US to shift its military assets to Syria

— The US military will have to shift surveillance aircraft from other regions and increase the number of intelligence analysts to coordinate attacks with Russia under the Syria cease-fire deal partly in order to target militants the US has largely spared, senior officials say.

Senior defence and military officials said that they are sorting out how the US-Russia military partnership will take shape and how that will change where US equipment and people will be deployed. They said, however, that they will need to take assets from other parts of the world, because US military leaders don’t want to erode the current US-led coalition campaign against the terrorist Daesh group in Iraq and Syria.

More military planners and targeting experts will be needed to identify and approve airstrikes against the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Fatah Al Sham. The US has rarely bombed the group, previously known as the Nusra Front, and the targeting is trickier because the militants are often intermingled with other US-backed Syrian rebels.

Making matters more complicated are US military concerns about Russian targeting. Unlike the US, which uses precisionguided munitions, Moscow has predominantly used so-called dumb bombs in its airstrikes over Syria.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged the scepticism.

“I don’t think that anyone in the US government is necessarily taking at face value Russia’s or certainly not the Syrian regime’s commitment to this arrangement,” Toner said. “I also think some of the comments from the Department of Defence were just about speaking to the fact that there’s logistical challenges of setting up the JIC (joint center) and coordinating these airstrikes and that’s going to require additional effort and additional time.” —

I don’t think that anyone in the US government is necessarily taking at face value russia’s or certainly not the Syrian regime’s commitment to this arrangement Mark Toner, State Dept. spokesman