ISIS

A Virginia man who was fighting with the Islamic State group in northern Iraq was detained by Kurdish military forces Monday while apparently trying to flee to Turkey, according to media reports. The Kurdish news agency Rudaw, citing a local commander, said Muhammad Jamal Amin is an American citizen with a Palestinian father and Iraqi mother from Mosul. Rudaw said […]

Editor’s Note: Russia has announced its withdrawal from Syria. Yes, you read that correctly–Russia is pulling out of Syria. A very, very curious turn of events, wouldn’t you say? According to the Russian government, its goal has been achieved and Daesh has been stopped. I’m not sure what metrics they are basing that assessment on, […]

Martin Banni is the last of his family in Iraq. The 25-year-old Christian fled his village of Keremles when the so-called Islamic State invaded the Nineveh Plains in the summer of 2014. Today he lives in a camp in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, while the rest of his family lives in San […]

 The United Nations mediator, Staffan de Mistura, was satisfied enough with the results to convene a new round of indirect peace talks starting Monday, which opposition groups have agreed to attend. That is the day before the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which morphed into civil war and then […]

A controversial group in western India called Hindu Swabhiman Sangh is training children from age nine to adulthood to fight ISIS.

Editor’s Note: We’ve spoken of Gaddafi’s SAMs before, and the fantastic work performed by Wild Weasels to defeat them during Operation Odyssey Dawn and Operation Unified Protector. Not surprisingly, since Qaddafi’s execution at the hands of rebels, Libya has fallen into a state of utter lawlessness. Daesh is now the strong hand stirring the pot, […]

Locked inside a room where the only furniture was a bed, the 16-year-old learned to fear the sunset, because nightfall started the countdown to her next rape. During the year she was held by the Islamic State, she spent her days dreading the smell of the ISIS fighter’s breath, the disgusting sounds he made and the pain […]

Editor’s Note: The North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco was developed back in the 1960s specifically for counter-insurgency (COIN) operations, and another one of its primary missions was flying Forward Air Control-Airborne (FAC-A). The airplane can carry up to three tons of external munitions and is able to stay on station for over three hours. A […]

Editor’s Note: FighterSweep Fans, I believe we have the best, most talented, credible team of contributors in aviation journalism. The majority of our writers are pilots, and most of those are either currently or former military aviators. Those who aren’t pilots work in the aviation industry in some capacity or other. So for all of […]

Cyberwar threatens to cause havoc worldwide, but it could be good for the U.S. economy and a handful of publicly listed companies. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, as part of a $582.7 billion budget request to fund his department through 2017, recently said nearly $7 billion of that will be allocated toward improving the military’s ability to develop and deploy […]

Last month, an array of American tech companies, media organizations, PR firms, and other groups met with government officials behind closed doors at the Justice Department. They had come to talk about ISIS propaganda online. In what the government dubbed the “Madison Valleywood Project,” the participants were briefed by White House officials before huddling for hours to come up […]

Thousands of Islamic State fighters and 160 of its leaders were killed in U.S. and allied military operations in Syria and Iraq over the past 18 months, the commander of the U.S. Central Command told Congress on Tuesday. But the Islamist terror group has expanded to several regional states as U.S. forces enter a new […]