Army commanders have made it clear to David Cameron in the wake of the Paris terror attacks that decisive action could rid the world of the evil ISIS terrorists.
Military commanders are also urging greater use of British officers to train local Kurdish fighters and have a firmer hand in tactics.
It is part of a raft of advice being given to David Cameron by both military and foreign office mandarins as he prepares for next week’s “full spectrum” report of British options to rid the world of the evil death cult.
It comes as a Sunday Express online poll of 30,000 people revealed that 82 per cent supported tougher military action in Syria, with 25 per cent advocating RAF air strikes and more than one in two, 56 per cent, favouring Britain’s military engaged in a full blown ground war to smash the so-called ISIS.
IS’ land grabs in Iraq and Syria has given its fighting forces an arsenal which includes Russian-made T-62 and T-55 main battle tanks, artillery and even helicopter gunships.
However, a 2003-style operation of coalition troops, consisting of armour, infantry and air support working together, would cut through this in a fortnight.
The Government has little appetite to commit British forces in a ground offensive, with sources confirming: “the preference is to help train and support local forces who have had some recent success in retaking Sinjar.”
But last night it emerged senior generals are preparing for the possibility.
“Discussions are now under way here towards the deployment of troops,” said one UN security expert last night, adding that it would have been easier if action had been taken 15 months ago.
Last night General Lord Dannatt, the former head of British Army, said the war against ISIS would not be won by air power alone, and that more training of local Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Jordanian troops and even Syrian refugees would have to be tried before doing the “unthinkable”.
“What we should be doing is to send out big training teams” he said.
“The unthinkable, if we still haven’t succeeded, is to use coalition combat troops” he added.
However, he added: “If I was CGS today, I would be looking to see that Defence Secretary Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister agree to deploy effective training. We’d probably have to give that process between four and six months.
“But the longer we don’t take sufficient action, the greater the problem becomes, and the wider the ISIS insurgency will become. Time is not on our side.
“I’d be telling the PM that this might not work, and we are going to start preparing combat troops, because I would not deploy them until they’ve had three or four months work up period.”
He said that any ground offensive would have to be carried out “stage by stage”.
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