WASHINGTON (KRT) ­ Although the U.S. and British air strikes against Afghanistan that began Sunday resemble previous air campaigns in the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia, American war planners are using a new strategy, different tactics and some new weapons to attack a very different kind of enemy.
Like its predecessors, the air campaign is intended to eliminate Afghanistan’s creaky air force and its rudimentary air defenses so that U.S. and British aircraft and helicopters can fly at will over the country. But it’s not designed to knock out a “center of gravity” like Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard or Slobodan Milosevic’s Belgrade, one senior official involved in planning the operation said, “because the Taliban don’t have a center of gravity.”
Instead, the official said, the aerial bombardment is designed to isolate bin Laden and to encourage divisions among Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, who’ve been protecting him. As a result, the initial military campaign will last several days, it will stop and start in different parts of the country with no pattern or warning and it will include some covert military operations.
Air Force C-17 cargo jets delivered 37,500 food packages to areas not controlled by the Taliban, a senior defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated Sunday that other aspects of the operation “may not be so visible,” suggesting that U.S. Special Forces also could be in action. But Rumsfeld hedged: “I’m disinclined to talk about things that are in progress. If we had a significant number of U.S. military on the ground, it would be known by now.”
Rumsfeld said the weapons used in the attack included a mix of precision munitions and unguided conventional bombs, which can be used for carpet-bombing.
“The majority are precision weapons, but not exclusively,” he said.
Precision munitions, which use the satellite-based Global Positioning System, have proved highly effective in past campaigns in taking out enemy radar and anti-aircraft batteries, plus other air defenses, communications networks and command facilities.
These include sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, which fly just under the speed of sound at low altitudes and carry a 1,000-pound warhead. B-2 stealth bombers and naval strike aircraft can deliver other satellite-guided bombs such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition or JDAM, which can be launched 15 miles from their targets.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, said the strikes involved 15 U.S. bombers and 25 attack F-14 and F-18 jets based on two aircraft carriers. U.S. naval vessels and a British submarine fired about 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The U.S. bombers included B-52s, which are primarily used to drop cruise missiles at targets from hundreds of miles away, and B-1 Lancers, which are used to drop precision-guided bombs and can be used for carpet-bombing runs. They flew out of a British military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, said several U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Also employed in the strikes were two bat-winged B-2 stealth bombers loaded with JDAMs. They flew from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, and were refueled in mid-air en route to their targets, officials said. Instead of returning to Whiteman, the B-2s landed at Diego Garcia, said a defense official, indicating that they would be used for further missions.
The B-2 can hit 15 to 20 targets per mission using the JDAMS, a weapon that is “much smarter” than the precision weapons used in the Gulf War because it uses the GPS to home in on its targets, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bob Hails, former Air Force deputy chief of staff and bomber pilot.
The U.S. ships that fired cruise missiles were part of the battle groups led by the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Carl Vinson, said Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft from the carriers were also dispatched to jam Taliban radars and communications.
A defense official said the C-17s — flying from a U.S. base in Ramstein, Germany — would also drop leaflets written in Pashtu, one of Afghanistan’s two major languages, stating that the U.S. attacks were against the Taliban and bin Laden and not against the Afghan people or Muslims.
The official, speaking on condition he not be named, said a specially equipped U.S. C-130 cargo plane, dubbed Commando Solo, was flying close to Afghanistan, beaming airdrop locations in Pashtu-language broadcasts that could be picked up on civilian transistor radios.
Four U.S. ships fired cruise missiles: the USS Philippines Sea, a cruiser and three destroyers: the USS O’Brien, the USS John Paul Jones and the USS McFaul.
An undisclosed number of other countries assisted by granting overflight and landing rights to U.S. combat aircraft.
Rumsfeld and Myers declined to identify specific targets.
But defense officials, speaking on condition they not be named, said strikes hit bin Laden’s bases, although those attacks were likely to have been purely symbolic as the facilities are believed to have been empty for some time.
In one raid near the northern Taliban-held city of Mazar-e Sharif, swing-winged B-1 bombers carpet-bombed a “concentration” of Taliban tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, the official said.
More important from the Pentagon’s viewpoint were strikes on the Taliban’s aging Soviet-made air defense radars, anti-aircraft missiles and anti-aircraft artillery batteries, and command and control centers in and around the capital, Kabul, and the southern city of Kandahar.
Kandahar is where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and his ruling circle of Islamic clerics are based. Bin Laden also maintained bases in and around the city.
The U.S. strikes also targeted the Taliban’s air force of about 22 old Soviet-made MiG-21 and Su-22 jets, most of which were believed to be at a military airfield outside Kandahar, and the Islamic militia’s rickety fleet of Soviet-made helicopters, defense officials said.
“The goal of the strikes is to allow us to operate food drop missions and any other missions without” risk from Taliban air defenses, said a senior defense official. But he conceded that U.S. aircraft might still be at risk from Taliban fighters armed with U.S.-made shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles with a range of about two miles. The CIA supplied Stingers to Islamic guerrillas who fought Soviet occupation forces during the 1980s.
“We can’t do much about the Stingers at this point,” he said.
Some defense officials have played down the Stinger threat, saying the Taliban has been unable to maintain the highly accurate missiles, which have a design life of about seven years.
© 2001, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.