"US forces are currently located on the outskirts of Mosul. They will remain behind the front line with Iraqis in the lead. " This is what the Pentagon officially communicates.
There has always been little doubt about the presence of US special forces in Mosul, but the Pentagon's statements are politically correct. The rules of engagement for US forces do not include the first line, but exclusive consulting tasks. However, acting against the front does not prevent them from defending themselves if they are attacked.
The Pentagon reiterates the exclusive role of supporting Iraqis. US special forces will not act in concert with Shiite troops supported by Iranians. Although twenty have been deployed Apache, the Pentagon denies their use, at least in the very early stages of the conflict.
Mosul, Iraq's second city, should be defended by five thousand militiamen of the Islamic state.
The IED threat
That of Mosul will be a long and bloody battle. The first (Iraqi) estimates, all too optimistic, speak of the month of December as a useful deadline for liberation. Americans are much more cautious when they expect a few more months of operations. The point is that an urban warfare will break out in Mosul: every neighborhood, house and well will have to be secured first by the terrorists and then by the IED threat (Improvised Explosive Device, improvised explosive device, ed). It is only a very early stage, because the constant threat will remain precisely that represented by improvised explosive devices (some combined with chemicals), by the hundreds scattered around the city in recent months.
To try to minimize losses, the Pentagon has provided several types of asset to Iraqi troops, such as Horizon, which allows users to track IED information on an interactive map. Another mapping application, BOOM or Blast Origin Overpressure Modeler, is able to provide the detonation radius of a bomb on an image processed by Google Maps. BOOM provides an explosion model according to various parameters.
Also operational Real Time Regional Gateway, a sort of search engine capable of linking all available information from the planet's intelligence networks to a single entered data. The Real Time Regional Gateway combines the relevant information by sharing it on the network.
(photo: US Army)
