islamic State militants.
One American soldier killed
According to various sources, today there are from 300 to 500 soldiers of the US Armed Forces in Syria. But even this number, according to the American administration, is too large. The hysterical notes came after a soldier was blown up by an improvised explosive device near the city of Ain Issa in late November 2016. This was the first loss among personnel for the entire period of hostilities since October 2015. Two central US newspapers wrote about this, condolences appeared on the Pentagon's official website.
Betrayal
At the same time that an American soldier was mortally wounded, the Peshmerga fighters came under fire from militants in the village of Fazlia. The families of Kurdish soldiers were injured. Their comrades called American helicopters for two hours. But they didn't arrive. An attempt to pull the wounded out from under the shelling ended in failure. But on the other hand, an Apache helicopter was immediately sent to evacuate the only dead American.
In their defense, representatives of the Pentagon referred to a failure in the command system.
Spetsnaz ran as fast as they could
"Delta" was the name of the special forces squad, which landed in early July 2014 near the Syrian city of Raqqa. The main purpose of the operation is to search for hostages, among whom, as the special services assumed, was journalist James Foley. He disappeared in 2012. Despite the fact that two years have passed since the disappearance of the media representative, the representatives of the American command named this fact as the main reason for their secret mission.
The landing was carried out with the help of a "quiet" type helicopter equipped with an additional blade, which helps to land as quietly as possible. But these tricks didn't help. Militants of the "Islamic State" found the landing and began a massive shelling. The operation was not completed. Its duration is about 40 minutes. That is how long it took to capture Osama bin Laden.
However, the Americans did not abandon their basic principle - to act quickly, get away even faster. A similar method of conducting military operations was demonstrated at joint exercises on December 5, 2016 by paratroopers of the 173rd US Airborne Brigade and Slovenian soldiers who were trained to act together in Slovenia during rapid deployment.
The US Army is not capable of long-term conflicts
Air strikes are a favorite tactic.
The US Department of Defense posted on its official website on December 7, 2016 that the US and coalition military forces continued to attack terrorists in Syria and Iraq with bombers, fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles. They are based in Erbil and Qayyar. A U. S. Department of Defense official said they did not report the number or type of aircraft engaged in the strike, the number of weapons deployed in each of the strikes, or the number of individual weapons points aimed at targets. Ground artillery that participates in a counterstrike or in support of fire for maneuvering is not classified as a strike.
The armies give a "two"
Ideologues, propagandists, special forces, military advisers - a narrow circle - are in better combat readiness than the million-strong US army, which the generals have not allowed to fight for real for many years. And the same generals accuse the soldiers of low training. In early 2016, a scandal erupted. A number of generals - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States General Joseph Dunford (the highest-ranking officer in the military), Chief of Staff of the Army Mark Mill, retired General John Allen - reported the low combat readiness of the US military.
Look for a woman in uniform
US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James admitted in her speech to parliamentarians that the level of training of the troops is the weakest in history. Less than half of the US armed forces are ready for high-tech combat.