View of campaign vs. Qaddafi from high in sky

U.S. airmen continue to play a key role in the NATO effort to aid rebels in Libya as they seek to topple longtime strongman Muammar Qaddafi.

And CBS News correspondent Charles D'Agata got a chance to go along for the ride as a giant NATO AWACS plane took to the skies - and cruised six miles off the ground.

"The best way to see how the war in Libya is going is from 30,000 feet up," D'Agata observed.

On the outside, an AWACS is a radar dish with wings, D'Aagata explains. On the inside, it's a sophisticated command center, from which a team of specialists controls the battlefield below.

"We provide the air picture and air traffic control and surveillance, and that intensity is still there," Maj. Gen. Steven Schmidt, the hands-on commander of NATO's fleet of AWACS, told D'Agata.

So far, NATO aircraft - jet fighters, AWACs and others -- have flown more than 15,000 sorties and unleashed more than 5,600 airstrikes on pro-Qaddafi ground forces in Libya.

American servicemen made up more than half of the multinational crew on the flight D'Agata was on.

The crew was able to come to the aid of one of the most vulnerable parts of Libya, the besieged city of Misrata.

Pilots identified what they believed to be a surface-to-air missile site near Misrata. Controllers on the AWACS craft guided four F-16's to the region, where the pilots were ordered to drop their bombs.

Each successful strike against Gaddafi's forces is a boost for the rebels fighting them. But even with NATO's help, says D'Agata, progress has been frustratingly slow.

Says Schmidt, "We are keeping the pressure on Qaddafi and the regime, just as we have from the start, and we are going to continue that until we get the job done."

For all the might of the combined forces operating over Libya, the job isn't done yet, D'Agata points out, and slowly but surely, NATO's resources are being drained by a weak but stubborn enemy.