We'll hold 'em, you hit 'em

I've said for some time that the Saudis should be directly involved in the mess they helped create with Daesh in Syria/Iraq, and their planes are a good start. So far there has been no official commitment to sending the Royal Saudi Army in to get dirty, but it's apparently not completely off the table. They certainly have the resources to make an impact regionally, and I imagine getting some more combat experience for their troops would be a plan also.

The concern comes from various quarters about the incursion of Saudi troops to hit Daesh and Assad (as they would want to) on the basis of Iran and the Shia in general getting bent out of shape. If there was in fact some June 1914-syle delicate balance of power in the region this would have some merit, but as things stand the Saudis don't give a flying about Iran as long as America has the House of Saud's back, nor are "we" too fussed about keeping Tehran happy.

The feared Sunni-Shia "civil war" is already happening so the Saudis doing the dirty work of removing Assad would cut the Gordian knot of disturbing the power balance which most seem to fear messing with. Reports also have airstrikes on al-Nusra, another slightly-less bloodthirsty Salafist outfit and no more a friend to us than Daesh is.

There is always the problem of the power vacuum, and hitting all of the players might seem a good idea. The only problem I see with hitting Assad is that he represents the only remaining protection (besides the Kurdish areas) for religious minorities in Syria. The Alawi sect that the Assads hail from is adjudged heretical by "proper" Muslims and they won't last a week if the Baath party goes down completely, likewise the remaining Christians and garden-variety Shia.

In the meantime the squeeze is being put on the money-making and administrative soft underbelly of Daesh, which has them scrambling to adjust. Strikes on Daesh forces besieging Kurdish etc. villages in Syria have taken some pressure off, and a further degrading of the materiel Daesh scored from the Iraqi and Syrian armies will degrade their advantage. The tanks, APCs and artillery they took from Mosul are hard to hide and useless to you if you do manage it. That is a lesson the Germans on the Normandy front in WW2 learned the hard way, and that was without smart bombs.

A random though along that track; A-10s have been deployed to theatre, but what is ideal for killing vehicles and even easier to base are AH-64D (or better) Apaches, especially "Longbow" ones. Base a few of those close behind the friendly lines and you'll be able to break up any vehicular attack in minutes.

That's tactics, but also public relations. Already the US is making some more friends as it saves them from Daesh, and confidence that the lines will hold will take the humanitarian pressure off as people stay put or return to their homes. Putting hardware where the locals can see it, making them feel like it's "theirs" has an intangible but very real morale effect.

I'm not holding my breath to see Saudi M1A2s sweeping to Damascus, but you never know. Latest I've heard of the Iraqi Army is that it's as useless as it was in Mosul so SOMEBODY has to pick up the slack.