RAF chief says battle against Islamic State must continue to stop terror group 'bouncing back'
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier says the UK faces a "spectrum" of threats and IS could "morph into something different".
Sunday 4 March 2018 12:28, UK
The battle against Islamic State must continue if the terror group is to be stopped from "bouncing back", the head of the RAF has warned.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier said that though the jihadis have lost 98% of the territory they once held in Syria, the RAF's mission will not be scaled back in the foreseeable future.
More than 1,700 strikes as well as surveillance and reconnaissance missions have been carried out by RAF jets alongside Reaper drones.
Air Chief Marshal Hillier said: "The key thing here is, as we have discovered in previous conflicts, is that if we let up, then they will come bouncing back, and we will have to re-engage.
"We will have to keep going with this one until the job is done. When people say to me 'when is that going to be?' Well, when it is done."
IS brought terror and destruction across huge swathes of Syria in 2014, seizing Raqqa and spreading into northern and western Iraq to capture Mosul before advancing to the edges of Baghdad.
A US-led 74-member global coalition has been battling the extremists, liberating Mosul in July and Raqqa in October.
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But Air Chief Marshal Hillier fears that even though the spread of the group has been "stopped and rolled back", the jihadis could "morph into something different".
He said: "They are starting to look more like an insurgent terrorist organisation who are trying within that region and more widely across the world to undermine us by other means.
"That starts to feel more like what we experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq before.
"What it indicates is that you need to have the understanding, the capability to find these people and you need to have the ability to deal with them as necessary when you do find them.
"I don't see any drawdown as a result of that, and it is not because I cannot see into the future.
"I simply look at the RAF as being continually involved in these sorts of operations for nearly three decades now - that tells us something about what the world is like.
"I anticipate that it is going to keep looking like that, different pressures but more likely to be on reconnaissance than on the strike capability, but we will still need to have both of them there throughout."
Air Chief Marshal Hillier said there was a "spectrum" of threats facing Britain, when asked what the biggest security issues facing the country are.
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He said: "At one end of the spectrum we have the need to counter violent extremist organisations - Daesh (IS) are probably one of the most obvious manifestations of that," he said.
"The Royal Air Force remains hugely committed in that effort - there has been no diminution of that effort over the last few months.
"So we have been extraordinarily successful in dealing with that. More to do though, because it will morph into something different.
"If I look at the other end of the spectrum, then there are the state based threats, and Russia is becoming increasingly assertive, challenging international norms, putting pressure on us."