The role of technology in the operation to kill Bin Laden

It's been just over 24 hours since the United States attaining the goal they had set years ago to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, something they did in an operation that was intended to kill the leader of Al Qaeda, as well has finally happened . The operation in Abbottabad, a town located 55 kilometers north of Islamabad, was to complete an operation that lasted many years. This operation, which lasted just over 40 minutes has been the end of a search that has lasted many years and in which the United States has used all possible resources, including technological ones, which have served to find bin Laden and to identify .

Bin Laden has been hiding the last eight months in a complex valued at more than one million dollars. Since then there have been focusing the investigation of U.S. intelligence and the CIA in September but thought she was a high probability that the leader of Al Qaeda are found in this complex work continued examining satellite images in successive months. The first meeting was Barack Obama on this matter was on March 14 and was the first of five events that remained, the last at 8:20 the day on which the transaction took place.

The operation was carried out by a group of U.S. SEAL, a special operations group of the United States military. These groups usually have a name but the name of the group to kill Osama Bin Laden has not been made public because it is a classified data.

Both before, during and after the operation of U.S. intelligence agencies have been using the latest technologies, which most of them are classified. JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command for short) is a group that was created in 1980 and since September 11 has become very important, growing exponentially in recent years, the intelligence group is responsible for preparing the way for other sensitive operations. This is made ​​up of highly skilled professionals working in collaboration with other agencies such as the CIA or the NSA. Following the introduction in 2004 of Stanley McChrystal commander and his boss, Gen. Michael Flynn, developed technologies based on forensic techniques can translate common data in useful intelligence.

During the months prior to the operation of the various intelligence agencies were evaluating different data at different stages in the evaluation that was thoroughly discussed many satellite images and these were found a key piece, a column of smoke coming out from time to time and implied that burned away inside the complex. The NSA was able to determine that the complex had no phone or internet connection. All information provided by the NSA and the work done jointly by JSOC and NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) was enough to help the CIA determine who was hiding in the complex was Osama Bin Laden , with a high percentage probability.

Once the intelligence brought to the table all the information to President Obama, it decided to give the green light to the operation, which began a few hours after it happened. When the SEAL group reached the place where the operation took place everything was followed live by the senior officials who were thousands of miles away in Washington, Barack Obama continued throughout the operation with live video and audio from the monitor room White House, accompanied by members of his cabinet and senior military officers.

This is possible because the soldiers often wear helmets with cameras that transmit everything that is happening live. These cameras are also used to analyze in real time what happens on the battlefield. The images received are examined in real-time systems that are capable of indicating the different people that are real-time by checking with the various databases they own. This is also accompanied by real-time satellite.

During the operation, in which several people died in addition to the leader of Al Qaeda could be identified in this because one of their wives called him by name while performing the engagement. The showdown with bin Laden in which he arrived to shoot his own gun, took place between the second and third floor and before he was killed by a shot in the left eye used a woman as a human shield. Once identified on the ground that it was Bin Laden's body SEALs members took him to one of the helicopters crashed, the other by a mechanical failure, and taken to one of the bases in Afghanistan, where confirmed by DNA that actually it was him. U.S. used DNA extracted from the brain of one of the sisters died of Bin Laden.

As we see, the same way that technology is very present in our lives we do with this case as in the army is also well, which also use more advanced technologies and the vast majority of them are really expensive which few details to be sorted.

The role of technology in the operation to kill Bin Laden written ALT1040 on 3 May, 2011 by David Blonde
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