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Role of Air Power in Urban Combat

Aired April 07, 2003 - 15:49   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.


RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: The Air Force -- the coalition, rather, did change its strategy over the last few days, talking more about providing close air support when it comes to Iraq and Baghdad. But how in the world do you do that when you're talking about you're providing air support for ground troops in a city of 4.5 million people and you want to make sure that you hit the right people, the enemy?
Joining us now from Washington is retired Air Force Major General Larry Arnold, who was with the 1st Air Force, and largely helping out -- critical in the defense of the continental United States. General, thanks for being with us today.

MAJ. GEN. LARRY ARNOLD, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Thanks. Good to be here, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: How, indeed, do you fight urban warfare using aircraft if you want to make sure that you are trying to minimize collateral damage, but also pinpointing where the enemy is?

ARNOLD: Renay, let me back up just a second and talk about how we got to Baghdad, and then I think we can put that in some kind of context it.

SAN MIGUEL: OK.

ARNOLD: You know, as we move forward, our troops, we always had a fire support coordination line. Above that fire coordination line, or further away from the army, we would find very hardened targets, usually found by the tremendous ISR capabilities, or intelligence surveillance capabilities that we have in the Air Force and in our air power. We'd isolate those targets and destroy them with massive bombardments many times.

But we weren't close to our own people or close to civilians in many cases. Even in Baghdad, when we hit parts of the city, we hit them with B-52s with GPS ordnance. But we didn't have the friendlies around at that particular time, and so the possibility of inflicting casualties on our own troops was somewhat diminished.

But now, today, things have changed to some degree. As we move into Baghdad we now have a situation where we're in very close proximity, so how are we going to operate? You heard earlier, we're going to have airplanes overhead the entire time.

SAN MIGUEL: OK.

ARNOLD: So what we're going to be able to do is to change our way we go in and attack. Ideally, we'd like to go in with our helicopters, with the gun ships, and hit targets if we can. But if the resistance is too strong in that particular case, we'll back off those helicopters and we may put a gun ship, a C-130 gun ship overhead. All of this is being coordinated very closely with the ground troops, with the Army at that particular time, as we go into that area.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me talk just a little bit about -- because we are running out of time here. But we want to talk about what we saw early, early, early this morning on CNN, the shot of an unmanned drone aircraft over Baghdad. And this was all before this latest activity started in Baghdad.

Talk a little bit about the Army hunter drone, which we believe that was. That's the lowest flying of all this unmanned aircraft, right?

ARNOLD: That's right. Well you put the Army hunter drones, then above that, of course, the Patriot, above that the Global Hawk, and then above that the satellites. Once we define the targets that we're going after, we decide what kind of ordnance we want to put on them.

Helicopters, again, C-130s, A-10s, F-16s, F-18s, F-14, F-15Es. Sometimes very small bombs without explosives. Just a concrete shape that will go in and minimize the danger, the damage that is done.

In other cases, where you can and have to, you'll use a high explosive. The full array is available to us, we only have to choose what we need to do to minimize civilian casualties and certainly to try to stop any kind of friendly fire.

SAN MIGUEL: General Arnold, we will have to leave it there, but it's very good information in a short period of time. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it.

ARNOLD: Thank you very much, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: You bet.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired April 7, 2003 - 15:49   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: The Air Force -- the coalition, rather, did change its strategy over the last few days, talking more about providing close air support when it comes to Iraq and Baghdad. But how in the world do you do that when you're talking about you're providing air support for ground troops in a city of 4.5 million people and you want to make sure that you hit the right people, the enemy?
Joining us now from Washington is retired Air Force Major General Larry Arnold, who was with the 1st Air Force, and largely helping out -- critical in the defense of the continental United States. General, thanks for being with us today.

MAJ. GEN. LARRY ARNOLD, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Thanks. Good to be here, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: How, indeed, do you fight urban warfare using aircraft if you want to make sure that you are trying to minimize collateral damage, but also pinpointing where the enemy is?

ARNOLD: Renay, let me back up just a second and talk about how we got to Baghdad, and then I think we can put that in some kind of context it.

SAN MIGUEL: OK.

ARNOLD: You know, as we move forward, our troops, we always had a fire support coordination line. Above that fire coordination line, or further away from the army, we would find very hardened targets, usually found by the tremendous ISR capabilities, or intelligence surveillance capabilities that we have in the Air Force and in our air power. We'd isolate those targets and destroy them with massive bombardments many times.

But we weren't close to our own people or close to civilians in many cases. Even in Baghdad, when we hit parts of the city, we hit them with B-52s with GPS ordnance. But we didn't have the friendlies around at that particular time, and so the possibility of inflicting casualties on our own troops was somewhat diminished.

But now, today, things have changed to some degree. As we move into Baghdad we now have a situation where we're in very close proximity, so how are we going to operate? You heard earlier, we're going to have airplanes overhead the entire time.

SAN MIGUEL: OK.

ARNOLD: So what we're going to be able to do is to change our way we go in and attack. Ideally, we'd like to go in with our helicopters, with the gun ships, and hit targets if we can. But if the resistance is too strong in that particular case, we'll back off those helicopters and we may put a gun ship, a C-130 gun ship overhead. All of this is being coordinated very closely with the ground troops, with the Army at that particular time, as we go into that area.

SAN MIGUEL: Let me talk just a little bit about -- because we are running out of time here. But we want to talk about what we saw early, early, early this morning on CNN, the shot of an unmanned drone aircraft over Baghdad. And this was all before this latest activity started in Baghdad.

Talk a little bit about the Army hunter drone, which we believe that was. That's the lowest flying of all this unmanned aircraft, right?

ARNOLD: That's right. Well you put the Army hunter drones, then above that, of course, the Patriot, above that the Global Hawk, and then above that the satellites. Once we define the targets that we're going after, we decide what kind of ordnance we want to put on them.

Helicopters, again, C-130s, A-10s, F-16s, F-18s, F-14, F-15Es. Sometimes very small bombs without explosives. Just a concrete shape that will go in and minimize the danger, the damage that is done.

In other cases, where you can and have to, you'll use a high explosive. The full array is available to us, we only have to choose what we need to do to minimize civilian casualties and certainly to try to stop any kind of friendly fire.

SAN MIGUEL: General Arnold, we will have to leave it there, but it's very good information in a short period of time. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it.

ARNOLD: Thank you very much, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: You bet.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com