Former military intelligence officer Michael Pregent said that "tens of thousands" of troops will be needed to effectively combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) under the current structure of the U.S.-led coalition in an interview with Fox News host Shepard Smith.
Pregent said that the roughly 5,000 Free Syrian Army members expected to train in Saudi Arabia will serve as the "command and control" force, under which the coalition "can roll tens of thousands up underneath."
"As we start to build a coalition, everybody thinks we want them to provide military forces or sorties to go after ISIS targets," Pregent said. "What we really need are partners that can help us with intelligence, share intelligence, curb foreign fighter flow into Syria and Iraq, and also provide the effort to help us defeat ISIS's ability to raise money and earn money on a daily basis by helping us with threat finance, for example."
Pregent said U.S. airstrikes have significantly curbed ISIL's ability to spread propaganda by broadcasting images of its conquests in Iraqi and Syrian cities.
"Most of the ISIS videos of them rolling into towns, that's pre-U.S. airstrikes--they can't do that anymore," Pregent said. "So there's some great opportunities to exploit their propaganda machine."