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Old March 11th 04, 06:00 AM
Kevin Brooks
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"D. Strang" wrote in message
news:BVR3c.16402$m4.4457@okepread03...
"AllanStern" wrote

CNN is reporting this morning that the US Mil is about to deploy

U-2 spy
planes, JSTARS acft, and Rivet Joint RC-135s to search for bin Laden.

They
claim that the US is going to maintain round-the-clock

surveillance/search to
locate him. They say the acft will be controlling some RPVs in the

search.

E-3, E-8, RC-135 are really the A-Team in Command, Control, and

Communications.

The problem is, that none of them work worth a **** in mountainous

terrain.

If you are going to have an air to ground war, then you really need to

have the
A-Team there for the rack and stack of finding and killing targets while

managing
tankers, bombers, attack assets, etc. Having seen airborne radar in

action in Pakistan,
I can tell you that it will be tough work to associate all the noise and

dead spots.

I suspect you are right about the E-8, but not-so-right about the RC-135 and
U-2; the first has no real use for ground mapping radar and does not have
such a capability, while the second is far from being limited to using just
SLAR. The RC-135 is undoubtedly there to keep OBL from using any handy
radios, cell phones, and the like; the U-2 can also do some of that, and
provide photo coverage with realtime feeds to users and analysts.

Brooks