“It must be a strange world up there”

An inside view of a coalition airstrike

VIDEO FEATURE: Click to play the footage: AC-130 over Afghanistan. (7 min 24 sec)

This video, apparently of a night strike against a Taliban camp, was posted anonymously on Google Video by a U.S. soldier who had access to the footage. The date portrayed is unclear, but it was originally posted on internet sites starting in 2002 or 2003. A thermal imagery spotting camera captures and records the images.

According to the comment by someone who re-posted it:

“This video appears to show an AC-130 doing its job very effectively, Its impresive accuracy and apparent ability to own every bad boy they see running about… I would love to have a chat with the guys that fly these things, it must be a strange world up there!”

There was a time in the heady days after the liberation of Kabul when air-power enthusiasts believed that Al Qaeda and the Taliban could be eliminated with few casualties by the use of precision munitions guided by small teams of special forces. Four years later, insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq and southern Lebanon have defied this approach, avoiding defeat in the face of overwhelming air power. Insurgents have suffered losses, but have managed to remain solvent and to win the PR war by turning airpower's greatest advantage--its ability to strike at a distance--into its greatest liability by widely publicizing (and often exagerating) civilian casualties.

The AC-130 is precise, but the video also hints at the fog of war in which airstrikes inevitably occur. It shows pilots making life-and-death decisions based upon indistinct shapes below them. And, as in every case, airpower is only as precise as the intelligence that directs it. Regardless of precautions, mistakes occur. Here’s a provocative clip from the audio, which I tried my best to transcribe:

Speaker 1:  “You do see the rectangular building next to it Greg?”
Speaker 2:  “Yes sir”
Speaker 1:  “That’s affirmative...That’s the mosque, do not engage the mosque.”
Speaker 2;  “Roger”
Speaker 3: “The square building is the mosque or is…”
Speaker 2: “The RECTANGLE! The Rectangle!”
Speaker 1: “The Rectangular building is the mosque.”
Speaker 3: “Roger that.”

And later:

Speaker 1: “Ok, in front of the mosque there’s three vehicles, oriented east-west…”
Speaker 2: “Yes. Got a vehicle moving now…”
Speaker 1;  “You are clear to engage it”
            …A few seconds pass…
Speaker 1: “Standby, Do not engage. Do not engage.”
             …A few seconds…
Speaker 1: “You are now clear to engage the vehicle…and any personnel around that you see.”

The voices we hear are air support callers and the crew in communication with the commanders that must sign-off on air strikes (at various times, the US has had to run each of its targeting decisions past allies--not sure if that's going on here...perhaps some of our readers with military expertise can shed light on what’s going on here in the comments section.)