Weapon of choice ... a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone aircraft. Photo: US Air Force
WASHINGTON: The CIA employed sophisticated new stealth drone aircraft to fly dozens of secret missions deep into Pakistani airspace and monitor the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, current and former US officials said.
Using unmanned planes designed to evade radar detection and operate at high altitudes, the agency conducted clandestine flights over the compound for months before the May 2 assault in an effort to capture high-resolution video that satellites could not provide.
The aircraft allowed the CIA to glide undetected beyond the boundaries that Pakistan has long imposed on other US drones, including the Predators and Reapers that routinely carry out strikes against militants near the border with Afghanistan.
The agency turned to the new stealth aircraft ''because they needed to see more about what was going on'' than other surveillance platforms allowed, said a former US official familiar with the details of the operation. ''It's not like you can just park a Predator overhead - the Pakistanis would know,'' he added .
The monitoring effort also involved satellites, eavesdropping equipment and CIA operatives based at a safe house in Abbottabad, where bin Laden was found. The agency declined to comment for this article.
The CIA's secret incursions into Pakistan's airspace underscore the level of distrust between the US and a country often described as a key counterterrorism ally, and one that has received billions in US aid.
Pakistan's spy chief, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, last week offered to resign over the government's failures to detect or prevent a US operation that he described as a ''breach of Pakistan's sovereignty''. The country's military and main intelligence service have come under harsh criticism since the revelation that bin Laden had been living in a garrison city.
The new drones represent a big advance in the remotely piloted planes, which have been the signature US weapon against terrorist groups since the September 11 attacks. In 2009 the air force acknowledged the existence of a stealth drone, a Lockheed Martin model known as the RQ-170 Sentinel, two years after it was spotted at an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The operational use of the drones has never been described by official sources.
The stealth drones were used on the night of the raid, providing imagery that the President, Barack Obama, and his national security team were watching as the US Navy SEALs descended on the compound.
The drones are also equipped to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions, enabling the US to monitor the Pakistani response.
The CIA never obtained a photograph of bin Laden at the compound or other confirmation of his presence before the assault, but they concluded after months of watching the complex that the figure frequently seen pacing back and forth was probably the al-Qaeda chief.
The operation in Abbottabad involved another US aircraft with stealth features, a Black Hawk helicopter equipped with special cladding to dampen noise and evade detection during the 90-minute flight from a base in Afghanistan. The helicopter was destroyed by US forces - leaving only a tail section intact - after a crash-landing at the outset of the raid.
The assault and the surveillance involved venturing into some of Pakistan's most sensitive terrain. The compound was surrounded by Pakistani radar and other systems that could have detected Predators or other non-stealth surveillance planes.
''It's a difficult challenge trying to secure information about any area or object of interest that is in a location where access is denied,'' said the retired air force lieutenant-general David Deptula.
The challenge is multiplied when the surveillance needs to be continuous, which ''makes non-stealthy slow-speed aircraft easier to detect''.
Satellites can provide snapshots of fixed locations every 90 minutes. ''Geosynchronous'' satellites can keep pace with the Earth's rotation and train their lenses on a fixed site, but they orbit at about 36,000 kilometres up. Drones fly at altitudes between 4500 and 15,240 metres.
Stealth aircraft typically use a range of radar-defeating technologies. Their undersides are covered with materials designed to absorb soundwaves, their engines are shielded and their exhaust diverted upward to avoid heat trails visible to infrared sensors.
Still, the missions were regarded as particularly risky because, if detected, they might have called Pakistani attention to US interest in the bin Laden compound.
The Washington Post
Sent by Keith Hayward.
No matter how much we criticize the USA and Israel,one cannot but respect and hold in awe their single minded devotion in going after their enemies.
I only wish India could take a leaf out of their book.
We make ourselves a laughing stock when the prime minister declares proudly that India WILL never carry out an operation like what America did.
How can we, nincompoofs that we are.
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