walking on the face of the earth, it is a good thing. it is a good thing for the people of afghanistan, for our troops and our forces ats at th airfield. i ll leave tit there. can you discuss the airport? we ve seen a number of allies bring their evacuation operations to a close early. will the u.s. stay there through the 31st? we are going to complete this mission by the end of the month. we ve said that. nothing has changed about the timeline for us. we will do this as safe and orderly as possible. that includes being able to continue to evacuate right up until the end. what about the threats at the airport? can you describe what threats are still very real. they re very dynamic, and we are monitoring them literally in real time. as i said yesterday, we re taking all the means necessary to make sure we remain focused on that threat stream and doing what we can for force protection. a couple questions. first for you, john. have u.s. troops begun
unmanned aircraft come from? a drone, a predator drone, any information. over the horizon. and came over the horizon. and was there were there reports that the target was in a vehicle? is that accurate or was there any other damage to isis infrastructure? as i think the general said right at the top, we re going to be loathe to release a lot of tactical level bda detail here. we want as much flexibility as we can. i hope you can understand that we re not going to answer a lot of that detailed stuff right now. just to follow up, what do you think of the isis-k cells in kabul itself? clearly these attacks are coming from kabul, or the terrorists have gone underground, you can t target the city itself with air strikes right now. what i can tell you, we re watching the threat stream carefully, laura. clearly they have the ability
earth, that s a good thing. it s a good thing for the people of afghanistan and it s a good thing for our troops and forces at that airfield and i m going to leave it there. to follow up, can you discuss the level of threat right now at the airport? we ve seen a number of allies bring their evacuation operations to a close early. will the u.s. still stay there through the 31st? we are going to complete this mission by the end of the month. we ve said that. nothing has changed about the timeline for us. and we will do this in as safe and orderly way as possible, and that includes being able to continue to evacuate right up until the end. what about the threats at the airport? can you describe what the threats are still very real, they re very dynamic and we are monitoring them literally in real time, and as i said yesterday, we re taking all the means necessary to make sure we remain focused on that threat stream and doing what we can for protection. a couple questions. firs
or feeling about the impact of this strike on isis-k in afghanistan? have you degraded them in any fashion? can you explain that? if they re high profile, have you deterred, degraded? what is your conclusion about what the impact of this strike actually has been? they have two they have two high profile planners or one planner, one facilitator, there are no longer on their muster role. so they have lost some capability to plan and to conduct missions. barbara, make no mistake, nobody is writing this off and saying, well, we got them, so we don t have to worry about isis-k anymore. not the case. as i said earlier, the threat stream is still active, still dynamic, we re still laser
saying, well, we got them, so we don t have to worry about isis-k anymore. not the case. as i said earlier, the threat stream is still active, still dynamic. we re still laser focused on that and forced protection and we aren t thinking for a minute that what happened yesterday gets us in the clear. not a minute. but do we believe that we hit valid targets? bad guys who can do bad things and plan bad missions? absolutely and do we think that will have some impact on their ability going forward? absolutely. so the situation right now, the threat from isis-k in afghanistan still very active, being monitored, we re told, in realtime. that means literally minute by minute. a lot of concern about that threat around the airport. we are now just really counting down the hours, right. tuesday is the day the u.s. is finally supposed to be out of afghanistan. they are beginning the withdrawal of u.s. troops, and