Plan calls for air assault to kick off war

By Robert Burns
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In the opening hours of war in Iraq, volleys of terrain-hugging cruise missiles and torrents of precision-guided bombs would seek to blind Saddam Hussein's military, cutting military communications and clearing the way for a ground invasion that would sweep north from Kuwait.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the idea is to create "such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on that the end is inevitable."

The end Myers and others hope for — but aren't counting on — is an Iraqi collapse so quickly after the first shots are fired that U.S.-led forces could enter Baghdad without a fight.

How Iraq responds to the initial air barrage will be a key factor in determining the timing of the ground war. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of Central Command, may launch the ground assault just a few days after the air attack. In Desert Storm in 1991, the air campaign stretched to five weeks before the ground war, which lasted only 100 hours.

Of the 250,000 U.S. troops arrayed against Iraq, about 130,000 are in Kuwait. That would be the main launching pad for a ground invasion, to include about 30,000 British troops. Franks yesterday met with his Army commander in Kuwait, Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, and then returned to his base in Qatar, where he would give the first attack orders to U.S. forces throughout the region.

The overall scenario would differ from the 1991 war over the same ground, so-called "swarm tactics" — simultaneous, coordinated attacks by air, conventional forces and commando units, designed to confuse and overrun Iraqi defenders — would replace that war's five-week softening-up by air strikes.

The main Army forces are the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division, the Army's only helicopter assault division, both in Kuwait.

With more than 200 tanks, the 3rd Infantry is expected to spearhead the drive to Baghdad. In a sign that soldiers of the "Iron Fist" division have moved to the brink of battle, soldiers of Company A, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, were issued their "basic loads" of live ammunition yesterday. They were told to break camp and be ready to move into action on a moment's notice.

Also assembled in northern Kuwait are more than 50,000 U.S. Marines. Some are expected to take part in a dash up the western flank of the Tigris-Euphrates Delta toward Baghdad, while others take the southern city of Basra and the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway, Iraq's outlet to the Persian Gulf.

If the Iraqi defense doesn't crumble swiftly, the war could last weeks and pose grave risks for U.S. troops. One perilous possibility is that Saddam might foil the U.S. battle plan with a pre-emptive chemical or biological attack on allied forces.

A senior defense official in Washington said yesterday that U.S. intelligence had detected signs — but no solid proof — that some soldiers in an Iraqi Republican Guard unit south of Baghdad had been given chemical munitions. Other officials called the signs inconclusive but troubling.

About 1,000 U.S. and British warplanes are arrayed on Iraq's periphery, and analysts have said they expect as many as 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles to be launched in the first 48 hours.

The first planes to penetrate Iraqi airspace may be the Air Force's radar-evading stealth jets — the F-117B Nighthawk fighter, which led the attacks on Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War, and the bat-winged B-2 bombers.

At about the same time, some 30 Navy ships and submarines in the Gulf and Red Sea would launch hundreds of satellite-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Anthony Cordesman, a leading expert on Iraq and U.S. military power, foresees a new kind of air war.

"It will be designed to paralyze enemy forces rather than destroy them," he wrote in an analysis on Saturday. Once the shooting starts, he concluded, the Iraqi government "will be gone in days or weeks."

Another key element of the air campaign would be Navy F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats flying from five aircraft carriers — three in the Persian Gulf and two in the eastern Mediterranean. Each carries about 50 strike planes and some two dozen support aircraft.

The Air Force's fighters and bombers would launch from bases around the Gulf, plus the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Some might even come from Europe. The Marine Corps has dozens of F/A-18 fighters, AV-8B Harrier jets and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.

The U.S. strategy is predicated on speed — not just in the time it would take ground forces to reach Baghdad, but also the speed of communications that would enable fighter and bomber pilots, for example, to switch target coordinates in mid-flight.

Once under way, the ground assault is designed to be a lightning movement similar to the opening of the Gulf War, with M1A1 Abrams tanks, mine-clearing vehicles and other armored forces blasting through dirt berms and across oil-filled trenches on portable bridges laid by combat engineers.

Close air support would come from Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and Marine Corps Harrier jets, among others. "We've been practicing 'the dance' — the battle rhythm," said "Scott," the commander of a Harrier squadron based on an assault ship offshore.

The main axis of attack was expected to involve the Army's 3rd Infantry Division and 1st Marine Division, striking northward on the western side of the Tigris-Euphrates Delta and crossing the Euphrates near Ramadi.

From there they would wheel east toward Baghdad and Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and clan stronghold, which he was likely to defend with his best troops, a Republican Guard division.

Cordesman and others say that despite years of intermittent U.S. and British bombing of Iraq's air defenses in the southern and northern "no fly" zones, Iraqi retains formidable batteries around Baghdad. These include sophisticated surface-to-air missiles that could pose serious danger to allied pilots, even at night.

Saddam's wild card could be chemical and biological weapons; he claims he has none, but U.S. officials believe he does and may use them if his survival is at stake.