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CNN Live At Daybreak
America Strikes Back: Satellite Photos Show Damage Done to Military Targets
Aired October 10, 2001 - 08:21 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We here at CNN certainly look forward to the Pentagon briefings on a daily basis. Yesterday -- we get those in the early afternoon East Coast time -- and yesterday given some fascinating looks at satellite images on the ground in Afghanistan.
And Miles O'Brien with us again to decipher those images and tell us what we are being told from the Pentagon -- hello, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Bill. I'm not alone. General George Harrison is with me -- one of our military analysts.
And let's take a look at some of these images, which the Pentagon released yesterday. And we'll try to walk you through it and take a look at it with a -- well, a more trained eye, if you will.
This is, we are told by the Pentagon, one of al Qaeda's training camps -- this particular one near Kandahar.
(voice-over): And, General, as you look at this, when we say training camps, I think people envision perhaps tents. But these look like fairly big structures here. I am told that many of the training camps, as a matter of fact, were actually former Soviet installations. These are hardened structures in some cases, correct?
MAJ. GEN. GEORGE HARRISON, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST (voice-over): Well, in many cases, they are. But as you point out with your circling, the object of doing targeting is to find the vulnerable areas in places that are most important. And when we see the after picture, you will see that aim points were carefully selected to ...
O'BRIEN: There you go.
HARRISON: ... to take care of the issues. You can see the individual impacts, and it's important to realize that each one of these GPS-guided bombs was individually targeted against a specific place to do some desired effects on this particular camp.
O'BRIEN: Now, by all accounts, these camps were vacant.
(on camera): And so the effect that this will have is a little bit to measure, isn't it? HARRISON (on camera): Well, it's going to be a long-term effect, but in fact, it's just like taking out the maintenance garage for your automobile. It's going to have a long-term effect, but it's going to get you eventually.
O'BRIEN: All right. Air defenses: that's obviously a key thing if you're a person like yourself ...
HARRISON: Right.
O'BRIEN: ... who straps himself into an F-16 on occasion.
(voice-over): This is a SAM site -- surface-to-air missile site, I am told -- right here. Now, the trick to get in these is -- well, of course, it's tricky, because it's designed to shoot you out of the sky.
HARRISON: Right.
O'BRIEN: How do you go about it?
HARRISON: Well, obviously the first thing that -- well, maybe not obviously. The first thing you go after is the guidance and the control radar. The missiles are the last thing you go after. You want to get his ability to guide targets toward you, so that you can deny him the ability to use those missiles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's look at the after shot, if we will. And it disappears. The circle is pretty much empty.
HARRISON: Right.
O'BRIEN: I think what you saw around it, too, were some anti- aircraft installations ...
HARRISON: That's right.
O'BRIEN: ... in addition to the surface-to-air missile.
Let's go to the final shots, if we could. This is some before and after of an airfield. This particular airfield is the Shindad airfield, and a typical airfield type of situation. Let's look at the after shot and a different orientation.
But if you see, all of these places are craters. Now, these craters, General, are specifically designed. I notice they hit the taxiways, and they hit just a certain part of the runway.
Is the idea not to obliterate the field,
(on camera): so that maybe it can be used later?
HARRISON (on camera): Well, possibly. But as you will see, these aim points are carefully selected, so that available -- the usable hard surface is not there for any kind of operation or any kind of aircraft that the Taliban might want to operate. O'BRIEN: Is that a non-usable airfield
(CROSSTALK)
HARRISON: This is non-usable for any of the aircraft that they have.
O'BRIEN: All right. Good. Thank you very much General George Harrison in helping us understand.
We are told by the Pentagon that there is, in fact, only one usable airfield left in Afghanistan now, and the Pentagon is claiming air superiority -- Bill.
HEMMER: All right. Miles, thank you.
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