Cable News Network 17:20 October 5, 2001 Friday
Titan Rocket Blasts Off, Carrying Top Secret Cargo
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: Satellite pictures help to build an image of potential and possible targets. Take a look at this map. This is one of 15 bases in Afghanistan run by the Taliban and/or Al Qaeda. And the map was constructed using several satellite images, as well as other intelligence. It was done by a group called Globalsecurity.org. John Pike from that organization joins us now.
John, help us understand. You're taking a look behind you here at a satellite picture, or a picture shot by the satellite. Help us understand how much detail intelligence people can get out of these things.
JOHN PIKE, DIRECTOR, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well, the type of detail we've getting in a wide-area shot, such as this, can enable you to see that the city of Kabul is over here, housing areas. And far over on the edge, you can barely make it out, the airport, which, unfortunately, is within mortar range of the downtown. So this is probably one area that the U.S. military would want to stay away from, to avoid an ambush.
CHEN: Let's get closer in there, to the shot of the Kabul Airport. This is also a satellite image. If you can point some of the details out to us from the satellite image of the airport. That aircraft there, is that likely to be some sort of fighter aircraft, or what?
PIKE: Well, we can see, down here at the bottom, a jumble of what are obviously commercial aircraft. A couple of other transport aircraft over here -- seem to be a little more operational, because they're out by themselves. Some of these may be passenger planes. Some of them may be specially modified cargo planes that the Taliban has been using to drop bombs. What we don't see evident, in this picture, at least, are some of their fighter aircraft. But we have seen imagery of other airfields, where they do have some MIG-21s.
CHEN: The satellite images -- and you're getting these from space imaging -- but the satellite images can also give you an idea of activities far away from a place like Kabul, and more the outlying areas of Afghanistan. If we could take a look now at some of the troop movement activity that you are able to see, show us what this is. Explain this to us.
PIKE: A little difficult with one image of this resolution to tell what we are looking at. This appears to be a line of soldiers, commandos, terrorists marching along the road here. And unfortunately, with one image of this resolution you really can't be sure. If we had imagery from that classified keyhole satellite that was launched a few minutes ago, we might be able to tell. Or if we had another image of this type a day later and there was no one there, then you would say, "This is an area with troop activity. This is an area that you might want to send some special operations troops in to capture them, to question them, try to get Bin Laden's unlisted phone number.
CHEN: If we were going show our audience the big wider picture, even on something like this, it would give us an idea, John. about the difficulty of the terrain and the movements. How important -- how useful is it to military operations and planning have the images?
PIKE: Imagery like this and the much better imagery that the classified systems give are absolutely essential for mission planning, mission rehearsal, detecting targets. With the commandos going in, knowing exactly what sort of buildings they are going to be taking down. It's not going to be decisive. Ultimately that is going to require soldiers with guns, pointing them at enemies on the ground. But they aren't going to do that until they have the imagery to know where the enemy is.
CHEN: You just can't get past that human element of it, can you? John Pike. His organization is Globalsecurity.org and we are going to hear from you more later on as well. John Pike, thanks very much. Now we return to Bill in New York. Bill?
HEMMER: All right, Joie. Love that technology.
copyright 2001 Cable News Network
