WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Cook was speaking a day after General Lloyd Austin, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), which runs all military operations against ISIL in the Fertile Crescent, told the US Senate Armed Services that only "four or five" military volunteers trained by the United States were still active fighting ISIL in Syria.
"When they reenter Syria they’re no longer under the control of the [US-run] training and equipment program," Cook said during a daily press briefing.
Cook, however, told reporters on Thursday that the program now had "100 additional fighters in training [with] more in queue after that."
However, he noted, "I don’t know the disposition" of further forces being trained.
In the Wednesday’s testimony that US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said was the most inept he had ever heard, Austin admitted the US train and equip program would fail to meet its goal of putting 5,400 fighters in to combat ISIL in the first year of operation.
Of those, almost all had been killed or captured by the al-Nusra Front — Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, according to Fox News.
In 2014, Congress approved $500 million to fund the train and equip program of which $41.8 million has been spent so far, Austin testified.
Much of the money was spent on providing the volunteers with state-of-the-art expensive US high-tech military equipment, almost all of which has now been lost or has fallen into the hands of ISIL or the al-Nusra Front, Fox News reported on Thursday.
Carter is looking at a range of things as "[this] is a program consistently under review," Cook added.
The Defense Department has already asked Congress for another $600 million to expand the program in 2016, the Senate Armed Services Committee was told on Wednesday.
