Secret spy planes take up the fight
Surveillance now the key to entry of special forces and
ground troops
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday October 11, 2001
The Guardian
American and British spy planes, including ageing RAF
Canberras and Nimrods with eavesdropping equipment the
Ministry of Defence does not like to talk about, are scouring
every metre of Afghanistan, a country twice the size of
Germany.
It is the start of a crucial new phase in what military planners
have repeatedly called an unprecedented "intelligence-led"
operation to root out Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaida network
hiding somewhere in the country.
Unless the Taliban collapses very soon, the campaign will
almost certain include special forces, helicopters, and larger
units of ground troops.
The initial phase of night-time air strikes concentrated on priority
military targets to give control of the skies. US planes will now
continue with round-the-clock search and destroy missions.
The military force was strengthened yet further yesterday when
F15 strike and ground attack aircraft left the US base at
Lakenheath in Suffolk to take part in what Washington calls
Operation Enduring Freedom and London has designated
Operation Veritas.
Flying by daylight "opens up more targets", defence officials
said yesterday. It also enables pilots to "revisit" previous
targets. The inhabitants of the capital Kabul, Kandahar, the
Taliban's spiritual home, and Herat in the west witnessed
bombing for the third day running.
But the new emphasis is on surveillance and reconnaissance.
Surveillance
At the Americans' request, Britain has deployed Nimrod R1s
from the RAF's secretive 51 squadron based in RAF Waddington
in Lincolnshire. The aircraft are akin to mini GCHQs, picking up
radar signals and communications from the ground, including
mobile phone conversations.
Bin Laden's entourage has continued to communicate with the
outside world despite the bombing, defence sources say.
The Americans have planes with a similar capability to the
Nimrods. They include "River Joints"- adapted Boeings - and the
US navy's Orion EP3 of the kind forced down by China earlier
this year.
Canberra PR9,a high-flying reconnaissance plane adapted from
Britain's first jet bomber, is photographing the mountains and
valleys of Afghanistan for any sign of movement by Bin Laden's
bands of Afghan Arabs. They will also search for Taliban units
whose "light motorised infantry" consist mainly of small trucks,
sometimes with small anti-aircraft guns mounted on them.
American U2s are engaged in similar operations.
The US, meanwhile, has also deployed unmanned aerial
vehicles - the low-flying Predator and high-flying Global Hawk.
American special forces, including a small number of SAS
soldiers have also been engaged in gathering intelligence on the
ground.
Helicopters, special forces, and ground troops
Once the surveillance operation has pinpointed "emerging
targets" such as Bin Laden units, the way will be paved for the
next phase of the rolling military operation - attacks by heavily
armed US Apache helicopters and insertions by small groups of
special forces brought in by low-flying Black Hawk helicopters.
Andrew Brookes, air power expert at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies, warned yesterday of the dangers of
deploying noisy helicopters, which could be vulnerable to
shoulder-held Stinger missiles supplied to the mojahedin by the
CIA in the 1980s and which did so much damage to Soviet
helicopters.
What is really needed for helicopters is "ground superiority" as
well as air superiority, says Mr Brookes.
But the Pentagon was reported by the New York Times
yesterday to be preparing raids using Black Hawks with night
vision and targeting equipment and systems to protect them
from fire from the ground.
The helicopter gunships are part of the US army's 160th special
operations aviation regiment, which has two battalions at Fort
Campbell, Kentucky, and a third at Hunter army airfield in
Georgia.
The 160th is the only sizeable American army unit trained for
night missions. It was engaged in the invasion of Panama in
1989, the Gulf War in 1991 and the firefight in Somalia in 1993 in
which 18 American soldiers were killed.
Black Hawk helicopters can be carried in transport planes which
could be flown to Uzbekistan where some 1,000 American
airborne troops from the 10th mountain division have already
been deployed.
They could also be based on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk
which left Japan over a week ago without its compliment of 70
planes.
But defence officials on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday
cautioned against expectations of the early use of Apache or
Black Hawk helicopters, and of the deployment of larger units of
ground troops.
If British troops were called upon, they would be soldiers from
the rapid reaction force, including paratroopers.
"No option is off the table," a senior British defence source said
yesterday. He added that if ground troops were to go into
Afghanistan, there would do so in large numbers. "You would go
in with enough people to make sure your people are safe," he
said.
Larger numbers of ground troops could be deployed using
Chinook helicopters in separate operations to hold bases
captured from the Taliban.
But British defence sources warned that military operations
"might be resolved before Ramadan [which begins on November
16 for a month]". However, he added that they could equally
continue throughout Ramadan, and through the winter into next
spring.
Northern Alliance
Whether it does not could depend on the activities of the
Northern Alliance, the forces fighting the Taliban and now sup
ported by the US as well as the Russians and the Iranians.
They are now claiming victories over Taliban units north of Kabul
in operations which could give them control over the whole of
northern Afghanistan, including the area bordering Uzbekistan.
They are also claiming defections from the Taliban. Western
intelligence agents are almost certainly operating with them. The
French have said as much.
The US and Britain would like the alliance to play a big role on
the ground to help defeat the Taliban. However, they are making
it clear that the alliance would never make a credible alternative
government.
They want what they call a "broad coalition", opposed to any
connection with al-Qaida, and to allow the huge display of forces
now converging on Afghanistan, to drift away. guardian.co.uk |
