LONDON – Missile strikes by British Reapers against Islamic State targets in Iraq are increasing in intensity, the Royal Air Force reported Tuesday.
Three Lockheed Martin Hellfire AGM-114 missiles were launched from two Reapers operating over Iraq on Nov. 13, the RAF said in a statement.
“On Thursday evening, Kurdish Peshmerga reported coming under fire from a dug-in machine-gun position. An RAF Reaper succeeded in locating the IS position, and attacked it with a Hellfire missile. The crew operating the Reaper then identified further IS positions, allowing another coalition aircraft to conduct an attack,” said the RAF.
The same Reaper crew later used another Hellfire against a roadside IS checkpoint.
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Elsewhere in Iraq, another Reaper struck a moving truck carrying militants.
Britain reported its first Reaper strike in Iraq on Nov. 10 after the government announced Oct. 16 it was deploying the remotely piloted vehicle for operations over Iraq.
Prior to the announcement of the latest strikes Tuesday, the Ministry of Defence gave Parliament some details of the scale of Reaper operations over Iraq.
“From Oct. 22 [to] Nov. 9, there had had been 22 RAF Reaper missions over Iraq in support of coalition operations against IS. In two cases, the aircraft was armed and there has been one weapon release,” the MoD said.
The British have yet to confirm the number of Reapers it has deployed to the region or where they are based.
Ten of the General Atomics-built machines had been in operation in Afghanistan, but have been drawn down in line with the British withdrawal of combat troops.
The RAF said Tornado strike jets have also been operating over Iraq.
A Tornado GR4 supported by a Voyager A330 inflight refueling aircraft had conducted a strike with an MBDA Brimstone missile near Mosul against an IS communications truck and later hit positions with Raytheon Paveway precision guided bombs.
Britain operates the Reaper and the Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft over Syria on situational awareness missions, but the RAF is not authorized to use weapons.
Email: achuter@defensenews.com.
