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U.S. Launches Huge Afghan Air Offensive

Aired August 26, 2002 - 14:41   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of that action that Barbara has been talking about, I can tell you CNN producer Ryan Chilcote has seen much of it first hand. He joins us now live from Kandahar to tell us what he witnessed.
Ryan, you have been flying with the pilots for many days. What are some missions that stand out to you?

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN PRODUCER: This Operation Mountain Sweep was actually the largest air assault -- what the U.S. military calls an air assault, or helicopter-driven air assault, at least since Operation Anaconda, maybe since Operation Desert Storm. Basically, you had as many as 20 helicopters at any given time moving those 1,000 to 2,00 U.S. troops about 200 miles from here to objectives in that (UNINTELLIGIBLE), eastern Afghanistan, region.

Basically, what they do is they fly and drop the troops off. Then the troops rush in and search compounds. The whole idea is to use the mobility and element of surprise that these helicopters give the troops to get these al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Now, one of the interesting things, of course, is that these fighters were, as Barbara Starr mentioned, tipped off to the fact they were coming. What the U.S. wants to do is when they get out to the field, use these helicopters, get into positions, and then unexpectedly move to other locations when they pick up intelligence bits that there might be things there.

Back to you -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, Ryan, the last couple of days were successful, right? The soldiers were able to get their hands on a lot of enemy intel.

Exactly. There was one incident in particular where the U.S. military picked up some intelligence that there might be some al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in one particular area. They changed their mission plans, went there -- actually, they flew an Apache attack helicopter over a certain village. And they saw a man walking along a road in it who was trying to basically evade them. He seemed very nervous about them being there. So they kept an eye on him. They thought, that's interesting, why is that man trying to evade us. That man then got on a bicycle and went racing off.

They kept following him in this Apache attack helicopter. He then got on, from that bicycle, got on a motor bike and raced into a compound. Well, the U.S. military thought that was pretty interesting that this man wanted to get away from them so badly. So they surrounded that compound, swept in the helicopters and grabbed that man. He is now in a detention facility.

Those are the kind of operations that U.S. military wants to launch here in Afghanistan, and that is what they think will be the key to success here.

Back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Ryan Chilcote, live from Kandahar.

Ryan, I hope you are keeping a journal.

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