{"id":70736,"date":"2017-03-09T09:58:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T14:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=70736"},"modified":"2017-03-09T09:10:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T14:10:48","slug":"marines-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70736","title":{"rendered":"Marines in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Military.com <\/a>reports that members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit have set up shop in Syria as US-backed forces prepare to attack ISIS in the Islamic State’s capital city, Raqqa.<\/p>\n

A defense official would not speak to the size of the detachment deployed to Syria, but said it included elements of multiple artillery batteries, as well as support personnel, including infantry Marines. It’s the first time American artillery support capability has been on the ground in Syria since the fight against the Islamic State began in 2014.<\/p>\n

The Marines are equipped with M777 155mm howitzers, which can fire high-explosive rounds, effective at a range of more than 14 miles, or GPS-guided Excalibur rounds, which have an effective radius of up to 25 miles. They are there to provide capabilities for the commanders of the joint task force leading the ISIS fight and to support the push into Raqqa, the official said.<\/p>\n

This is the second time in just over a year that a Marine artillery detachment has been deployed from a MEU in support of the ground fight against ISIS militants. In March 2016, more than 100 Marines departed the 26th MEU to establish Fire Base Bell, an artillery position in northern Iraq set up to provide support as ground troops prosecuted an assault on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The news follows the eye witness reports <\/a>of Army Stryker vehicles spotted in Syria over the past weekend.<\/p>\n

U.S. Stryker combat vehicles have been spotted in northeastern Syria, where special operations troops have been on the move to head off potential clashes among a number of rival forces converging on the flashpoint town of Manbij.<\/p>\n

Photos of the eight-wheeled Strykers and up-armored Humvees flying U.S. flags were posted on social media over the weekend after the U.S. regional command confirmed that elements of the 500 mostly Special Forces troops in northeastern Syria had moved toward Manbij.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Military.com reports that members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit have set up shop in Syria … Marines in Syria<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}