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CNN Sunday Morning

A Look at the U.S. Military Arsenal

Aired November 04, 2001 - 07:10   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.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: The Pentagon says some sophisticated technology is helping allied bombers zero in on targets in Afghanistan. The U.S. has two high-tech warplanes in the region, the JSTAR and the Global Hawk, which is an unmanned spy plane.

CNN's Joie Chen gives us a closer look at those high tech eyes in the sky.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOIE CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You just call it the JSTAR. That's what the Air Force calls it. It is a command-and-control platform in the air. It's used to support and direct ground warfare.

Joining us now from Washington with more insight into the JSTAR, CNN military analyst retired General Don Shepperd.

General, somebody described this to me as being something like an AWAC, except instead of looking down into the air, it's pointed down to the ground.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, that's probably a pretty good laymen's explanation, Joie. It's part of a suite of sensors and command and control vehicles. that is designed to see targets on the ground, and relay them to war fighters, and most important to get bombs on the right targets. I had a chance to visit these folks last week at Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia, and it makes you proud as an American. All the way from the wing commander down to the lowest airmen, these people are real professionals and experts at their work.

CHEN: Those guys we saw sitting in the back of the aircraft, essentially, they could be on the ground, except they happen to be in the air as the aircraft is watching what is going on the ground.

SHEPPERD: Yes, what you're seeing here is these are Atari kids, and the information technology ninjas of the modern world. Crews of 21 on long missions. One eight-hour mission can look at an area of about 386,000 square miles, the size of Afghanistan, in one eight-hour mission. They can carry a crew of 31, go up to 20 hours. They're refuelable. They have a long, 26-foot, canoe-shape radar underneath the aircraft, a synthetic aperture radar that enables them to look through all kinds of weather, day or night, and see moving vehicles.

The idea is that they can classify these moving vehicles, even between wheel and track vehicles.

CHEN: Now we have looked a bit of other videotape here, which actually has to do with who the JSTARs are relaying their information to. Sort of explain to us the relationship between what happens with the JSTARs and what's going on the ground, and what fighters can deliver.

SHEPPERD: Right, basically, they relay the information to an army ground control system. This can be hooked up many ways. It can go through satellites, but it goes to an information fusion center, that is then translated into intelligence, and that intelligence gets coordinates, gets the location of targets, gets to the targeting cells, and that information is relayed to the cockpits of airplanes to put ordinance on the target. These people are key, and they are magnificent at that time job. They are a really new capability since the Gulf War, where it was rushed into service, used during the battle of Cathay to see tanks coming down, so that airpower could destroy the tanks before they even got to the front.

CHEN: The question I have about the JSTAR is this notion of -- I mean, doesn't something have to be moving underneath it for the JSTARs to be able to take a picture of it?

SHEPPERD: Well, a radar can see anything that is radar- reflective. But the idea is to have a moving target indicators, or NTI, systems hooked up so you can discern a target is moving, you can keep track of it, and you can also classify it. The idea is to surveil, locate, classify the target, and get targeting-level information to the war fighter. It's a tremendous capability that no one else in the world has.

CHEN: And as you say very, very new, and we will see how it does, or what it does do his in the course of the operation in Afghanistan.

Another aircraft that the Pentagon has acknowledged bringing in to the mission is the Global Hawk.

SHEPPERD: Right, the 93rd air control wing from Georgia received their deployment. We will let the Pentagon say when they're deployed, if they're deployed, and if they've used, the same thing with the global hawk. The global hawk is in development stage. It's a long- range UAV, uninhabited air vehicle. The idea is to take off and go on long missions, 24-hour missions, loiter over the battlefield, and between things such as the JSTARs, the global hawk, AWACs and other airborne platforms, the idea is you cannot move without leaving the trail and being seen and having that translated into targeting information, where...

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(END VIDEOTAPE)

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