New Mission, New Techniques -- Defense News
JSTARS Now Tracking Taliban in Afghan Mountains.
Airplanes that were designed in the 1980s to spot Soviet tanks rumbling through central Germany, and used in Iraq to track forces moving under the cover of a sandstorm, now are being used in Afghanistan to spot Taliban fighters trudging on foot at night along rough mountain trails.
The planes are E-8C JSTARS - Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft.
"We're looking at some new applications for the radar," confirmed Col. William Welsh, operations group commander at the 116th Air Control Wing, which operates the U.S. Air Force's 17 JSTARS planes and is based at Robins Air Force Base, Ga. "We're trying to determine exactly what its capabilities are."
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My Comment: I am not privy to the exact capabilities of this technology, but I do not that the intent is to one day track all movement on the ground. This is just the second generation of what will soon be technology that can track and monitor all movement within a defined area. The military applications of such information are truly mind-boggling ..... this does not only give our forces the high ground, but it also denies the enemy any possibility of hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan or any other safe haven within the range of these aircraft. You can run .... but you cannot hide .... will have new meaning when such tech becomes available to our forces in any conflict zone.
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