E-mail aids in war on terror

Wednesday, May 1, 2002 | 9:33 a.m.

Technology has made the U.S. operations in Afghanistan a far different war from the one waged in Vietnam 30 years ago, according to a Navy SEAL who recently returned after commanding troops in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Despite having forces spread over 240 square miles, Capt. Robert Harward was able to communicate quickly with his troops through e-mail on computers linked to satellites, he told the local Las Vegas Council of the Navy League of the United States Tuesday night. As a result, an operation could be under way within 24 hours.

Retired Navy Cmdr. Jim Jefferis, who was in a patrol boat squad during the Vietnam War, recalled that in 1970 it would take him up to five days before he got permission to launch an operation to rescue Americans from the Vietnamese jungles. "By that time the enemy was gone," he said.

"Our ability to move information back and forth today is mind-boggling," Harward said. "Technology has changed everything."

Harward, who has returned to his base in Coronado, Calif., stopped in Henderson Tuesday to speak to the group of retired Navy men and women and civilians who support the sea-going services.

The captain commanded a coalition of 2,800 men and women in three areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in some of the most dangerous territory covered by combined forces from the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Turkey.

In addition to e-mail, his troops had the technology to track and capture suspected terrorists by "owning the night" with laser gun sights and scopes that pierced the darkness, Harward said.

Afghanistan was familiar territory for Harward, who graduated in 1974 from the Tehran American High School in Iran. During summer breaks he had hitchhiked through the same mountains where he took command.

But the officer trained in underwater demolition saw the irony in Navy and Marine forces taking to the mountains 10,000 to 12,000 feet high. They would be dropped by helicopter into snow drifts 10 feet deep, he said. In some places where helicopters couldn't go, men climbed shear rock walls.

"SEALs without flippers," Harward described his men. "Instead they had snowshoes on."

Sometimes after the men landed in the snow, 4-foot-tall monkeys that are indigenous to mountains of the area would rain rocks down on them.

The operation was successful because the coalition of manpower and firepower was small, agile and flexible, Harward said.

As to whether Osama bin Ladin was killed in the assault, Harward said he couldn't be certain. "The big question is, did we vaporize him?" he said. If bin Laden disappeared in an explosion from a bunker-busting bomb assault, there won't be any DNA to identify him.

At least the threat of terrorists arriving from Afghanistan is gone. "They do not have the ability to project their power from Afghanistan," he said.

In the aftermath of the special operation, no detail escaped Harward's attention.

After 42 missions that destroyed 500,000 pounds of weapons and explosives, his men rescued two dogs, named JDAM and CAS, from a village that had been reduced to rubble. The pups were adopted by Navy families in Coronado.