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Taliban sees U.S. weapons of past, present and future
©Associated Press, WASHINGTON -- The U.S. fight in Afghanistan is relying on an odd mix of weapons -- from the past, present and future -- for a military that before Sept. 11 already was making the transition from arming for the Cold War to tooling for new threats. B-52s of Vietnam War vintage -- some older than the Air Force pilots flying them -- lumber hundreds of miles from an island in the Indian Ocean to drop tons of "dumb" bombs on Taliban trenches. Million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from Navy ships and submarines are aimed at turning terrorist camps into dust clouds. Army helicopters and Air Force AC-130 gunships watch warily for Stingers, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that the CIA provided to Afghan rebels in their 1980s war against the Soviet Union. Billion-dollar B-2 bombers, built to evade the Soviets' sophisticated radar networks, fly 44-hour missions from Missouri to drop the latest version of a "bunker buster" bomb first used in the Gulf War. Aircraft carriers, derided by some as irrelevant relics ready for retirement, launch dozens of fighter-bombers daily from the Arabian Sea, their sights set on decrepit but still dangerous Taliban air defenses and other targets. One carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, left most of its usual complement of Navy strike aircraft at their home base in Japan. The Kitty Hawk is loaded with Army special operations helicopters, some of which launched commando raids on Afghanistan on Oct. 20. The Afghan war also is providing a glimpse of the future for U.S. weaponry. The Global Hawk, a high-altitude spy plane that flies without a pilot, has been ordered into action over Afghanistan even though it is still in development, yet to be fully tested. Unmanned aerial vehicles, as the Pentagon calls this type of high-tech aircraft, do the job without risking pilots' lives. Also at work are unmanned Predator aircraft, which fly much lower than the Global Hawk and provide real-time video images of ground targets. An armed version of the Predator, capable of firing Hellfire anti-armor missiles, reportedly has been flown over Afghanistan. With the Taliban's air defenses largely disabled and winter weather approaching, the Pentagon also is sending into action the E-8 Joint STARS, a modified Boeing 707 jet with radar that can find and track vehicles on the ground at a distance of more than 124 miles, in any weather. The original idea, of course, was to track tanks and other armor on a traditional battlefield. In Afghanistan, a war that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says is being fought unlike any other, the vehicles to be tracked by Joint STARS include sport utility vehicles and pickups used by the Taliban. A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, emphasized that Joint STARS can track vehicles in all weather. "That will be helpful when you're looking for trucks or SUVs or others that are moving around," he said. The war on the homefront -- "homeland security," as the Pentagon calls it -- also features a mix of past and future. Air Force fighters are flying armed missions 24 hours a day over New York and Washington and over other parts of the country from time to time, a domestic air defense effort not seen even during the Cold War. At the Pentagon and other federal installations in Washington the Army has stationed machines that monitor the air for signs of biological or chemical agents -- a new capability that heretofore had been intended for use on a foreign battlefield.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
