The military is concerned about a shortage of surveillance equipment as the pursuit of Osama bin Laden is heating up, senior Pentagon officials and congressional aides said in interviews in the last few days.
To address the sudden increased demand after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon is sharply increasing spending on intelligence gathering, accelerating purchases of reconnaissance planes and transferring surveillance drones from places like the Balkans to the Afghanistan area, the officials said.
More than US$1.3 billion of the first US$4.2 billion in emergency spending authority given to the Pentagon following the attacks will be devoted to improving intelligence gathering, senior Pentagon officials said.
A large part of that money will be used to accelerate production of the RC-135V/W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft and the Global Hawk, the Air Force's new long-range unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. The Global Hawk is still in testing but might be put to work over Afghanistan, the officials said.
"What we're simply doing is getting everything into the best possible position to use," said Undersecretary of Defense Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller.
Pentagon planners are also looking for ways to speed up purchases of the RQ-1 Predator, an unmanned aircraft that can loiter over a target for 24 hours. With a range of 806km, Predators could reach bin Laden's strongholds in eastern Afghanistan from bases in Uzbekistan or Pakistan. And with an array of sophisticated sensors, the drones can produce still photographs and live videos of activity on the ground from more than 13,050m in the air.
For those reasons, many experts say the Predator will be a vital tool for military commanders as they make last-minute decisions on the targets and timing of strikes.
"Predators provide the most detailed, continuous and up-to-date information," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.com, a Web-based military and intelligence policy group.
However, with the loss of two Predators over Iraq in the past month, the Air Force now has just seven immediately available for military operations, according to Air Force and congressional officials. A third unpiloted spy plane, possibly a Predator, was lost over Afghanistan a week ago. But it is not clear whether the plane belonged to the military or to the CIA.
The shortage of surveillance drones -- including the Predator -- prompted Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to warn NATO defense ministers last Wednesday that the US was likely to transfer some of its unpiloted reconnaissance planes from Macedonia and elsewhere in the Balkans to southwest Asia if the campaign against bin Laden and the Taliban intensifies in coming weeks.
Last week Wolfowitz said he told the NATO allies that surveillance drones in the Balkans "are going to be in even higher demand now." And he noted that intelligence gathering had become more critical as the US pursues bin Laden and his organization, al-Qaeda.
Once bin Laden and his associates' locations are known, Wolfowitz later added, "going after them is relatively the easiest piece of it."
Pentagon officials now say that much of the US$18 billion they hope to get from a US$40 billion emergency budget supplement authorized by Congress will be spent on intelligence and surveillance. The first two installments of that money will, among other things, help accelerate production of reconnaissance aircraft like the Global Hawk and Predator and buy computers that handle the raw intelligence data collected by satellites and aircraft.
RSS