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America Strikes Back: Explaining Hardware and Strategy in Afghanistan

Aired October 9, 2001 - 06:42   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. air power has been called into action two days in a row now.

Here to explain some of the hardware being used, and some of the strategy that we're seeing being used, is our military analyst, retired Major General Don Shepperd -- good morning, General.

MAJOR GENERAL DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Leon.

HARRIS: It's probably been a while since you had to get up before dawn, but we sure appreciate you coming in here with us this morning.

One of the things that we noticed this morning, first off, was that there were air strikes being conducted during the daylight hours. Were you surprised to learn that?

SHEPPERD: No. This is a fairly standard operating procedure. You go in first. You take out their early-warning radars. You take out the radar-guided SAMs that you can operate at a high altitude. Once you can operate at a high altitude, you go in during the day.

You don't want to get down in the guns, where you're mixing up with the anti-aircraft guns and also the shoulder-fired missiles. You stay at high altitude to stay away from that, but you have to take care of the radar-guided surface-to-air missiles first, then you can do what we're seeing today.

HARRIS: All right. So what does that tell you, then, about what phase we happen to see right now in effect? I mean, does this mean that phase I may be over with in a matter of days, hours or what?

SHEPPERD: I think probably in a matter of a very few days. This is a fairly short air campaign, where you eliminate the infrastructure that you're worried about, so you can operate during the day. And you're talking three to five days. We're now going into the third day. This phase should end very quickly, Leon.

HARRIS: All right. Then what shall we see come next, then? When is the next phase going to be on?

SHEPPERD: Well, the next phase is going to be going against the fielded forces, although we've done some of that. You're going against the individual tanks, the vehicles. And it gets to be a fairly unexciting phase, because as you start operating, you don't see anything happen, such a big collapse or that type of thing.

It's -- it will be slow going now, and we need to be prepared to be patient. Remember in the Gulf War, a 37-air war, and then a sudden collapse. We are hoping for something of that sort here, but it may be much more murky, Leon.

HARRIS: Well, you know, journalists aren't very good at being patient. Thus far, we have been able to use the -- we haven't been able to have folks on the ground when things were happening, but we have had the benefit of explosions to somewhat record with our night vision cameras and what not.

Will there be anything like that at all with this second phase?

SHEPPERD: Yes, there's going to be some of that. I don't know if we can go to the Telestrator right now or not. If we can, I'd like to run a Telestrator that shows basically the makeup of the carrier battle groups, and how they operate, and what's coming off those carriers, and how the strikes are carried out.

HARRIS: All right.

SHEPPERD: If I can look at the Telestrator here, I'm going to start off here in the Mediterranean, give an example.

We're not giving locations, but this is the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group. Carriers in all of these battle groups protected by destroyers and cruisers and also submarines. Out of these ships, comes the Tomahawk missile -- Tomahawk missiles, and also comes bombers from the area -- we are told, Diego Garcia. These long-range B-52 and also B-1 bombers launch the cruise missiles from these airborne platforms and from the ships into Afghanistan to strike the targets that we're seeing.

Now, we have another illustration here that will show how this basically takes place in Afghanistan. Again, starting off in the Red Sea, where the carriers come through -- the Arabian Sea going into Afghanistan and will show you some of the things that are being struck here. The key things we have seen are Kabul and Kandahar and Jalalabad.

Now, remember, we're not striking the cities. What we are striking here is military targets around those cities -- airfields, radars, aircraft on the ground, command posts and munitions storage areas.

You will also notice up at the top the red dots. Konduz and Mazar al-Sharif, our northern strongholds, close to where the Northern Alliance is up there. So the Taliban is up there, and we're hitting forces in the field with what we call dumb bombs from some of the other bombers.

This is, again, is fairly standard military operation, and nothing surprising yet. The weather will be a factor, Leon.

HARRIS: Well, there was a negative surprise this morning, General. I'm sure you heard about the four U.N. workers who were killed. And although the targets had been, up this point -- we had been told they were all going to be military targets.

But is there any idea how this kind of a mix-up could have occurred?

SHEPPERD: Yes, it's very easy. A 2,000 pound bomb is very indiscriminate when it goes off. Unfortunately, civilians are killed in every war. They are not targeted. They happen to be in the vicinity of a target, unfortunately. We'll have to investigate to see how this happened to try to keep it from happening again, but it happens in every war. It's a terrible, terrible thing -- civilians are casualties -- hopefully, very, very few

HARRIS: But doesn't the risk of that sort of thing go up once the weather starts turning bad? I know that's a concern right now, because the change in seasons right now is on the horizon.

SHEPPERD: Yes, two things: So far, the weather hasn't mattered, because you've gone in with Tomahawk missiles, and you've gone in with Stealth aircraft that drop precision-guided munitions that can go through the weather guided by global-positioning systems satellites there. This thing, such as the Tomahawk that we've got here, can be launched from a submarine into it as a program of the coordinates of the target. It doesn't care whether it's day or night. It doesn't care what the weather is.

Now, as you put down those initial set of targets, and you go into daytime operations, you want to be able to see the targets, and you do not want to operate below weather, because you become very vulnerable down there, whether you are a Tomahawk missile or whether you are an aircraft. So what you'd like to do is have good weather.

We hear sandstorms are coming, and of course, late this month the rains come on the Khyber Pass followed by snows. And we've got a tough time coming up here that may extend this for a long period of time as far getting those fielded forces -- Leon.

HARRIS: Well, of those different challenges you just mentioned there between weather, rain, snow or dust storms right now, which one actually presents the biggest challenge to any troops that may be on the ground?

SHEPPERD: Well, first of all, we have not received any confirmation that American troops are on the ground. There have been reports of special forces in there, but we have not heard about military -- American military troops being deployed on the ground ...

HARRIS: That is correct.

SHEPPERD: ... particularly those from Uzbekistan there. So weather doesn't hamper the troops on the ground other than making it inconvenient and inconvenient to travel. We are able to operate on the ground.

But from an air standpoint, weather is a factor. You'd like to be able to see the targets and launch in precision-guided and laser- guided munitions, and weather becomes a factor when it comes in.

HARRIS: Major General Don Shepperd, thank you very much for the time. Again, thanks for getting up early -- we sure appreciate it.

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