Navy commanders say targets dwindling; planes returning with their bombs

By Susan Sevareid

Associated Press

ABOARD THE USS ENTERPRISE – U.S. fighter pilots bombing Afghanistan are running out of targets – often returning to their carrier on the Arabian Sea with unused live bombs, the captain of the USS Enterprise said Tuesday.

Pilots bombed “a couple” of Afghan planes on the ground during overnight strikes, but generally “it’s not a real target-rich environment,” he said.

The captain’s name, and that of others in the force, cannot be published because of U.S. Defense Department rules aimed at protecting relatives back home from any possible threat.

The initial military campaign may be “short and sharp,” according to the admiral of the Enterprise, which includes the carrier and other ships and craft, as well as 7,500 navy personnel. However, he said, warplanes and missile-launching ships could be called back from time to time.

In Washington, Defense Department officials said the attacks on Monday included five long-range bombers, including a pair of B-2 stealth bombers and three B-1B’s. They joined 10 strike planes launched from aircraft carriers like the Enterprise in sending bombs and missiles to air defense and other military targets across Afghanistan. Two U.S. naval vessels and one submarine launched 15 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

About 20 U.S. warplanes participated. That was half as many as in Sunday’s opening assault on Afghanistan, the country targeted because it is harboring Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The Enterprise captain said cockpit video images of the planes hit on the ground would be shown to journalists aboard the carrier later Tuesday.

“Frankly, I don’t even know how many of those planes on the ground were even flyable,” he said. “They aren’t now.”

The Taliban’s air force had consisted of about 15 Soviet-era jet fighters that had seen action exclusively as bombers in recent years. Afghanistan’s Taliban ruling militia has been using anti-aircraft guns and some unguided surface-to-air missiles, but was not believed to have an especially capable air defense system – certainly nothing like those American forces withstood in Yugoslavia or Iraq.

Pilots spoke Monday of shifting their missions from combat air patrol to striking at ground targets, an indication the Taliban weren’t putting up much of a fight in the air.

Fighter jets took off and landed through the night, with the second wave of operations still in progress by midmorning Tuesday. The Sunday night operations had lasted 15 hours and included striking targets as well as escorting planes dropping humanitarian aid.

The admiral said extraordinary precautions are being made to avoid collateral damage, with pilots required to confirm all sites before firing. But he said he could not say whether anyone was killed on the ground in Afghanistan.

Some pilots spoke of running into relatively heavy anti-aircraft missile fire or spotting unguided surface-to-air missiles; others attracted only light weapons fire.

Pilots dropped packets of food and medicine designed to flutter to the ground to minimize the chance they would injure people. The humanitarian airdrop was intended to show Afghans that the United States was after terrorists, not ordinary people. Hunger is widespread in Afghanistan, a country devastated by war and drought.