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American Morning
Pentagon Says We May Never Know Precisely How U.S. Navy SEAL Neil Roberts Died
Aired March 07, 2002 - 07:09 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: More now on the war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon says we may never know precisely how U.S. Navy SEAL Neil Roberts died. Roberts was one of seven American servicemen who were killed earlier this week in Operation Anaconda. Now, images transmitted from an unmanned military drone like this one actually allowed commanders to Seattle Roberts' death as it unfolded. It appeared that he was executed by the enemy after falling from his helicopter. But U.S. officials say that fall actually may have killed him.
Joining us now to talk more about the surveillance technology and the fighting, CNN military analyst General Don Shepperd, who joins us from Washington. Welcome back, General.
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: Good morning.
We're going to start off with the fighting. First off, we talked about an American commander about a minute ago saying that this battle will continue as long as the Taliban don't surrender or until they are all dead. What is a realistic timetable here?
SHEPPERD: Well, they've been talking about in terms of weeks. Now, we don't know whether that means two weeks or several weeks. Remember, the Tora Bora area, which is a much larger area, took about three weeks, from early December until just about to Christmastime.
On the other hand, there appear to be many more fighters in this particular 60 to 70 square mile area. So it could take several weeks to really clean it out and go in every cave up there like they want to, Paula.
ZAHN: I know commanders have said they've been surprised by the level of resistance, of the al Qaeda firepower and the fighters, and it now appears as though the al Qaeda troops are mushrooming, reports that they're coming in from Pakistan. What can you tell us about that?
SHEPPERD: Well, if they're coming in from Pakistan, it's really good news, if you can believe that, for the American operation, because as they said, we want to kill or capture them. So if they're being resupplied, their resupply routes will be hit and they also will be attacked as they get into the area. So the purpose is to kill or capture these people and the more of them that assemble, the more of them that will happen to.
ZAHN: Are you surprised to hear the numbers we're hearing now, that there could be close to 1,000 al Qaeda troops left out there?
SHEPPERD: No. I've even heard as many as 1,500 this morning. I don't think we know. There are reports that several hundred have been killed, but I'm not sure we have a handle on exactly how many people are there. You're estimating from the air. You're counting. But we don't know for sure, Paula. How ever many it is, we'll take them on, is what it amounts to.
ZAHN: Now, there are people who think that the level of resistance should show us something else, that perhaps they're trying to protect someone, perhaps Osama bin Laden. Does that make sense to you?
SHEPPERD: It makes sense. On the other hand, everything that we're hearing from intelligence says there's no indication either Omar or bin Laden are among these troops. And if I were bin Laden, I certainly would not be there with all the Americans around and searching heavily in this area and all the weapons available. I don't very seriously that either one of them are there. And I'm not sure that either one of them are still alive.
ZAHN: All right, General, let's move on to some of the technology that's now being used. We talked about the use of this drone, the Predator that unfortunately captured pictures of Neil Roberts', he was killed earlier this week. Describe to us what the Predator does, how it works, what it's capable of doing.
SHEPPERD: Yes, basically this is a RQ-1 Predator drone. General Atomics is the prime contractor. It's a light airplane, about a 50- foot wing span, about 26 feet long. It takes off from a 5,000 foot strip. It goes and orbits for 16 to 20 hours. There are four air vehicles or airplanes, if you will, in the system, two vans on the ground. It has three sensors, an electro-optical sensor that takes a picture and a satellite or a synthetic aperture radar.
Now, these are transmitted to a ground station and then retransmitted to a satellite for broadcast to other locations and exploitation, if you will, by a Trojan spirit satellite communications system. About 65 people manning the whole system. This thing can stay airborne for up to 24 hours and it flies at about 60 to 70 knots at medium altitude.
They can also, as has been shown in this thing, transmit pictures to the AC-130 gunship for targeting out there. So it's very flexible. Also, reports that the CIA have put hellfire drones on this to fire at targets. So it's called an unmanned air vehicle if it's just the sensors and no weapons, an unmanned combat air vehicle if it has weapons on it. But very effective in this scenario, Paula.
ZAHN: Can it give you much specific information about the movement of these al Qaeda troops?
SHEPPERD: Yes and no. Basically you can see people on the ground. You can't see details about who they are. You can see them moving and it has an infrared system, as well, so you can see at night and of course the synthetic aperture radar enables you to see through the weather if it's a radar reflective target. So you can tell people are there. You can count them. But you're looking through a soda straw at a small area. So you have to be very careful. There are, there's a person that flies it, a person that operates the sensors back in the van and then other people that exploit both the pictures and the radar to transmit it to other locations.
So the answer is yes, you can see a lot, but you can't see it in explicit detail.
ZAHN: As always, we appreciate your insights. Thank you, Major General Don Shepperd. Good to see you again.
SHEPPERD: Right.
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