RAF Typhoons Deploy Brimstone Capability For First Time

An RAF Typhoon takes on fuel during an Op Shader mission (Picture: MOD).

The RAF's Brimstone missile capability has been deployed from a Typhoon jet for the first time, in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.

The Brimstone was one of three weapons upgrades on the aircraft last month under ‘Project Centurion’.

A pair of Typhoons were patrolling the Euphrates valley on Tuesday where a boat being used by IS had been identified.

It was found by the Typhoons moored on the river bank and a Brimstone 2 missile was employed to deny the terrorists use of the craft.

The RAF also destroyed two IS strong-points, including a heavy machine-gun position, 11 days ago, using the Paveway IV guided bomb.

Trucks carrying men, women and children have been leaving the last IS-held pocket of territory in eastern Syria as part of an escorted convoy.

Some 300 IS militants, along with hundreds of civilians believed to be mostly their families, have been under siege for more than a week in the tent camp in Baghouz.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) surrounding the patch of land have been unable to carry out a final assault on it because of the presence of the civilians.

Recapturing Baghouz would mark an end to the territorial rule of the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate that once stretched across a third of both Syria and Iraq.

It would also allow US president Donald Trump to begin withdrawing American troops from northern Syria, as he has pledged to do, opening a new chapter in Syria's eight-year civil war.

Few believe, however, that ending the group's territorial rule will end the threat posed by an organisation that still stages and inspires attacks through sleeper cells in both Syria and Iraq.

The Trump administration, which abruptly announced in December that it was pulling out of Syria, said on Thursday that it will keep  200 US troops in the country for now.