Lavandera: High-tech aircraft to Afghanistan

Lavandera

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military is sending two high-tech warplanes to Afghanistan to take part in the coalition airstrikes against the Taliban government.

CNN's Ed Lavandera, based at the Pentagon, talked about that and the U.S. military's strategy in this report.

LAVANDERA: The latest is that, over the course of the last 24 hours, the U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have engaged in attacking the Taliban front lines. The idea is to cut off communication and supply lines to the Taliban.

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And they're also hoping that over the course of the next couple of days, perhaps the next couple of weeks, that the northern town of Mazar-e Sharif will be bombed enough so that the Northern Alliance could soon topple that down, and they're hoping that would allow ammunition drops to be brought into the country.

They're hoping that a lot of this bombing campaign that we've seen over the course of the last 24 hours will weaken the Taliban front lines.

The Pentagon is also announcing to everybody that they will introduce the use of two high-tech war planes in the region, as well. One of those is called the Global Hawk, and these are weaponry and aircraft that will help the U.S. military track moving forces along the ground.

They will also use an aircraft known as the J-Stars. And the idea behind this is, as the air campaign continues over Afghanistan and the troops along the front lines scatter and move throughout the region, they hope that these high-tech surveillance planes will help the U.S. military forces on the ground and in the air track the movements of the Taliban forces ... as well as aiding the Northern Alliance troops that are fighting against the Taliban.

Also, in the Washington Post this morning, the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, wrote an opinion piece where he also engages in a broader discussion of this military campaign and this war on terrorism, saying that the U.S. needs to look beyond this war and start thinking about the other kinds of attacks and the other kinds of dangers that are lurking out there in the world.

He said that the U.S. and its military needs to be aware that from now on, the idea of a war might not be classified into one specific theater, but it's a more vague and a more far reaching sort of threat that the U.S. is under.