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Flying J-Stars keeps an eagle eye on IraqSophisticated spy plane could be key in hunt for Saddam
By Kris Osborn
(CNN) -- The J-Stars reconnaissance plane often flies 40,000 feet above the ground as the eyes of the Air Force, tracking the earth below. "We detect anything that moves on the ground," says Air Weapons Officer Capt. Michael Garret, who served on board a J-Stars with the 116th Air Control Wing in Operation Iraqi Freedom. "We then report those positions to either Air Force assets, coalition assets or to ground commanders," Garret said. Crew members said the plane can help greatly in the search for Saddam Hussein and remaining enemy fighters in Iraq. The spy plane's 21-member crew includes engineers, pilots, technicians, and intelligence experts who relay information through a secure link to both ground commanders and nearby planes. Lt. Col Mick Quantrall, the mission group commander, described how the J-Stars surveys the terrain below. "We take a real close look, some say like a chicken looking at a piece of corn very closely -- then when something moves, a lot of people react to it. It isn't just one or two positions, but the entire jet," he said. The J-Stars surveillance plane -- a modified Boeing 707 -- can survey the whole picture. J-Stars Senior Director Maj. Wade Brackins compared the plane's capabilities with those of the RQ-1 Predator, an unmanned surveillance aircraft: "A Predator is like looking through a soda straw at a very small area," Brackins said. "We can look at a larger area and say 'OK, there is something there.' Now the Predator can come in with higher resolution to be able to say 'Yes, that is what it is.' So all of that information then goes to the ground." Coalition officials in Baghdad believe the J-Stars will play a crucial role in post-war Iraq because its large, canoe-shaped radar can detect former Saddam regime officials or Saddam himself moving from one hiding place to another. Army Maj. John Simonton explained how the J-Stars could help find Saddam: "If someone cues us to look in a certain area where they suspect him moving, then we could look there and see if we are picking movement up." Then the information would be radioed to the right person. The plane employs two separate radar modes. One is a Doppler radar design to detect movement on the ground, called the Moving Target Indicator. The other is a synthetic aperture radar that sends back snapshots of the terrain below. Air Force officials said the aircraft flew more than 200 sorties during Operation Enduring Freedom. "In one phase of the war we were monitoring the Marine Corps unit and we had some suspicious movement coming off their flank side," Capt. Garret said. "We had sensors on the aircraft to detect that, as well as using off board aircraft to go visually (identify) that -- and it was enemy forces moving on their flank." Despite its many success stories, the J-Stars does have its limitations. For security reasons, Air Force officials will not discuss just how precise the imaging and radar systems are. Several officials, however, acknowledged that certain weather systems can complicate the radar system or made detection more difficult. "The J-Stars was not designed to work independently," CNN military analyst Ken Robinson said, "but rather in coordination with other reconnaissance assets. Crew members rely on a process called cross-cuing, where they communicate with land forces or lower flying aircraft to make a positive ID of any target." This is why crew members emphasize that no coalition member fires on a target based solely on what the J-Stars sees. These days in Iraq, with remaining enemy fighters blending into the population and staging guerrilla-style attacks, finding those targets can be a very difficult task.
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