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U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18s with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 link up and perform an Air to Air refuel with a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-150 Polaris air-to-air refueller during a combat mission in the skies of Iraq on July 19, 2015.

U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18s with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 link up and perform an Air to Air refuel with a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-150 Polaris air-to-air refueller during a combat mission in the skies of Iraq on July 19, 2015. (Courtesy Photo by Op IMPACT)

WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led coalition has ramped up its air campaign against the Islamic State, with the number of munitions dropped on targets in Iraq and Syria increasing by 60 percent in July over the previous month, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The Department of Defense reported that in July, the most recent data available, the coalition dropped 2,829 munitions on Islamic State targets compared to 1,686 munitions in June.

“We’re certainly going to pound [the Islamic State,]” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Tuesday at a global forum with troops.

The increase came as the U.S. and the coalition passed its one-year anniversary of Operation Inherent Resolve. In August 2014, the month the operation was launched, the coalition dropped about 200 bombs.

The Pentagon has been criticized by members of Congress, particularly by Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for not escalating its bombing campaign even as the Islamic State seized the western Iraqi city of Ramadi and expanded its control in other parts of Iraq’s Anbar province and Syria.

Some Iraqi officials have also complained about slow coalition response to requests for air support.

The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, told reporters last week that not all missions end with bombs dropped.

“Remember we are not at war with Iraq, so we do not want to drop bombs indiscriminately,” Welsh said.

Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert at the Congressional Research Service, said the jump in munitions dropped likely reflects the impact of the additional U.S. forces sent back to Iraq earlier this year. In June President Barack Obama ordered 450 additional forces to Taqqadum air base, a facility that’s been used as a training post to reach out to Iraq’s Sunni population.

“We have sent more people in to the Ramadi area, Anbar province – they may be getting better information on where the targets are,” Katzman said.

Katzman said in the months prior there had been a perception “that the campaign plateaued and had not made the progress it should have by now. There is this pressure to show progress.”

The actual bombs dropped is a different statistic than the number of airstrikes conducted, and may be a better way to measure the pace of the air campaign’s intensity.

On Monday, the Pentagon clarified how it defines an “airstrike.”

Spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said that in Pentagon parlance, an airstrike could involve a single weapon used against a lone [Islamic State] vehicle or a “single strike in which multiple weapons are used” against multiple buildings in a single targeted complex.

That means reports on the number of airstrikes alone offer little clarity about the extent of an attack.

copp.tara@stripes.com Twitter: @TaraCopp

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