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CNN Live Saturday

High Tech Weapons of the Current U.S. Military

Aired October 13, 2001 - 15:09   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: We know that the military operations underway in Afghanistan have been directed at military and terrorist targets; however, collateral damage has been unavoidable.

Let's go now to our Donna Kelley, who's got more on this for us -- Donna.

DONNA KELLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Leon, thanks.

And joining us is General Don Shepperd; he is retired from the U.S. Air Force and he is our CNN military analyst.

General Shepperd, talk about a little bit with us -- do we have our telestrator available? Is that back up? Can we see that? OK, telestrator is down for a moment.

Tell us about what happens when we have collateral damage and how you can avoid that.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, collateral damage is unintended damage. Now, when we strike a target, we take a look at the target, we run computer models, we decide what type of weapon to put on that target. We select our run-in headings to try to keep collateral damage in the area down.

Sometimes we make mistakes. It appears that this incident that we're talking about, that's been announced by the Pentagon is a mistake in the targeting process. That could mean human error, it could mean we had the wrong coordinates, it could mean that the weapon went astray afterwards. All of those things are possible, Donna.

KELLEY: Some things you can do, though, as you were telling us before, you can make some changes to avoid collateral damage. What can you do?

SHEPPERD: Yes, you can. The first thing you do is you decide what your target is and then what's close to it that you don't want to hit. You will run a computer model, and if you find that the fragmentation pattern from the weapon strikes the unintended targeted, then you can change the fusing on the weapon, make it go off deeper in the ground so the fragmentation is absorbed by the ground and does not hit the surrounding area, or can you use a smaller weapon. All of those are choices.

We still don't know what went wrong in this situation. It's way too early to tell. There will be an investigation, Donna.

KELLEY: OK. Today there were trying to hit, apparently, a helicopter at the airport near Kabul, in the capital there. And it's a mile off. Is a mile a lot for a smart bomb?

SHEPPERD: A mile is a long, long way. You're talking about accuracies of these smart bombs, think in the area of 10 to 50 feet and a fragmentation pattern of 200 to 300 feet. A mile is a long, long way. Something terribly went wrong in this process, Donna.

KELLEY: Let's talk about some of the available weapons and the planes that they go with. We have a couple of pictures that we'll go through.

Let's start with the B-2. Tell us a little bit about this and what it does.

SHEPPERD: OK, while I'm waiting for the B-to come up, the B-2 was not available in the Gulf War. Basically, the B-2 is your stealth bomber. It's based in Whiteman, Missouri and it -- comes out of Whiteman, Missouri -- flies all of the way to the Mideast, and then recovers in Diego Garcia.

It can be -- it can carry the new JDAM, Joint Direct Attack Munition, which is a satellite guided munition. It can also carry other weapon as well, such as the new JSOW, which is another weapon we'll talk about.

KELLEY: And we'll talk about that in a second, but let's stick with one more plane: B-1B.

SHEPPERD: Yes, the B-1B is also -- it was all available in the Gulf, but it was not used in the Gulf. It basically is the truck, if you will. It will carry a lot of bombs; up to 84 500-pound dumb bombs. And it will carry 12 of the JDAM, Joint Direct Attack Munitions, satellite guided bombs. It will also carry -- I'm sorry, 16 of those.

Let me check my figures again. The B-1 will carry 12 of the -- 24 of the JDAMs and 12 of the JSOWS.

Now the JSOWs, Joint Stand-Off Weapon, is a launch-and-leave weapon. Think of it as a small airplane carried underneath another airplane. You go in low or you go in high, you launch the JSOW, wings pop out and it glides to the target based upon the coordinates provided by the GPS satellites up there. And they're a very, very effective weapon.

KELLEY: Let's see if we can bring up the JDAM system. Do we have that so we can take a look at that while the general talks about that JDAM system?

OK, let's take a look at that. This is a smart weapon. What about this?

SHEPPERD: Well this -- what this is basically a bomb in which you attach a guidance system in the tail. It talks to satellites. And you program in the coordinates you want it to hit, and then the satellites update the information and tails on the rear of the bomb there guide it, then, to the target.

KELLEY: So is this like an enhancement, when that says that that converts that -- that can convert a falling bomb into a smart weapon?

SHEPPERD: Indeed. You can drop this -- it's called a Mark-84, 2,000-pound bomb. You can you drop it dumb, or you can put one of these guidance kits on it and drop it to hit very, very precisely.

KELLEY: OK. And then a JSOW. You were telling us a little bit more about that. Let's look at that and...

SHEPPERD: Yes, the JSOW is a Joint Stand-Off Weapon. Again, launch and leave, the idea, 15 to 30 miles, depending on your speed and your level from the target. The wings pop out and this glides to the target. And it also uses GPS Global Positioning System satellite guidance to hit the target very, very precisely.

It also carries submunitions. It can act as a bomb, out also spit out smart bombs -- small bombs that are also smart that go after signatures and infrared signatures on -- again, in vehicles and tanks, this type of thing. Very formidable weapon. Just coming into inventory.

KELLEY: OK, GBU-28, that's the same as a bunker-buster, isn't it?

SHEPPERD: Yes, the GBU-28 basically is the bunker-buster. And it's a 5,000-pound bomb, and we put a smart guidance unit -- a GPS, Global Positioning System...

KELLEY: So that's enhanced as well now, too.

SHEPPERD: Enhanced as well. And what this does is it goes deep into the ground. When it goes deep into the ground, you can put it against bunkers.

We used it in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein's buried bunkers there. It has already come into use in Afghanistan, and we will undoubtedly have it come up later on as we go against some of these buried targets in the mountains there.

KELLEY: OK, I think we have some pictures of that, too. We can see a little bit more how that buries in and burrows in, and then will explode once it gets down below ground a little bit more.

SHEPPERD: Yes, it will, indeed, if they bring it up high and if they don't. The whole idea is the bomb penetrates the earth and goes off underneath the ground. It can go off -- it can go many feet underneath the ground, depending upon the type of soil that it goes into. But the idea is to get under the ground and keep the boom and the fuse intact.

Now during the Gulf War -- here's a picture of the GBU-28 -- 5,000 pounds; it's a laser-guided weapon, here. We now have GPS guidance on it as well, and we can put it into the ground. And during the Gulf War, we took these -- we took old artillery tubes and formed them. They were actually hot, and we flew them down here to Alabama and we put in -- or to Georgia, I'm sorry -- and we put in explosives and then rushed them to the Gulf to hit the targets, and delivered them from an F-111 at that time. Now these can be carried by the F-15 and other airplanes as well.

KELLEY: Real quickly: How about weather? Is weather a factor as much anymore? It's not, is, like from the Gulf War?

SHEPPERD: It's not. That's the big advantage. Laser-guided munitions, which is really all we had in the Gulf War, those required good weather. You had to be able to see; clouds put you out off business.

Now, with the new GPS-guided, satellite-guided munitions, we can go through the weather. So it extends the clock to 24 hours, and extends the weather to anywhere, anytime. Very formidable weapons, and a huge step forward from the Gulf War, Donna.

KELLEY: All right, General Shepperd, thanks very much.

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