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American Morning

America Strikes Back: How Special Forces Might be Deployed in Afghanistan

Aired October 19, 2001 - 09:37   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: Let's bring in our military analyst General Don Sheppard, who is of course keeping us on the straight and narrow as well on all of these things. I want to talk a little bit at least about how in fact special forces might be deployed in and around this region, given what we know about how troops have been forward deployed.

And, general, I guess one of the thing that comes to mind immediately are those carrier battle groups out there in the Arabian sea. We have an image, a graphic which we put together, which depicts probably what might be happening onboard the USS Kitty Hawk, which as we know left Japan without its flight wing, thus making possible to be useful for helicopter pilots, kind of a joint operation. Let's look exactly how mission might be flown off that deck.

And general, this would be probably a Pavilow (ph) hawk helicopter, which would have to refuel along the way. There is a lot of coordination involved here, right?

GEN. DON SHEPPARD, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: There is indeed. That is a Pavilow helicopter there, and we also have Pave (ph) Hawks coming off to refuel by MC-130 Talon, which gives them unlimited range, about 400 miles into the country, which is about a four-hour flight for these airplanes. It's a long way. These are very capable forces, can operate in night and all kinds of weather.

O'BRIEN: All right, so that's just one way. There are many other points of ingress, if you will, from what we know about where U.S. helicopters, where aircraft are, and where some of our ground troops might be.

Of course, the caveat on all this is that while many of these governments around Afghanistan have said, yes, you can put people on the ground here, but so long as they're used for humanitarian purposes or search and rescue. Is that one of those wink and nod, diplomatic statements.

SHEPPARD: It could be. The secretary of defense has been very careful to say that he is going to allow each nation to characterize what they can do to support and what the forces within their country are doing, but basically, we need bases to station our special operations forces, to refuel them, and to receive larger Army forces, that come in later, Miles. They are going to have to tell us from the Pentagon and also from the countries involved what they're allowing these forces to do.

O'BRIEN: All right, with all of those disclaimers, why don't you give the lay of the land, if you will, and at least in general terms, give us a sense of and what special operations role will be at this juncture.

SHEPPARD: Right, let's take a look at the telestrator, if we can. If I can go to this telestrator here. I'm going to mark the key cities here. First of all, Kandahar is the center of activity from Kabul, the capital, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. Those are the major population centers held by the Taliban forces. They have to be able to communicate back and forth between these cities and resupply forces back and forth between the cities here.

Now the whole idea of inserting special forces, if you can, is -- I will clear the last lines out of there. The whole idea of special forces is to come in and insert between these lines people that can intercept resupply missions, that can tell you where they are going on so that airpower can be brought on. Also, the Northern Alliance at the same time now will be moving on Mazar-e-Sharif and down toward Kabul, trying to secure those areas. The whole idea is disrupt the movement of forces, cut off their communications.

Now, one other thing I would like to state, is that when -- by going into the Kandahar area, and between Kandahar and Kabul, this would be a line of retreat for the Taliban forces from Kabul to Kandahar. They may have no way to retreat. So the special operations forces to watch and listen and tell us where they are, so we can call in airpower and further to disrupt when the time comes to do that.

O'BRIEN: Give us a sense then, general, and special operations when they are on the ground. How useful can they be in identifying those targets for the air campaign. As time goes on as there become fewer and fewer obvious targets, it becomes more difficult, no matter how good your precision weapons are, if you can't find target, they do no good?

SHEPPARD: These are small teams of forces. Don't think that of the special forces as large groups of heavily armed troops. They are small teams, a dozen men, this type of thing. They can get in quietly, they can watch day and night, they can also mark targets call in airpower from the AC-130 gunships, relay targets to airborne- forward air controllers so we can call in heavy airpower. This is a joint team that is well practiced between special operations and the airpower forces that we have available. Very well practiced and very, very powerful -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: General Don Sheppard, thank you very much.

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