Well known fact: ISIS is lacking the aviation. Well known fact: AWACS is primarily air-control radar plane. Do you wonder what help can deliver AWACS in the war with ISIS? Me too. But one NATO commander thinks different. NATO leaders will approve the use of AWACS surveillance aircraft to assist the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State extremist group, the alliance’s secretary-general said Monday.
Jens Stoltenberg said he expects the alliance summit in Warsaw also to agree on a new role for NATO in the Central Mediterranean, where the European Union has deployed ships to halt human trafficking.
At a news conference at NATO headquarters, Stoltenberg outlined the ambitious agenda of the two-day summit, which opens Friday in the Polish capital. NATO officials have said the AWACS planes would fly in Turkish or international airspace, but be capable of peering electronically into areas of Syria and Iraq now in the hands of Islamic State to help the U.S.-led forces that are fighting the group.
Stoltenberg said NATO leaders this week will also agree to begin training and capacity-building measures for the Iraqi military inside Iraq, expanding an alliance program that has been training Iraqi officers in Jordan.
