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American Morning
America Strikes Back: U.S. War, Space to Ground
Aired October 22, 2001 - 09:40 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We have had some confirmation that U.S. troops made a night raid into Afghanistan. What does that signal in terms of the start of a ground war? Let's get some perspective on what the troops might face.
For that, we go to Miles O'Brien. He is back from the CNN center.
Good morning again, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Let's take a walk through the battlefield of 21st century, shall we? We call this a vertical battlefield.
Gen. Don Shepperd, our military analyst, and I have been talking about ways to tell you about all the forces that the United States brings to bear on any sort of situation, Afghanistan, in particular, in this case, from space all the way down to the ground. And we have a pretty instructive animation.
Let's start in space, shall we, General? We're at 22,300 miles above the surface of Earth. That's an important altitude because that is what you call geocychronous orbit, which means what?
GEN. DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Geo-orbit is twice the radius of the Earth. It stays in the same place over the Earth for communications. These are the space warriors, the unseen heroes in space on which almost everything depends these days, Miles.
O'BRIEN: So as it rotates, the Earth rotates at the same rate relative to the satellite, meaning that that same spot on the Earth is constantly illuminated and used for communication, primarily -- there are some other aspects. This is not primarily where the reconnaissance satellites would exist -- too far away.
Let's go a little further down, a little closer to Earth. This is where we would see, in low Earth orbit -- LEO, as they call it -- that kind of thing.
SHEPPERD: LEO and HEO, Highly Elliptical Orbits and Low Earth Orbits -- basically to get close to the Earth to take pictures for high-resolution, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Typically, much more of a narrow focus, much more of a detail capability. Some of these satellites you can redirect their orbits, in order to focus in on a specific location.
SHEPPERD: You can, but they have windows in which they only look at the area for a certain period of time.
O'BRIEN: Let's move down a little bit farther, shall we? This puts us in the realm of the reconnaissance aircraft -- you could call these, right?
SHEPPERD: Right. We are using these altitudes only for instruction purposes. What we are saying is very high altitude. It could be much higher than this; it could be a little bit lower. We're showing something like a Global Hawk here, which may not be used. The U-2 operates up at very high altitude. These are airborne reconnaissance that can linger for long periods of time for photography and radar.
O'BRIEN: Basically, the point is here is that, unlike the satellites, you can direct them very specifically to a very specific location exactly where you want to get a picture, exactly when the weather is just right, not relying on orbital mechanics.
And as we go a little farther down, we get into...
SHEPPERD: Now you get airborne platforms, such as the E-3 Sentry AWACS that can direct the air war, provide information, Rivet Joint, JSTARS, those types of things that watch things on the ground and provide communications and direct the air war in real time.
O'BRIEN: This is basically a modified 707; that's a big radar dome, and it sends out a signal and can find blips all over the place, friend or foe, and direct fighters, whatever the aircraft, to the proper locations.
Let's move a little bit farther down now. Now we're in the fighter realm. This is an FA-18; we just saw them involved over the weekend. Bagram was the location. They've been very active in this fight off of carriers, right?
SHEPPERD: These can go from the deck all the way up to very high altitude, but they have pods on them that can zoom in, see things on the ground, and very accurately direct weapons, both laser-guided weapons, satellite-guided weapons, and dumb bombs and missiles.
O'BRIEN: We saw one of those missiles drop into the mountain there. Then that brings us down to -- and once again, we want to empathize we're not trying to give away altitudes here; these are just reference points to give you a sense of where we are -- we are not telling you this is where these particular aircraft are operating at any given moment. Fifteen thousand feet is a busy place for the predator and the AC-130 gunship. Tell us what that mission is.
SHEPPERD: The point about 15,000 is that below 15,000, AAA and shoulder-fired SAMs come in. If you go below that altitude, you're risking it. If you stay above it, you're better off, if you can.
O'BRIEN: So the arc of anti-aircraft fire would peak out at that point, and that's why 15,000 is a good place to be. If you get much closer than that, you have to be ready to deal with the possibility of anti-aircraft.
SHEPPERD: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: Let's go farther down, where that is the point.
SHEPPERD: Now you have the low fliers, the heroes in the helicopters -- and they are heroes, let me tell you. They're very vulnerable to AAA that is on the mountains, they are very vulnerable to shoulder-fired missiles.
The only thing we haven't shown is under the sea. We can come from undersea to outer space. And these guys in special operations -- Rangers, that type of thing -- say you can run, but you can't hide, and you'll only die tired. We have the ability to watch you and follow your signature day or night, bad or good weather, from undersea to outer space.
O'BRIEN: We are going to have to put that one up on a plaque, I think.
Finally, we get down right onto the ground, the people who are getting their shoes dirty in these sorts of situations. In this case, we are talking about special operations. One of the roles is to identify targets, correct?
SHEPPERD: It could be. Also, the regular soldiers can do this as well -- and fort air controllers talking to the ground fort air controllers. So when you put people on the ground, the Taliban now is playing our game. They're reacting to us; we're not reacting to them. They have to react to small forces, large forces, airborne assaults, as we've just seen, and bombs coming through the weather day and night. It's a tough problem for them.
O'BRIEN: A quick tour from 22,300 miles above the surface, right down to the hard scrabble dirt of Afghanistan, a tour of exactly how the U.S. military operates in a vertical sense.
Don Shepperd, retired general U.S. Air Force, we appreciate your insights.
Cnn.com is a good place to go if you want to find out a little bit more about this. We have all kinds of information about the various weapons systems, aircraft involved, and a lot of depth and context there as well, in case you miss Don Shepperd talking about all of these things.
That's it for now. We're going to be back with more. We're going to take another tour of the map room later, and we'll tell you a little bit more about the Predator, which is the unmanned vehicle which is flying overhead -- Paula.
ZAHN: Miles, thanks so much.
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