TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022591/0225995.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.0 KB | 205 lines

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                                                            THE GULF WAR, Page 34

STRATEGY

Fighting a Battle by the Book


A military plan designed to fight World War III will get its
first real test on the ground and in the skies over the Persian
Gulf

By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT -- Reported by Dean Fischer/Dhahran and
Jay Peterzell and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    The U.S. plan for fighting a ground war remains, quite
properly, a national secret. But by examining the basic tenets
of U.S. military strategy, it is possible to draw a fairly
detailed picture of what an allied ground campaign might look
like. The key, say defense analysts, is an obscure Army
publication called Field Manual 100-5. It lays out the
principles of "AirLand Battle," a military doctrine taught to
every American Army plebe and war-college student since the
early 1980s.

    An AirLand ground battle would bear little resemblance to
the World War I-style frontal assault that Saddam Hussein's
generals seem to be bracing to fight. "Don't give me a meat
grinder," General Norman Schwarzkopf has repeatedly told his
operations planners. Instead, AirLand doctrine calls for air
attacks on the enemy's rear areas to cut off supply lines,
destroy command-and-control centers, and strike at reinforcing
units in order to isolate the battlefront.

    The strategy is aimed, ultimately, less at Iraq's weapons
and troops than at the enemy's mind. Ground units would make
deep, rapid thrusts through enemy lines; troops would take
advantage of the combined effect of artillery, air support,
naval bombardment and armored assaults on targets carefully
chosen to throw the enemy off balance by spreading fear,
confusion and dismay. Says Lieut. General Charles Horner,
commander of the combined air forces in the gulf war, who
worked closely with the Army on the latest version of Field
Manual 100-5: "The idea is to feed the enemy in bite-size
chunks to the ground forces to devour."

    The AirLand scheme was devised as the battle plan for World
War III. Its roots go back to the 1970s, when NATO strategists
were trying to figure out how to defend Europe from an attack
by overwhelming numbers of Soviet tanks. The key was to fall
back on the front while trying to disrupt Soviet supply lines
from the rear. A seminal 1979 study by Joseph Braddock, a
military consultant, showed that the U.S. could predict the
location of Soviet armor units as they moved up toward the
front and that even modest success in slowing the flow of
Soviet reinforcements could produce significant effects on the
battlefield, tipping the balance just enough to give NATO
forces temporary tactical superiority.

    For an AirLand battle to succeed, commanders must learn to
plan ahead: they must sequence operations so that the effect
of a deep attack on Day One will be felt precisely when those
crippled rear forces are needed at the front on Day Five.
Relying less on brute force than on operational elegance, it
requires commanders to concentrate their efforts on attacking
the right thing in the right place at the right time. The
enemy's crucial "center of gravity" -- a term borrowed from
Prussian strategist Karl von Clausewitz -- is that target whose
destruction will have the greatest ripple effect on the enemy's
overall military operations.

    The debate over whether a land war is even necessary largely
misses the point. Much of that discussion is a continuation of
the World War II-era argument between the Army and the Air
Force about the proper use of air power. Traditionally, the
Army has considered the Air Force an adjunct to its ground
forces, providing close-air support for tactical maneuvers; the
Air Force, on the other hand, prefers to think of itself as a
power in its own right, capable of destroying the enemy's will
to fight with long-range strategic bombing strikes. In an
AirLand battle the Army and Air Force coordinate their efforts
from the start. A senior Army official described it as
"holding the enemy down in the rear while you gobble him up
piecemeal in the front."

    The entire allied campaign thus far has unfolded like a
classic AirLand operation. In this case, the allies had the
luxury of starting with the air war. It began with deep strikes
against strategic targets (including major command-and-control
centers and facilities for producing chemical and biological
weapons) and with missions aimed at giving the allies air
superiority (attacks on air-defense sites, airstrips and Iraqi
planes).

    In a matter of days, the bombing campaign shifted to "deep
interdiction targets" -- military jargon for communications
facilities, major highways and bottlenecks in supply lines. As
a senior Navy official discussing air strikes against Iraqi
bridges put it, "All those bridges are AirLand bridges."

    Within a week, the bombers began zeroing in on what allied
commanders calculated to be Iraq's center of gravity. That
could be almost anything: a function, like command and control;
a symbol, like the ziggurat at Ur; or a person, like Saddam
Hussein. But the allied commanders decided that in this war the
center of gravity is the Republican Guard, the well-trained,
highly mobile 150,000-man force that Saddam relies on for
operational flexibility near Kuwait. "If you can destroy the
Republican Guard," says a senior Army planner, "you will unravel
the entire Iraqi army. The rest of them will be like fish in
a barrel."

    In the days before the start of a ground offensive,
according to the AirLand scheme, the focus of the air attacks
moves closer and closer to the front -- tanks, troops,
minefields and artillery emplacements. Analysts say there is
no need to destroy the Republican Guard and other troops "in
detail"; the rule of thumb is that when units suffer 30%
attrition, they usually experience a sudden, sharp decline in
capability. When that happens, the enemy loses the ability to
respond to an invasion. That is the moment for the final push
on the ground.

    The land battle called for by the AirLand doctrine would be
violent and swift. Following Schwarzkopf's battlefield dictum,
"Surround 'em and pound 'em," allied forces have been pushing
steadily west along Saudi Arabia's border with Iraq, where the
minefields start to dribble out and the Iraqi forces are
stretched thin. One scenario calls for allied armored divisions
to burst through the battle line and begin a high-speed
flanking movement, with tanks, armored personnel carriers and
mobile rocket launchers racing to cut off whatever remains of
Saddam's Republican Guard forces.

    Another possibility is that the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps
will attack the Iraqi town of Najaf, a transportation hub
halfway between Baghdad and the Saudi border that could act as
an allied supply-and-staging post. Speed is critical to
concentrate forces for an attack and then disperse before the
enemy can pull itself together for a counterattack.

    Armchair strategists speculate that the armored attack to
the west might be accompanied by a Marine amphibious landing
on the Kuwaiti coast, using high-speed hovercraft and "vertical
envelopment" -- meaning helicopters -- to disgorge large
numbers of troops onto the beaches. Others envision a key role
for the American paratroop units -- the 82nd and 101st Airborne
divisions.

    While the Army and Marine divisions form a giant pincer to
isolate the Iraqi forces on the battlefield, the airborne
troops could be dropped behind enemy lines from Black Hawk
helicopters to lure the Republican Guards out of their tank
bunkers. Once in the open, the Guards would be easy pickings
for allied tank killers like the Thunderbolt and Harrier jets
and the Apache and Cobra helicopters.

    In the AirLand scenario, the long-awaited face-off between
the U.S.'s high-tech M1A1 tank, with its turbine engine and
depleted-uranium armor, and the battle-tested Soviet-built
T-72, with its devastating 125-mm gun, would never come to
pass. Iraq's heavy armor would be kept at arm's length, picked
off from a distance by armor-piercing rounds, laser-guided
Hellfires and heat-seeking Mavericks fired from the air. Scout
planes and helicopters would identify targets, "squirt" them
with lasers, and guide helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in
for the kill. "The point is to reduce our casualty rates by
staying out of the enemy's range," said division commander
General Paul Funk.

    That's the theory. How it will work remains to be seen. An
AirLand battle relong-range planning, superb coordination,
perfect timing, uninterrupted communications, pinpoint
accuracy, constant high-speed maneuvering by ground forces and
well-executed logistics. Getting fuel and ammunition to tank
battalions traveling up to 120 miles a day calls for a massive
resupply operation that leaves little room for error. The
moment a unit stops moving, the battle risks degeneration into
a war of attrition in which both sides would take casualties
until the less powerful force is worn down to a nub.

    With their troops poised to attack, allied commanders were
haunted by last-minute doubts. Had General Schwarzkopf
correctly assessed the all-important center of gravity? Would
chemical weapons disrupt the delicate timing of the attack?
Could U.S. forces outpace the Republican Guard in a desert the
Iraqis know well? And is the troops' equipment -- particularly
the portable antitank weaponry -- up to the job?

    These fears are natural and healthy. Battle plans do go
awry, and tens of thousands of lives are at stake. There are
parts of the AirLand doctrine -- the full-fledged combined-arms
ground offensive in particular -- that have never been tested
on a battlefield. But the allied command has been running an
AirLand battle by the book for more than four weeks now,
demonstrating that it can coordinate large, mobile forces with
the requisite precision and skill. If the next phase of the
battle goes as smoothly, a strategy designed for the plains of
Central Europe will have been validated in the sands of the
gulf.