Defense
AP
An EA-6B coming from Iraq lands on the flight deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014 in the Persian Gulf.
Interestingly, the name had been rejected for a multitude of reasons, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal two weeks ago.
"It's just kind of bleh," an unnamed military officer told WSJ. An unnamed senior official further said that the name was merely a placeholder that had never been considered to be the actual name for the overall operation.
The failure of the name of the operation was multi-faceted. For some officers, Inherent Resolve failed to evoke the sense of the Middle East. Other officers rejected the name on the grounds that it failed to capture the sense of the international coalition that had joined the US in operations.
Military operations have been named by the US military since at least World War II. The lack of a name for the operations in Syria and Iraq comes as a break with 70 years of military tradition.
The issue of a lack of a name for the operations has been raised since airstrikes first started in Iraq. In August, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that there was no "good reason" for the lack of an operational name.
Operation Inherent Resolve has targeted ISIS positions throughout Syria and Iraq for the past two months. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the US-led coalition carried out 18 strikes against the militants in the two countries.
The strikes focused on ISIS positions around the town of Kobane in Syria, while in Iraq the airstrikes hit ISIS militants by the critical Baiji oil refinery plant and the Haditha Dam.