EC-130 flights deliver U.S. message
over Afghanistan loud and clear
By Wayne Specht, Stars and
Stripes
Courtesy U.S. Air Force
An EC-130 Commando Solo aircraft similar to this one is broadcasting messages to Taliban
troops in Afghanistan. A virtual flying radio and TV studio, it is one of six assigned to
the Pennsylvania Air National Guard's 193rd Special Operations Wing and used for
psychological operations. |
Taliban soldiers who hear voices from the skies over Afghanistan may
think it’s divine intervention.
The Department of Defense would like them to see it that way.
Soldiers are invited to lay down their arms through messages from
EC-130 Commando Solo flights during Operation Enduring Freedom service.
During a Pentagon news conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said the EC-130 flights continue to broadcast messages to the ground in Afghan dialects.
The daily radio broadcasts into Afghanistan tell the Taliban they are
“condemned,” and that U.S. troops will eventually be on the ground there.
According to English language translations posted on the
Pentagon’s Web site, one message gives the Taliban forces instructions regarding how
to surrender to U.S. troops while touting the deadly firepower of the U.S. military.
“You have only one choice. … Surrender now,” one
message ended.
The Pentagon said the propaganda broadcasts that began last weekend
originate from a flying radio and television station built on the versatile C-130 Hercules
airframe.
Broadcast in Pashtu and Dari, more than a dozen messages are beamed
into Afghanistan for five hours each morning and five hours each evening by Commando Solo
aircrews.
The plane, which is outfitted to conduct psychological operations,
transmits on three frequencies — two AM and one shortwave.
One of the AM frequencies was used previously by a Taliban radio
station that saw its transmission capabilities destroyed by U.S. airstrikes, a defense
official said.
Although the broadcasts started with the air assault campaign,
leaflets advising Afghans of the frequencies were first dropped Oct. 14.
In a country where owning a radio is a luxury, just how many are
listening — and what effect this airwave offensive is having — are not known.
One Afghan specialist commended the Pentagon for the effort but also
expressed skepticism.
“You don’t achieve an uprising with radio broadcasts,”
said Omar Samad, director of the Afghanistan Information Center in Washington and producer
of Azadi Afghan Radio. “You need organizational efforts, money and arms to do
that.”
Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a
Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said employing psychological operations to win the
hearts and minds of troops is not new.
The operation is not “a revolution in warfare,” however,
“helping proxies win on the ground, and conducting manhunts, are both age-old
missions for the United States," O’Hanlon said. “The stakes are higher than
was generally the case in the past.”
Commando Solo is the Air Force’s only airborne radio and
television broadcast aircraft.
Six of the four-engine planes are flown by the Air National
Guard’s 193d Special Operations Wing at Harrisburg International Airport in
Middletown, Pa.
“Electrons, not bullets” is the motto of the crews, who
receive their missions from the State Department.
Commando Solo aviators fly psychological operations and civil affairs
missions using products developed by Army PSYOP units on AM and FM radio, and TV images
over any frequency.
As they fly high over a battlefield or a troubled country, they do a
distinct job, said squadron officials.
Each of the $70 million planes is capable of pre-empting a
country’s normal programming and replacing it with an informational broadcast.
The U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) at
Fort Bragg, N.C., the only active-duty component psychological-operations unit, develops
and produces messages for broadcasts.
Once airborne, the mission control chief and five electronic
communications systems operators occupy their search, medium and high frequency, very-high
frequency, and ultra-high frequency monitoring positions in the mission compartment.
The compartment has cassette and reel-to-reel audio recorders, a
video recorder, television monitors, receivers, noise modulators, transmitters and a live
microphone.
Rather than try to overpower an existing signal, operators generally
will broadcast on an open frequency.
Search operators monitor radio and television frequencies to find one
clear of other broadcasts and within target range. Operators match transmitters inside the
aircraft with corresponding antennae on the vertical tail of the aircraft.
Commando Solo aircraft have been used in other recent conflicts,
including Bosnia and other Balkan regions, Panama, Grenada and Somalia, squadron officials
said.
On Thanksgiving Day 1990, the 193rd SOW began broadcasting Voice of
America programming into the Kuwait operations theater, helping to prepare the battlefield
psychologically by offering Iraqi soldiers food, bedding and medical care if they
surrendered.
Broadcasts also reminded them of the consequences if they did not.
Combined with the leaflet drops, Air Force officials said an
estimated 100,000 soldiers surrendered or deserted when the war ended 100 days later.
Associated Press sources were used in this report.
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