Civilians ride a pickup truck as smoke billows following Turkish bombardment in the northeastern town of Ras al-Ain in Syria's Hasakeh province along the Turkish border on Oct. 9, 2019.According to two U.S. officials there is no military coordination taking place with Turkey. The U.S. will defend its ground troops, if attacked, but there is no intent to shoot down Turkish military aircraft because that would presume Turkey is attacking U.S. targets.
It's unclear how deep into Syria the Turks are planning to go, but a U.S. official said there are a variety of plans for a possible, full U.S. military withdrawal from northeast Syria, should that become necessary.
According to a third U.S. official, there is active planning between the U.S., the coalition and Iraqi partners for how to respond to the Turkish military operation inside Syria, should it impact Iraq's security.
They are actively monitoring refugee camps and ISIS prisons inside of Syria, should any become insecure. Iraqi border guard forces are also on alert, but Iraqi security forces are not readying for combat, said the official.
What comes next?
It is unclear how much the SDF's fighters will be able to hold back a Turkish incursion. The SDF consists of 60,000 Syrian Kurd and Arab fighters who were able to defeat ISIS with the help of coalition airstrikes and U.S. military equipment.
But they will now be facing a Turkish military that -- at 640,000 -- is NATO's second-largest conventional force, equipped with hundreds of pieces of modern artillery, tanks and aircraft.
(MORE: 'They abandoned us': Commanding general of US-allied Kurdish forces rails against US plans to pull back from Syria) Earlier this week, Gen. Mazloum Ebdi, the SDF's commanding general, told ABC News that he expected Turkey to launch a large-scale operation.
But he also expected that it would be a long, drawn-out battle because he expected all of his fighters to offer a stiff resistance to the Turkish incursion. And that would include the Kurdish guards working at the prisons that are holding the more than 12,000 ISIS fighters who were captured on the battlefield.
They "are going to head to the border area to defend their families" against a potential Turkish assault, Ebdi told ABC News.
"This lack in security, of course, is going to jeopardize the calm in the prisons," he said.
Kaynak:Abcnews