With much attention focused of late on the travails of Ukraine and its European allies with the US Trump Administration, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has sought to remind the world that its operations against the Islamic State/Daesh in Iraq and Syria are continuing, the most recent example of this being the targeting of a known Daesh operative by a Royal Air Force (RAF) MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
“On Tuesday 25 February a remotely piloted Reaper aircraft tracked a known Daesh terrorist in the Aleppo Governate of northwest Syria,” the MoD stated in a 6 March 2025 press release. “The Reaper’s crew kept a close watch on the individual. When he was seen alone on foot, and could be struck with minimal risk to any civilians, they successfully targeted the terrorist using the Reaper’s Hellfire missile system,” the MoD stated.
The MoD noted that RAF aircraft “continue to conduct armed reconnaissance patrols over Syria to counter Daesh terrorism threats, ready to strike such targets should they be identified”.
MoD information lists two previous operations throughout 2024. On 21 April 2024 a pair of RAF Typhoon FGR4 fighters launched a Paveway IV precision-guided bomb to destroy a rocket launcher being employed against coalition forces in northwest Iraq. On 18 June 2024, meanwhile, an RAF Reaper tracked and “conducted a successful strike” with a Hellfire missile on a known Daesh terrorist moving on foot in an area of the Syrian desert.
The MoD lists just one strike against Daesh in 2023, when on 2 May of that year RAF Typhoons attacked a Daesh group basing itself at two remote locations in the Hamrin mountains of northeastern Iraq, employing “seven Paveway IV guided bombs in successful precision strikes”.
In 2022 there were three strikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria: on 14 June, when an RAF Reaper destroyed a group of Daesh terrorists attempting to re-establish a presence to the north of Tikrit in Iraq; on 10 October, when a Reaper engaged a Daesh terrorist on a motorcycle in northern Syria; and on 20 December, when a Reaper destroyed a Daesh-occupied building near Al Bab in northern Syria.
There were 13 RAF airstrikes against Daesh in 2021, 12 in 2020 and three in 2019.
The first US Trump Administration declared Daesh and its self-declared caliphate defeated in December 2018. Daesh leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had originally announced the formation of the caliphate, which stretched from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in Iraq, on 29 June 2014, after which a US-led coalition began an offensive against Daesh from August 2014.
