The United Kingdom's defence minister Michael Fallon announced on 4 August 2015 that the country would maintain its current Tornado bomber-force in Cyprus for an extra year, through to March 2017. The planes of number-12 squadron are deployed to RAF Akrotiri to support the United States-led air war against Islamic State. This decision means that Britain will continue its involvement in the wars across the Middle East and south-west Asia into a seventeenth year.
Fallon said little about the other main UK contribution to the air war, the armed Reaper drones, and nothing at all about the use of special forces either in Iraq or Syria. As far as the air war is concerned, the shadowy use of drones is part of a continuing pattern (even if, at times, they have conducted most of the airstrikes). For their part the Tornadoes and Reapers have flown over 1,100 combat-flights since November 2014, and have carried out over 250 attacks. The government is very cautious in expressing any view on casualties, but unofficial reports suggest at least 240 Islamic State supporters have been killed by the British forces.
The UK component makes up barely 5% of the coalition attacks, the overwhelming majority of which are by the US. That is now getting a substantial boost from the Turkish government’s decision to allow the US to use the large airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey, which has numerous aircraft shelters barely 150 km from the Syrian border as the drone flies. The Pentagon has already announced that armed-drone flights have started from Incirlik, and that US personnel numbers will increase rapidly.
