American forces hammered ISIS positions across Syria with 10 strikes against more than 30 targets between Feb. 3 and 12, doubling the pace of the previous round of operations as the U.S. military tightens the vise on what remains of the terrorist network.

The United States Central Command announced Saturday that the strikes — carried out by unmanned aircraft — hit ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage areas. The campaign, dubbed Operation Hawkeye, has now killed or captured more than 50 ISIS fighters and destroyed over 100 pieces of ISIS infrastructure in the last two months alone.

CENTCOM said the strikes were conducted to:

"Sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network."

Relentless is doing real work in that sentence. And the numbers back it up.

The Catalyst: An Ambush That Demanded a Response

According to the Daily Caller, operation Hawkeye launched in December after an ISIS ambush on Dec. 13 took the lives of two American servicemembers and an interpreter during a joint operation with Syrian forces. Three people dead — and the U.S. military's answer has been systematic, escalating, and sustained.

The prior round of strikes, between Jan. 27 and Feb. 2, targeted an ISIS communication site, weapons storage facilities, and what CENTCOM described as a "critical logistics node." The most recent wave doubled that effort. The trajectory is clear: the pressure isn't easing. It's compounding.

This is what a kinetic response looks like when it's backed by strategic patience. Not a single retaliatory salvo designed for headlines, but a rolling campaign that degrades the enemy's ability to operate — its communications, its weapons caches, its logistics. You don't destroy over 100 pieces of infrastructure in two months by accident. You do it by hunting.

Al-Tanf Changes Hands

In a separate but significant development, the Syrian Defense Ministry announced that government armed forces assumed control over the Al-Tanf base — a facility at the Syrian-Iraqi border, roughly 270 km northeast of Damascus, that the U.S. operated for years to counter terrorism in the region.

The transition, reported by NBC News, marks a shift in the physical footprint of American counter-terrorism operations in Syria. But the strikes themselves make one thing unmistakable: withdrawing from a base is not the same as withdrawing from the fight. The U.S. doesn't need a fixed installation at Al-Tanf to put warheads on ISIS foreheads from unmanned platforms.

The base's handover will inevitably generate commentary about American "retreat." That framing misreads what's actually happening. The strike tempo isn't declining — it's accelerating. Operation Hawkeye didn't pause because a base changed hands. It doubled its output.

What the Numbers Tell You

Consider what CENTCOM has accomplished since December:

• More than 50 ISIS fighters killed or captured
• Over 100 pieces of ISIS infrastructure destroyed
• Strike volume doubles from one operational period to the next
• Targets spanning communications, logistics, weapons storage, and personnel

ISIS has been described as "defeated" so many times over the past decade that the word has lost its meaning. What the group actually is — and has been for years — is degraded, dispersed, and opportunistic. It exploits security vacuums. It hits soft targets. It waits. The Dec. 13 ambush was a reminder that "remnants" can still kill Americans.

The correct response to that reality isn't to declare victory or to hand-wring about endless wars. It's to make the operating environment so hostile that the remnants can't reconstitute. That's what sustained pressure means. Not a single strike. Not a press conference. A campaign that grinds down capacity week after week.

The Broader Picture

Syria remains one of the most complicated theaters on earth — a patchwork of competing interests where the U.S., Syrian government forces, and various armed groups operate in overlapping spaces. The Al-Tanf handover adds another variable. But the core American interest hasn't changed: ISIS cannot be allowed to rebuild.

The foreign policy establishment loves to debate Syria in abstractions — spheres of influence, diplomatic leverage, regional architecture. Operation Hawkeye operates in concrete terms. Weapons storage areas, destroyed. Logistics nodes, eliminated. Fighters, killed or in custody. The abstractions can wait. The Apaches and the drones don't.

Two Americans and an interpreter died on Dec. 13. The military's answer has been 10 strikes, 30-plus targets, 50-plus enemies neutralized, and 100-plus pieces of infrastructure reduced to rubble — and the pace is still climbing.

That's not a headline. That's a doctrine.