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 U.S. 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, according to The Washington Post.
CIA
flew stealth drones into Pakistan to monitor bin Laden house .The
aircraft allowed the CIA to glide undetected beyond the boundaries that
Pakistan has long imposed on other U.S. 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 U.S. official
familiar with the details of the operation. “It’s not like you can just
park a Predator overhead — the Pakistanis would know,” added the former
official, who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of
anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the program.
The
monitoring effort also involved satellites, eavesdropping equipment and
CIA operatives based at a safe house in Abbottabad, the city where bin
Laden was found. The agency declined to comment for this article. The
new drones represent a major advance in the capabilities of remotely
piloted planes, which have been the signature American weapon against
terrorist groups since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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 aircraft bears the
distinct, bat-winged shape of larger stealth warplanes. 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 President Obama and members of his national security team appear
in photographs to have been watching as U.S. Navy SEALs descended on
the compound shortly after 1 a.m. in Pakistan. The drones are also
equipped to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions, enabling U.S.
officials to monitor the Pakistani response.
The use of one of
the aircraft on the night of the raid was reported by the National
Journal’s Marc Ambinder, who said in a tweet May 2 that an “RQ-170
drone [was] overhead.”
The CIA never obtained a photograph of
bin Laden at the compound or other direct confirmation of his presence
before the assault, but the agency 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 U.S. 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 intentionally destroyed by U.S. forces — leaving only a
tail section intact — after a crash landing at the outset of the raid,
the paper said.
The assault and the months of surveillance
leading up to it involved venturing into some of Pakistan’s most
sensitive terrain. Because of the compound’s location — near military
and nuclear facilities — it was surrounded by Pakistani radar and other
systems that could have detected encroachment by Predators or other
non-stealth surveillance planes, according to U.S. officials.
“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
retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who served as head of
intelligence and surveillance for that service. The challenge is
multiplied, he said, when the surveillance needs to be continuous,
which “makes non-stealthy slow-speed aircraft easier to detect.”
Satellites
can typically 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 22,500 miles up.
By contrast, drones fly at altitudes between 15,000 and 50,000 feet. In
a fact sheet released by the Air Force, the RQ-170 is described as a
“low observable unmanned aircraft system,” meaning that it was designed
to hide the signatures that make ordinary aircraft detectable by radar
and other means. The sheet provides no other technical details.
Stealth
aircraft typically use a range of radar-defeating technologies. Their
undersides are covered with materials designed to absorb sound waves
rather than bouncing them back at sensors on the ground. Their engines
are shielded and their exhaust diverted upward to avoid heat trails
visible to infrared sensors.
Unlike the Predator — a
cigar-shaped aircraft with distinct wings and a tail — the RQ-170 looks
like more like a boomerang, with few sharp angles or protruding pieces
to spot.
The Air Force has not explained why the RQ-170 was
deployed to Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are battling insurgents with
no air defenses. Air Force officials declined to comment for this story. Online
