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American Morning

America's New War: Talk with Retired Air Force General George Harrison

Aired September 17, 2001 - 11:13   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Turning now to someone who knows quite well the landscape, the obstacles and the people in the Afghan- Pakistan region, retired U.S. Air Force General George Harrison.

General Harrison, thanks for being with us.

GEN. GEORGE HARRISON, RET. U.S. AIR FORCE: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Before we bring up the graphic here. Your sense of the region as whole. It's difficult to find region of the world that is more remote than that.

HARRISON: Well, clearly, this will be a different kind of operation than we experienced in the Gulf War, that was very open terrain, very easy to get at terrain. Difficult logistically, of course, but in this case we have line of sight difficulties all kinds of problems finding specifically what we are going for. I think the graphic you have coming up will illustrate quite clearly that difficulty.

O'BRIEN: Let's bring IT up right now as a matter of fact. If we can put it up on the screen here. This done by Dave Hennen (ph) in our weather center, who gave 3-D view, if we can bring that up. And this should zoom me down into the weeds, if you will, has I push the button. And it does not appear to be working.

As we try to get this to work, general, what you have is you have a mountain pass, a significant mountain pass called the Kadrad Pass (ph) which leads into Kabul.

And there we go. I must have been pushing the wrong button. I'm not a weather guy.

Here is the -- it's basically the land here. And I should point out that Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, leadership there today indicated some interest in perhaps allowing this to be staged -- a staging point for U.S. warplanes, if it ever came to that.

But as we get closer to Kabul here, let's talk about what the options are for a bombing. It's very limited, because of the terrain and because of the difficulty identifying target, correct?

HARRISON: I think the planners who are currently working, as we all know, in the Pentagon, figuring out the options for all these kinds of things are well aware of the difficulties, and they are probably going to end up spending a lot of time developing backup plans, because there's a high probability for misidentification, nonidentification, error and I think they understand -- I don't think, I know they understand how complex this operation is going to be.

O'BRIEN: When you get to identifying targets, I've heard between 12 to 18 camp may be run by Osama bin Laden's organization. Identifying those camps, is that something that can be done with satellite reconnaissance, or is more important to have perhaps human resources on the ground in these mountains?

HARRISON: I think your question illustrate how difficult and how complex this entire situation is. We can't depend on photographs. We can't depend on electronic intelligence. We can't depend on technical intelligence. We're going to have to spend a lot of time developing the human side of this operation, and it's going to be a long, drawn out, very complex operation.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit -- once you identify those 12- 18 sites let's say for the sake of just a discussion here, the what next is not so simple either? Just going in and dropping a bomb isn't necessarily the solution, is it?

HARRISON: Well, that's obviously right. Depending on the effect that you want to accomplish, taking out an individual or a group of individuals may or may not accomplish exactly what we are interesting in. We may have to worry about infrastructure, logistics. We may have to worry about command and control systems. Clearly this group or coalition of terrorist have a very sophisticated command-and- control system, and that's going to have to be dealt with. Obviously, if you deal with just one individual, you're going to end up with a replacement for that individual and the network still in place, and the network is the key to this.

O'BRIEN: All right. And I'm going to ask we if can bring up that two-dimensional map of the region, and as we get the map up, I want to ask you this. This is going to require a lot of surreptitious activity, human intelligence, long-term; things perhaps might happen that will never hear about. Does that jibe with the political realities of today, that the desire for some sort of public display of revenge?

HARRISON: well, I think public does want display of revenge, and they want something overt and something that's going to happen very quickly. But I think, clearly, when you look at the size of Afghanistan, that we will not do this in a very quick fashion. It's going to be a very long, drawn-out operation. It's going to require a long of development of infrastructure and understanding of what's going on. It's not just a military operation. We can't do this with a quick feel-good military strike. It's going to be a long drawn-out, total government total coalition operation.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk just briefly here, just to orient people on region here. If you had an aircraft out here, for example. The distances from here just to the border is about 400 miles. All the way up to Kabul is at least 700 miles. Now you have a lot of experience flying F-16s. That's pretty much the outer edge of the unrefueled mission, which means, refueling or perhaps staging somewhere else. That gets really complicated doesn't it?

HARRISON: That's obviously correct. We have to stage the tankers from somewhere. All of our tankers are land based -- the long-range tankers land based, based at some land facility. They have to have the range to get into the central portion of Afghanistan so that the fighters, or the attack aircraft can refuel on the way in. Now if you use long-range aircraft from the United States, that's certainly an option, with the B-2 and B-1 and B-52, those types of things. But it also means you have a very limited sortie capability, since you have a 24 hour long sortie operation.

O'BRIEN: In other words you have to plan and that kind of thing. And of course when you are talking about B-52s, or I suppose the B-2 might be exception to this, you're up higher generally. The B-2, being stealthy, puts you down lower, maybe on more specific targets.

HARRISON: Also the B-2 is actually a high-altitude aircraft.

O'BRIEN: OK. Now, if we what we hear is true, if Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan up here, if they were to help out, that drastically changes the capabilities, if you could stage aircraft there.

HARRISON: It does. But of course you don't just move into a strange location like Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan and begin to operate. You have to develop again the infrastructure that supports you there. And if this turns into much more than an air operation, which I suspect it will, you have to have logistics to support more than just airplanes. You have to have ground force support. You have to have all those kinds of things that we're used to dealing with.

O'BRIEN: When we bring up the term "ground troops" in this, we bring up images of a Normandy-style invasion, that kind of thing, lots of troops going in. Is there any scenario you can come up with that would have that sort of presence, or would it more likely special forces type of operations?

HARRISON: Well of course I'm not a ground forces expert by any means at all. But I think that the transformation of the Army over the last decades has them developed capabilities that give more than frontal assault capability with infantry. So I think the U.S. Army being a lot more imaginative than maybe we conventionally think of them, and I'm sure that they will develop different ways to do that. Special forces are clearly an option. All of those kinds of things will be planned by the joint staff in the months ahead.

O'BRIEN: You get the sense this is not the kind of scenario that the U.S. military really was designed to fight against.

HARRISON: Well, it's certainly not the kind of thing we thought about for the last couple of decades, but I think that we have a flexible enough force and enough capability that we can adapt, and I'm sure that adaptation going on right now in the joint staffs and service staffs. O'BRIEN: Is there enough flexibility with our tools in the toolbox to accomplish the sorts of mission you lay out here.

HARRISON: Not in the short term. Not in the short term. This is not a one-month or two-month operation. This is going to be a very long term operation.

O'BRIEN: All right. General George Harrison, United States Air Force retired, at Georgia Tech Research Institute right here in Atlanta.

Thanks very much for spending a little bit of time with us, giving us some insights.

HARRISON: Thank you.

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