U.S. Now Has Darkness as an Ally, Officials Contend

WASHINGTON —  The American military has taken the night away from the enemy in Afghanistan, giving the U.S. a tactical edge to accelerate its offensive against the ruling Taliban under cover of darkness, a senior defense official said.

“We own the night,” the official said this week, asserting that the Soviet Union never managed to do this during its disastrous war in Afghanistan from 1979-89. “To compare what they did to what we’re doing is a mistake. They used mostly slow and heavy stuff, tanks and other armor. We’re not doing that.”

Instead, Pentagon officials said, the United States has launched a bombing campaign designed to blind and deafen Taliban commanders by targeting radar and communication stations in addition to warplanes and airfields. The aim is to make the skies safe for a key part of the operation’s next phase--the use of helicopters carrying Special Operations troops on night hunts for enemy forces.

Special Operations forces have conducted some nighttime forays already, but the missions have involved such tasks as coordinating communications and targeting, the officials said. Once U.S. commanders conclude that bombers have done adequate damage to the enemy infrastructure, the forays are expected to become more numerous and to penetrate deeper into the country to search for Taliban forces.

One official with access to secret reports about the battle action indicated that Taliban defections already appear to be on the rise, a trend that is expected to continue as troops realize that they are up against an enemy who can see and kill them in the dark.

Although Pentagon officials would not disclose the launching points for upcoming helicopter-borne attacks by Special Operations teams--which include Army Green Berets, Army Rangers, the Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs and the Army’s most daring helicopter outfit, Task Force 160--they cautioned against assuming that these sites will be located in only one country. Talk at the Pentagon has focused on the former Soviet republics on Afghanistan’s northern border and the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Arabian Sea.

Pentagon officials refused to disclose whether Task Force 160, known as the Night Stalkers and headquartered at Ft. Campbell, Ky., has already been deployed to the war zone. The task force’s pilots are highly skilled at flying Blackhawk helicopters at night, dodging antiaircraft guns and missiles, and using an array of high-tech gear, including pictures of where they are going generated by the heat on the ground.

Night operations have long been valued by the U.S. military. Fear of high casualties limited their use during the Vietnam War, but night vision devices have improved steadily since then.

In December 1989, the combination of Green Beret teams on the ground and gunslinging versions of the C-130 transport plane in the night sky proved a lethal combination as U.S. forces successfully invaded Panama. That combination is expected to be employed in Afghanistan if concentrations of Taliban troops can be found.

In Panama, the Green Berets located enemy troops and the C-130 gunships circled low to do the shooting. The planes sprayed the ground below with rapid fire from Gatling-like guns.

In the decade that followed, big leaps were made in the development of night gadgetry and in training forces to use it to get the drop on the enemy.

Once they are assigned to a secret mission, Special Operations teams go into what they call “isolation,” a condition that has already been imposed on some teams chosen for night missions in Afghanistan. Members of such teams are cordoned off from their comrades and rehearse their assigned missions hour after hour under the most realistic conditions they can simulate. They often wear shoes that will leave the same kind of footprints as those left by the native population.