Islamic State Air Farce

"People saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back."
Rami Abdurrahman, director, Observatory for Human Rights, Britain

"The possession of these aircrafts will have a minimal military impact - however, they will provide a significant psychological boost to Islamic State, especially if ISIS can find a way to periodically employ them against military or civilian targets."
Richard Brennan, Iraq expert, RAND Corporation

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims Isis militants are learning to fly captured fighter jets

"We’re not aware of ISIS conducting any flight operations in Syria or elsewhere."
"We continue to keep a close eye on ISIS activity in Syria and Iraq and will continue to conduct strikes against their equipment, facilities, fighters and centres of gravity, wherever they may be."
Colonel Patrick Ryder, U.S. Central Command

ISIS test-flying warplanes in Syria? Another exploit for the Islamist jihadis? They've taken possession of all manner of armoured vehicles, advanced weaponry from the fleeing Iraqi military, why not from airbases overrun in Syria? The Jarrah air base in Syria was captured first by al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, the Nusra Front in 2013. And then the base became the conquested concern of ISIS in 2014.

Now, Mr. Abdurrahman with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights insists that former Iraqi officers who had served under Saddam Hussein as pilots are on the scene, teaching their Sunni terrorist allies the art of flying MiG fighter jets. The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham never had it so good. Everyone and everything coming their way. Volunteers from Europe and North America to make up the deficit of those killed in U.S. and allied air strikes, cash donations flooding in....

General Lloyd Austin, top American commander for the Middle East, denies that intelligence has raised the issue. No operational reports of ISIS flying jets have been reported. Nor is there any information to share about Iraqi pilots defecting to ISIS. On the other hand, an Iraqi intelligence official counters that his government is aware of a number of ex-Iraqi military officers travelling to Syria to train ISIS terrorists.

Isis fighters wave the group's flag from a damaged captured fighter jet in Syria
 
He was evidently aware that ISIS had acquired warplanes from Al-Tabaqa air base in Syria. But not, he hastened to add, when they took over from the Iraqi military in Mosul. Not to worry. Syria and Iraq militaries both are in possession of man-portable-air-defence-systems. To, you know, shoot down the ISIS flights should they be presenting themselves as targets. Neither military has yet shown themselves capable of prevailing in direct conflict with the ISIS upstarts, but they can handle jets flown by them.

The Observatory spokesman claims the planes have been witnessed flying over the Jarrah air base in the eastern countryside of Syria's Aleppo province. They were identified to be MiG-21 and MiG-23s flying at a low altitude, "Apparently to avoid being detected by Syrian military radar in the area". Imagine, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham capable of suppressing their penchant for ululating victory, and taking cautionary steps to avoid detection, instead. Amazing.

The flights, said Mr. Abdurrahman, represented an ISIS "moral victory", a surprising statement which doesn't appear to have been elaborated upon. "The jets could not fly much further without being knocked down", he said, by the U.S.-led coalition busy conducting air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Terrorist websites had posted photographs of ISIS fighters with the warplanes, but what was left to conjecture was whether the planes were in operational condition.

They're on a roll. They've taken possession of looted artillery, of chemical weaponry, and tracked armoured vehicles and a whole expansively vast lootbag of advanced weaponry. Now they can (maybe) boast an air fleet, as befits a state, even an Islamic State. What's next?