UK’s ISIS campaign gets a name

The United Kingdom’s airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria started just last week, but it already has a name: Operation Shader. 

In fact, the campaign had a name even before it dropped its first bomb, according to a British defense blog Think Defence, which shows pictures and video of British airmen preparing for the operation before it started on Sept. 30. 

{mosads}A British Embassy spokeswoman would not confirm Operation Shader was the air campaign’s official name, despite multiple British news reports citing the name. 

The name appears to have been christened as far back as Aug. 18, when the U.K. began helping with humanitarian air drops for stranded Iraqi refugees, but has since widened to include airstrikes it is now conducting against ISIS. 

The Pentagon has not yet given the U.S. operation a name, and there does not appear to be an official name for Royal Australian Air Force or French Air Force operations in Iraq either. 

The Pentagon’s lack of a name for its current operations in Iraq has prompted questions from Pentagon reporters and sparked several informal naming contests. 

Pentagon officials say there is an effort underway to name the U.S. operations in Iraq, which include an air campaign of hundreds of strikes that began in August and the deployment of more than 1,600 troops that began in June. 

“This is an unnamed operation,” a U.S. Central Command spokesman said.