Well, it’s combat, but it’s complicated

“Carter hailed 39-year-old Delta Force Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler as an exemplary hero who ‘ran to the sound of the guns’ in the helicopter assault Thursday with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters that freed 70 ISIS hostages. He was the first U.S. combat fatality of the campaign against ISIS.

"’This is combat,’ Carter said of the raid on an ISIS prison compound east of the town of Hawija in northern Iraq, and ‘we expect do to do more of this kind of thing.’

“However, Carter said that ‘things are complicated’ when asked if the policy against U.S. troops engaging in direct combat was still in effect."

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/10/24/delta-force-death-in-iraq-doesnt-reflect-combat-role-carter.html

Obama spokespersons said the raid decision was Carter’s and that the president had not signed off on the raid, but he was aware of the mission.