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American Morning
America Strikes Back: Helicopters Effective, but Risky
Aired October 25, 2001 - 09:34 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The military calls it boots-on-the- ground, and we know of at least one U.S. special forces mission on the ground in Afghanistan. Helicopters play a key role in any special operations.
Let's go to Miles O'Brien. He's standing by at the CNN center in Atlanta with more on what kinds of peril U.S. helicopters might face over Afghanistan.
There are lots of them aren't there, Miles?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are, indeed. It is perfectly designed for ambushes, the terrain of Afghanistan. It is a little bit of geography, history, and aviation what we will talk about.
To guide us through all this, we are going to turn to one of our military analysts, Gen. David Grange, joining us from Chicago.
Good to have you with us Gen. Grange.
GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: Let's first talk about the history. Let's show some pictures of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It began in 1979, and lasted about a decade. The Soviets spent about $45 billion in this effort. Helicopters were a key part of that, weren't they, General?
GRANGE: Yes, they where. I don't know if they used them as extensively as we did in Vietnam. We really developed the present day use of helicopters from the Vietnam War. But the Soviets did rely on helicopters quite a bit, especially with their paratrooper units.
O'BRIEN: Meanwhile, the CIA was funding the mujahideen, the people opposed to that occupation, about $10 billion in arms there, among them hundreds of Stinger missiles. This is a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile, very deadly against helicopters, and combined with the terrain in Afghanistan, an extremely potent weapon.
Let's look at the animation, and we'll talk people through this and give you a sense of why Afghanistan, with this steep canyon, like this, pose a real threat to a helicopter. Helicopters by their nature go low and slow. That's their mission, right, General? By that very definition, they are in harm's way.
GRANGE: They are. They go low. Sometimes they go low and slow. Sometimes low and very fast. The flying low negates the use of Stinger-type missiles, but it subjects you to small arms and machine gun fire.
O'BRIEN: If you have people up in these caves, let's say -- and there are thousands and thousands of caves, many of them which date back thousands of years, in Afghanistan -- you have got a perch which you could literally shoot down on helicopter from. That's a tremendous advantage, isn't it?
GRANGE: It is advantage. You can negate some of those advantages with proper suppression during helicopter movement, during an air assault. We would never fly a helicopter by itself in terrain like that, without analysis of the terrain and also some suppression of possible enemy weapon sites.
O'BRIEN: A little bit of artistic license in our graphic here. As you can see, these heat-seeking missiles, which are fire-and-forget types of weapons -- in other words, the warhead actually heads to the source of the heat, which are the engines. Let's take a look at the weaponry we are talking about here, the Stinger which is a shoulder- fired, potentially, missile. It just takes two people to do it. It has a range of about 5 miles horizontally, 10,000 feet. It's an impressive weapon, isn't it, General?
GRANGE: It's an impressive weapon. However, can fly under its effectiveness. It must be noted -- actually one person normally can fire the weapon. Usually, you use a team: One is an observer, one is the firer.
O'BRIEN: Then on the other side of things, let's take as an example the U.S. Blackhawk helicopter. A lot of other helicopters are in the fleet, but this is one of the workhorses. A couple of things to consider here. First of all, the tactics: The United States is not going to be flying too many daylight runs.
GRANGE: No, we're going to fly at night usually. I remember quite vividly an air assault in Grenada where we did a daylight air assault with six Blackhawk helicopters. Every one of them was shot up; we lost one of them. That was just small arms fire. That had nothing to do with surface-to-air missiles -- just small arms. So it's vulnerable, but that's a great helicopter. It has a lot of sustainability when it is hit. It's much better than the Soviet helicopters ever used in Afghanistan.
O'BRIEN: It's heavily armed, and in addition to that, in the survivability category, it has the capability of spitting out flares, which can fool the heat-seeking missiles, or chaff, which fools a radar-guided missile, but it's not impregnable vehicle, is it?
GRANGE: Not impregnable. In Somalia, we lost several helicopters, in Mogadishu. But keep in mind, the best defense of a helicopter during air assault operations, during air movement operations, is well-trained pilots. The aviators that fly these helicopters are well trained, and that's your best defense.
O'BRIEN: Good point.
Gen. David Grange joining us, giving us some with insights into helicopters and tactics used against them, tactics used to protect them. Helicopters are going to play a big part as these command raids -- sporadic, unpredictable -- that's part of the strategy continued in Afghanistan.
If you want to find out more about helicopters and U.S. aircraft in general, check out cnn.com. And of course, the AOL Keyword, everybody knows that, especially Paula: CNN.
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