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Inside the air assault raid
By Kris Osborn (CNN Headline News)
(CNN) -- NATO's former supreme commander has a simple formula for winning battles. "It's essential to have boots and eyes on the ground," says retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who headed military operations for NATO from 1997 to 2001. A military analyst for CNN, Clark said Operation Enduring Freedom, the continuing military operation in Afghanistan, will likely involve more actions involving U.S. Special Forces or other elite units that specialize in ground fighting. "The use of ground troops in searches and raids is increasingly becoming common practice," he says. We've heard a lot recently about the successful use of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. So what might these attacks look like? U.S. Army Special Forces personnel, among them the Airborne Rangers, often strike under cover of darkness. They chopper into hostile territory, rappel to the ground in small teams and use the element of surprise to attack quickly and decisively with overwhelming force. They may be armed with M-16 assault rifles and grenades, and may also be wearing night-vision goggles. Helicopter pilots are likely to be similarly prepared, wearing night-vision devices that make a dark night look like mid-day and help maximize the attackers' advantage. Other surveillance forces are likely to be at work, too. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls them "fusion" -- the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle working in tandem with another drone, the Global Hawk, while JSTARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System) streams "real-time" images to a data command center. But once forces are on the ground, the conflict becomes lower-tech. Endurance, marksmanship and determination to strike quickly and aggressively are what usually separate the victors from the vanquished. One Ranger puts it succinctly. "Physical fitness is the hallmark of the Rangers," he says. And a key rule in an assault raid is that you never turn your back on your enemy, he says. An air-assault raid, a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger tells CNN, succeeds in part by using speed and surprise. "We choose the time, place and method of attack," he says. The goal, he says is limiting "the amount of time between when the gunfight starts and a target is hit." In some instances, air assaults are supported on the ground by Humvees equipped with .50-caliber machine guns. The NATO military action in Kosovo is widely regarded for its effective use of air power, which ultimately led then-President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and the Serbs to surrender. Yet the campaign's success was credited, in part, with an implied threat from NATO -- its ground troops. European NATO members were prepared to put troops on the ground if the air campaign proved insufficient to oust the Serbs, Clark says. The Serbs, he says, took note. "It was the threat of ground troops which was the deciding factor in the Kosovo campaign," he says.
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