Defense
Thomson Reuters
Marine Corps General Dunford testifies during the Senate Armed Services committee nomination hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington
"If you want to talk about lessons learned, I'll tell you, I'm probably relearning lessons over the last couple of years, and No. 1 is intelligence," Gen. Joseph Dunford said in response to a question from Business Insider during an event at the Center for Strategic and
"If you want to know why our operation's quantifiably more effective today than they were a year and a half ago, it's because our intelligence is getting much better," Dunford continued.
Dunford had stressed in recent congressional testimony that with nearly 100 nations and approximately 30,000 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, the US military needed more cooperation from other nations' intelligence operations.
"I won't go into great detail right now, but in terms of how you fully harness the intelligence community, getting the right people in the right places to do target development - has been something that's frustrating to me," Dunford said Tuesday.
"I think we've made some improvements that result in the progress that we have made," he added.
Dunford's comments came days after the Pentagon announced the US-led coalition, Operation Inherent Resolve, killed Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, the top financier for ISIS (aka Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh). It was a sign of the progress to which Dunford referred.
"We're systematically eliminating ISIL's cabinet," US
CJTF OIR/Alex Lockie/Business Insider
As of March 15, the US-led coalition has conducted a total of 10,962 strikes throughout the region, with 7,336 strikes in Iraq and 3,626 strikes being conducted in Syria.
The Department of Defense puts the total cost of anti-ISIS operations at $6.5 billion as of February 29, 2016. And the average daily cost stands at about $11.4 million for 571 days of operations.