The Pentagon today confirmed that US B-52 bombers were dropping very heavy loads of bombs, a tactic known as carpet bombing, on Taliban troops and other military targets in the air campaign in Afghanistan.
The acknowledgment that frightening sticks of unguided bombs were being dropped followed eyewitness reports from northern Afghanistan on Wednesday of the heaviest raids yet against Taliban troops protecting Kabul and Mazar-iSharif.
Bombs from one eight-engine, Vietnam-era B-52 sent up a wall of orange flame and clouds of dust in Taliban positions overlooking opposition-held Bagram airbase north of the capital Kabul, according to a Reutersphotographer.
"It is fair to say that we are using both precision and non-precision weapons while attacking Taliban forces," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, senior operations officer on the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautiously told a media briefing at the Pentagon.
Pressed on whether the United States was dropping large loads of bombs from B-52s against concentrations of troops, he responded: "That is part of our campaign, it is part of our capability. And we do use it and have used it and will use it when we need to."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week that a small number of US troops had been put on the ground in northern Afghanistan to direct air strikes on Taliban troops guarding the key crossroads of Mazir-i-Sharif and that the success of raids there had increased sharply.
Mr Stufflebeem declined to comment on an apparent sharp increase in raids in the past 48 hours. He would say only that the big jets based on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean were being used all over Afghanistan, especially recently against large gatherings of troops.
But, responding to questions, he challenged the term carpet bombing as old and inaccurate.
"It's an old expression," the admiral told reporters of the attacks by B-52H bombers, which have been modernized since the Vietnam war to carry accurate air-launched cruise missiles and satellite-guided as well as unguided bombs.
"Heavy bombers have the capacity to carry large loads of weapons and often times if the targetpresents itself ... it's possible to release an entire load of bombs at once," Mr Stufflebeem said.
Such carpet bombing over the years has been described by some critics as an indiscriminate action which threatens the lives of innocent civilians in the area of large targets.
But Mr Stufflebeem said the military preferred the description of dropping a long stick of bombs on large but specific and easily-hit targets.