How Technology Won Sadr City Battle

One of the reasons violence in Iraq has subsided so dramatically was a significant battle that U.S. forces won in Sadr City just five months ago. Sadr City - part of Baghdad - is home to two million Shia, and the turf of fiercely anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

For years, insurgents in Iraq have been stymieing U.S. troops with homemade, low-tech weapons, like car bombs and improvised roadside explosives.

But in this battle of Sadr City, as 60 Minutes learned in a high-level debriefing with the U.S. commander in Iraq, the Americans overpowered the Shiite militias with hi-tech, including the most advanced, sophisticated, whiz bang hardware and software on Earth, like electronics, lasers, and high-resolution cameras that can literally cut through the fog of war.

"This was some of the heaviest fighting that we had experienced during our two months in Sadr City," Hort told Stahl. "Right where we're standing."

Standing there, or any place in Sadr City, could not have been done just five months ago - the area was off-limits to Americans. For years, the fiery cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Shiite militia controlled the streets.

Last March, they began using the neighborhood as a launching pad to lob rockets into the nearby "Green Zone," the seat of the Iraqi government and site of the U.S. Embassy.

"Not just one or two, but we're talking 20 to 30 rocket attacks coming out of Sadr City," Hort explained.

Col. Hort gave General Odierno his first briefing on the battle, and 60 Minutes was invited to sit in. It's rare that reporters can videotape sessions like this. We were asked to turn our cameras off only once, and were allowed to broadcast only a few slides that were later de-classified for us.

The U.S. military had wanted to mount an attack in Sadr City, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki balked for a year because the militias are Shiites like him, and that made a decision to fight them politically risky.

Odierno waited for the prime minister, saying the decision to go ahead was Maliki's to make. "I think what he finally realized were that the militias that had safe havens in Sadr City were really trying to destabilize the government of Iraq, and he realized it would add instability to his own government," the general told Stahl.

Once Maliki gave the go-ahead, a U.S. Stryker battalion went in, but they confronted a steady stream of militia reinforcements. "I mean every day, it was 20, 30, 40 new guys that were coming down to fight," Hort recalled.

So Hort and his men had to do something to keep them out. They decided to build a barrier straight across Sadr City. It would also create a buffer zone wide enough to prevent militia rockets from reaching the Green Zone.

To build the wall, Col. Hort's Charlie Company began putting up massive T-shaped concrete slabs. Fighting erupted almost immediately, as sniper fire came in from every direction; Charlie Company retaliated with massive tank fire.

"We fired 800 tank rounds in this fight. We haven't fired that many tank rounds since the start of the war," Hort told Stahl.

Col. Hort said "the building of the [so-called] T-wall became a magnet for every bad guy in Sadr City." This was one of the most intense engagements in the entire war. Yet even as the battle raged, the wall went up.

"It was literally concrete barrier by concrete barrier. We just wasn't goin' out there puttin' up some barriers. I mean, it was a fight every inch of the way," he said.

"Guys would climb the ladders to unhook the crane chains from the wall unarmed, while people are firin' at 'em. So it was high adventure," Lt. Col. Brian Eifler remembered, whose team laid down cover fire while some soldiers, wide open and exposed, unhooked the chains from the crane.

On days when the shooting was particularly fierce, they were able to put up only eight slabs. "Every type of weapon system the enemy had, they tried to use against us up at the wall. I mean, it was step by step by step. And fighting literally every hour of the day," Holt recalled.

The military called in sniper teams from the elite Navy SEALs and air support; F-18 fighter jets and Apache helicopters protected the flanks. But here's what really made the difference: an arsenal of advanced, high-flying technology.

The military used UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) with highly-improved camera systems, so sensitive they can see the enemy even at night, through clouds and gun smoke from high up. They can spot someone smoking, or a weapon on someone's side. And they have sensors so advanced they can hear enemy radio transmissions and pinpoint their location.

"In 2003 we didn't have all the systems that are now available. We had some, but we didn't have all the UAVs," Odierno explained.

In the battle for Sadr City, they used two different UAVs. One was the "Shadow" drone. Twenty or thirty seconds after a militia team fired a rocket, the Shadow locked on them, shadowed them, watched them move, and set up for their next shot.

Then an armed UAV, the "Predator," was activated. Actual pictures of a battle on the streets of Sadr City were captured: on the video, one can see a group of militia fighters rushing to a car that had just been hit by a U.S. Hellfire missile. They remove a mortar tube from the trunk and load it into a second car which they drive through the streets to an open field. At that point the Predator locks its sights onto the vehicle and fires off another missile. According to the Army, this killed two fighters inside the car, and destroyed the mortar tube.

War by remote control: this is how Charlie Company hunted down the militia rocket teams and whittled down their numbers. "They went from 20 to 30-man groups down to 5, 4, and in some cases only one or two," Hort explained. "The Predator and the Shadow were just phenomenal in their ability to see the enemy, particularly after he shot a rocket."

60 Minutes has learned from other sources that Col Hort's ground troops were supported by a secret, special-ops unit called Task Force 17. Using their own Predators, along with Iraqi undercover operatives and eaves-dropping, Task Force 17 was able to take out some of the militia leaders who were based north of the wall and hiding among the civilian population.

With the help of the drones and their high-powered cameras, Army commanders were able to see or "map" the entire theater of operations, and figure out the enemy's tactics and patterns with so-called "persistent surveillance."

"In some cases we would wait four, six, even ten hours to do the engagement because we didn't want to kill the guy. We wanted to go after the whole group, you know, the company chain of command as you want to call it that. They would actually pick up the rail, drive in their vehicle, go to another location and do an after-action review on what they did," Hort said.

In other words, after a long skirmish, all the individual militia rocket teams would rendezvous in a large group with their leaders.

In another video, you can see how Col. Hort's men would be tracking, as the militia fighters went to a set location for a battle assessment and their new assignments. "So once they got to that site, that's when we would do the engagement. Sometimes that took six, eight, ten hours to wait. And that's what Predator allowed us to do. It truly preyed on the enemy," he explained.

According to Odierno, the Predator flies at about 10,000 feet and is quite silent, making it difficult for the enemy to hear.

This was the first time UAVs were used this way at the brigade level, allowing soldiers on the ground to manage and synchronize the information themselves. They call it "find, fix and finish."

"All of this was pushed down to the brigade commander and used in this fight, primarily focused north against the rocket teams," Hort said.

Col. Hort and his men were able to watch in real time, as the enemy planted over 300 armor-piercing roadside bombs or IEDs. And so they made the decision - early in the battle - to use tanks and Bradleys (fighting vehicles), fortified with thick reactive tiles. They were so effective, said Col. Hort, that even while they actually struck 120 IEDs, the crews were all protected.

Hort told Stahl the number of attacks dropped from 60 to three or four a day.

So the battle of Sadr City was won with a combination of hi-tech and no tech, lasers and electronic eyes in the sky, and cement.

Over the course of the fighting that lasted eight weeks, the number of U.S. troops grew from 700 to 2,000, up against roughly 4,000.

An estimated 700 of the militia fighters were killed; six Americans died. Near the end in May, Col. Hort says as many as 40 of the militia leaders fled, and a ceasefire was negotiated. "It was my opinion at the brigade level-- that the cease fire was declared because they really didn't have a whole lot left to throw at us," he said.

By the end of the battle the T-wall was finally finished. "It's 4,000 meters, so close to two miles in terms of where the wall started and finished. And that's just the exact width of Sadr City," Hort said.

It seals off about a quarter of Sadr City and it's been beautified, with local artists painting murals of peaceful, happy scenes, that have to be approved by the U.S. Army. To get from one side of the wall to the other, the locals have to go through "entry points" and are checked when going back and forth.

But Gen. Odierno says it's easy. "And it's usually just showing of an ID. But it is a checkpoint. And again that's to limit the movement of the insurgents for the most part."

Merchants and traders are back in business in Sadr City. At a wholesale market in Sadr City, trucks deliver fresh produce from the countryside everyday now. The militias used to shake down the vendors at the market, but that's over.

Still, the local businessmen are not happy about the wall. Asked about the T-wall, a translator told Stahl, "They feel that they're cut off from the other side, which is affecting their businesses."

"You can tell them I think when we're able to get more security forces over time, we will take the T-walls down," Odierno replied.

Yet local citizens are providing intelligence, solid tips that have led to the capture of weapons and IED caches. But Odierno says the situation is fragile. "You eliminate safe haven. And now we can start to build. But it takes time. I mean, that's the issue. It just takes time."

Many of the fighters who survived, the general told 60 Minutes, fled to Iran and Syria to try and regenerate. The idea, he says, is to create a neighborhood that doesn't want them back.

Produced by Rich Bonin