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American Morning

Description of a Battle Group

Aired October 09, 2001 - 11:46   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 CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Bill. We do know there are probably, we say this probably, because the Pentagon isn't saying for certain on the record, four carrier battle groups in the general vicinity. There is a bit of an as asterisk on that because perhaps one of them doesn't have its flight wing on board, that is the USS Kitty Hawk, which was most recently in Japan, steamed out of port, destination officially unknown, but we believe is in the region.

We'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a moment. Let's orient you just a little bit to the region, and exactly what might be in the general area as we look at it. Let's get in a little bit closer. When last we had an official citing, the T.R., the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its battle group was here in the Mediterranean Sea. It is possible it is no longer there. We are not for certain about that. Let's take a trip across Saudi Arabia to the peninsula, into the Persian Gulf.

The Carl Vinson, where you just saw Walter Rodgers on there. And in the end of his story he told us he was in the Arabian Sea. Last official report, however, from the Pentagon, was the Persian Gulf. Now, if you recall, immediately after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon deployed many land based aircraft to an air base in Saudi Arabia to backfill, to augment, efforts to fly the no-fly zone patrols in Iraq.

That might have freed up this carrier group and sent it down into the Arabian Sea. Let's head that way, where we know the USS Enterprise battle group is. What is a battle group, you say? Well, obviously at the heart of it is an aircraft carrier, a floating city, four and a half acres on the deck, several thousand people, at least 5,000 people on board. Nuclear powered.

The Nimitz class aircraft carrier has 85 aircraft on it, 50 of them are considered attack. The other 35 are support, refueling, airborne radar systems, that sort of thing. Imagine this huge thing moving along at 30 plus knots. That's 40 miles an hour. Its is an impressive thought. There were ten carrier aircraft involved in last night's attack. The ongoing attack right now, obviously we don't know much about that yet.

There are two cruisers in a carrier battle group. Tomahawk missiles, that is the key thing on the cruisers. They are considered an offensive ship in the carrier battle group. It has some helicopters as well, a crew of 360, the second largest vessel in a carrier group.

Destroyers: There is probably one destroyer in every battle group. It is considered a defensive ship, defending the carrier that is. But also has those Tomahawk cruise missiles and we do know for a fact that at least two destroyers in last night's attack, the USS McFaul and the USS John Paul Jones launched Tomahawk missiles at targets in Afghanistan several hundred miles away. Those cruise missiles have a range of at least a thousand miles.

Finally, the battle group has one other element, not as easily seen. Beneath the surface lie two nuclear submarines, Attack class submarines, filled with Tomahawk missiles once again, crew of 130. We do know in last night's attack, the Providence, which is a part of that Enterprise battle group, the Providence did in fact fire Tomahawk missiles at targets in Afghanistan.

So that gives you a sense of how the Navy projects power. It is interesting, Afghanistan is a land-locked nation and yet the Navy is really coming into the play in the early stages of this war against terrorism. We invite you to check on our web site, CNN.com, where you can learn a lot about the weaponry the military forces use, including this aircraft, the F-14 carrier based fighter. It is designed to do air-to-air combat to protect a carrier in the event of an attack. We will send it back to New York and Paula Zahn.

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