FORTUNE
October 1, 2001
The Counterterror Arsenal
What weapons and tactics will the U.S. bring to bear in this new war?
By Stuart F. Brown
Military commanders need intelligence to pick targets and plan strikes, and U.S. leaders doubtless are wishing they had more of it right now. The reputation of the spooks at the Central Intelligence Agency and the bigger but less known National Security Agency, both of which failed to anticipate the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, is at a low point. Their intelligence arsenal was apparently more suited to the Cold War than to the new era of asymmetric war against terrorism into which America was thrust on Sept. 11.
Geostationary satellites with huge antennas that can intercept electromagnetic signals are little use against an enemy that chooses to switch off its cell phones. Laser-guided bombs have become amazingly accurate, but they are only as good as the information used to point the laser. "We've got lots of ways to blow things up, but finding the right place at the right time is difficult," observes Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.
But that doesn't mean that the U.S. military is completely unprepared for the new kind of combat it faces. Over the past 15 years or so, the Pentagon has been refining an array of small-unit tactics and technologies that it will now bring to bear against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors in the stark, craggy terrain of Afghanistan and, very likely, against other terror targets. Whatever form it takes, the operation in Afghanistan will be full of surprises, and it will be a far cry from the doomed frontal assault the Russians undertook there with their columns of tanks and infantry.
Even in a theater of combat in which "signals intelligence" from eavesdropping satellites is of limited value, the U.S. has an asset that can both identify targets and destroy them: the Special Forces. Commando units of the Army based at Fort Bragg, N.C., as well as certain Navy and Air Force units, are among the roughly 30,000 Special Forces troops that will play a major role in antiterrorist actions during the months--and possibly years--to come. Some may already be on the ground in Afghanistan or a neighboring country.
Special Forces units arrive behind enemy lines aboard helicopters and, if a landing strip is available, aboard transport planes. One of their first missions in Afghanistan is likely to be seizing and securing an airfield north of Kabul to use as a base of operations. They are also likely to establish a presence in the part of the country controlled by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Helicopters and aircraft supporting the Special Forces will be equipped with infrared-suppression devices and pyrotechnic flares to confuse heat-seeking missiles--countermeasures that may be needed to elude U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles the CIA supplied to Afghan forces when they were fighting Russian invaders. (Although the missiles have a shelf life beyond which they may malfunction, unknown numbers of the shoulder-fired Stingers are still in circulation, as may be some of their Russian-made counterparts.)
Special Forces troops bring with them an array of specialized skills, including surveillance, sharpshooting, demolition, storming buildings, and collaborating with friendly local forces. In the case of the elite Army Delta Force unit, which is shrouded in secrecy, troops may have language skills appropriate to a region and operate in disguise. Mindful of tough lessons learned during previous daylight missions--especially the battle of Mogadishu in 1993--the Special Forces often prefer to move and strike in the dark using night-vision equipment. When they launch an attack, the Special Forces rely on surprise and heavy firepower from a small arsenal of weapons to devastate their target and be gone before a counterforce can respond.
Technology is the friend of the Special Forces "operators." Squads may have assigned to them a Predator drone that loiters a few thousand feet overhead, taking infrared or video images of nearby targets and opposing forces. (Drones are dispensable, but they aren't invulnerable; one recently crashed in Afghanistan.) When a Special Forces unit is in danger of being overrun, or has identified an enemy force that's worth attacking, it can call on a helicopter gunship for backup. In situations crying out for more firepower, the operators may be able to call in "Spooky," as the turboprop AC-130 gunship is called. Descended from an earlier gunship used in Vietnam, the AC-130 is based on the venerable Lockheed Hercules cargo plane. From its left side protrude a pair of multibarreled 25mm Gatling guns, a 40mm Bofors cannon, and a jumbo 105mm cannon heavy enough to arm a tank. Spooky flies over a target making gentle left turns, its side-firing, computer-directed weapons unleashing a fearsome rain of destruction.
A main tactic of the Special Forces is likely to be to stay out of sight, hunt stealthily for a target, and then project a laser spot on it, making possible the almost pinpoint delivery of tremendously powerful aerial weapons. So-called precision-guided munitions, including cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs, will be essential to limiting collateral damage in this campaign and in other strikes to come. These "smart" bombs have a laser seeker and movable tail fins that adjust the weapon's glide path after it is released from an aircraft, steering it toward the spot of light on the target. Laser-guided weapons are still the most accurate, able to strike within less than ten feet of an intended point. The focus of weapons research and development since Desert Storm, however, has been on equipping weapons with GPS receivers and inertial-guidance systems that can guide them through smoke or clouds where a laser designator won't work.
If the Taliban choose to mass some of their captured Russian tanks for an armored assault on U.S. troops or Northern Alliance rebels, they can be attacked by an aircraft carrying the "sensor-fuzed weapon," a dispenser that spits out 40 rocket-powered submunitions that descend gently after their parachutes unfurl, searching with infrared sensors for tanks to kill with a blast from above, where their armor is thin. Should an important Taliban target prove to be protected by significant air defenses, Air Force F-15Es can attack with AGM-130A air-to-ground guided missiles from as far as 40 miles away. In flight, this weapon sends a video or infrared image of the target back to the aircraft, where a weapons system officer can see the approaching aim point and manually steer the missile home. The AGM-130A was used to destroy heavily defended bridges in Kosovo.
A crucial Special Forces mission that is doubtless being planned is to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons should the current regime crumble under internal pressure from factions sympathetic to the Afghani Taliban. "We know where they keep them, in an area enclosed by sort of boxed mountains that give a good security perimeter," says Tim Brown, senior associate at GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-analysis group in Alexandria, Va. "We would have been concerned about this even if the attacks hadn't happened. There's probably been a plan in the works for some time."
Although U.S. intelligence failed to provide a timely warning of the traumatic attacks on America's homeland, it can help make the response as effective as possible. Imaging satellites have sharp enough eyes to count the people in a crowd, for example. "We have unsurpassed overhead-reconnaissance capabilities, and such imagery will be essential to help identify certain targets in Afghanistan and assess the state of Taliban preparedness," says Steven Aftergood, senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a policy organization in Washington.
And the NSA, which can't use its huge antennas in space to eavesdrop on Osama bin Laden and his confederates in Afghanistan if they aren't using cell phones, may still help shed light on the Sept. 11 attackers and their supporters, according to author James Bamford, who has dogged the shadowy agency for decades and written two books about it. "With the FBI investigation going on, names and telephone numbers are turning up, which means that computer searches can be run using the tapes of international calls the NSA has intercepted in recent months," he explains. "Maybe they will get some hits that couldn't have been made before the attacks, because nobody knew these numbers were of interest."
It isn't too much to hope that the military may be able to take back the element of surprise. Of course, the things described here are only the ones the Pentagon is willing to acknowledge. In the so-called black world, where next-generation hardware is developed, virtually silent helicopters are known to have been tested. Who knows what other weird materiel the operators may have?
Copyright 2001 Warren Publishing, Inc.
