TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/030491/0304995.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.3 KB | 158 lines

                                                                                THE GULF WAR, Page 32

BOMB-DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

How Badly Crippled Is Saddam?


The answer will play a crucial role in determining how bloody
a ground war may be

By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT -- Reported by Dean Fischer/Dhahran,
Frank Melville/London and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    By some measures, the allied air campaign is easy to
quantify. In the five weeks since the war began, U.S. and
coalition aircraft have flown more than 94,000 sorties and
dropped 120 million lbs. of explosives on targets in Kuwait and
Iraq. But how successful has this awesome display of aerial
firepower been in weakening Saddam Hussein's military machine?
It all depends on who is answering the question.

    According to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf's Central Command
in Saudi Arabia, the answer is very successful, or Saddam would
not be trying to extricate his army from Kuwait. Last week
Schwarzkopf told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's armed forces
had been so badly damaged that they were "on the verge of
collapse." For the past two weeks, Schwarzkopf's aides
maintain, allied smart bombs have been knocking out Iraq's main
battle tanks at the rate of 100 a day. At week's end they
announced Iraq had lost, at a minimum, 1,685 tanks (out of a
prewar total of 4,280), 925 armored personnel carriers (out of
2,800), 1,450 artillery pieces (out of 3,110) and 375 fixed-wing
aircraft (out of 800) -- including 138 stashed away in Iran.

    To many in the U.S. intelligence community, these estimates
are too optimistic. Just when accurate assessments of Iraq's
battle strength are most needed, a kind of stats war has broken
out in Washington. "Norman's numbers on Iraqi kills are too
high," says a Defense Department analyst. "If this proves to
be the case in battle, he's in real hot water."

    The dispute exists because bomb-damage assessment is more
an art than a science. Each of the agencies involved -- Central
Command in Riyadh, the Air Force command, the Central
Intelligence Agency and its military counterpart, the
Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency -- has its own way of
deciding whether a target has been destroyed. Not surprisingly,
the different techniques have yielded divergent results:

    -- Central Command maintains that the overall strength of
the Iraqi forces has been reduced 40% to 50%, the goal allied
commanders wanted to reach before launching a ground assault.

    -- The Air Force, factoring in eyewitness reports from its
pilots, says Riyadh's estimates are 15% to 50% too low.

    -- The Defense Intelligence Agency claims Central Command's
figures are 15% to 20% too high.

    -- The CIA takes the most conservative line and would scale
back Riyadh's numbers 20% to 25%.

    Each of these estimates is based on the same raw
intelligence: the flood of pictures and streams of computer
data gathered by orbiting satellites and photo-reconnaissance
aircraft soaring high over the battlefield. But the information
must be interpreted by human analysts hunched over fuzzy photos
and computer screens. Identifying tanks and soldiers in
pictures beamed back from a KH-11 Keyhole satellite is often
a matter of counting dots on a computer monitor. "With 6-in.
resolution you get a pixel for each shoulder and one for the
head," says John Pike, space intelligence expert at the
Federation of American Scientists. "That's hardly enough even
to differentiate between military and civilian."

    Modern munitions complicate the damage-assessment task. In
other wars, a gravity bomb had to blow a big hole or leave a
tank upside down with its treads in the air to score a kill.
Today a laser-guided missile may leave only a 2-in. hole in the
outside armor of a tank but still destroy everything -- and
everybody -- inside it. Such damage would not be visible to a
satellite.

    Analysts dispute every scrap of information. Will this
bomb-damaged bridge support the weight of heavy armor? Is that
dark smudge on the picture a burning tank or an Iraqi smoke
pot? Was the division that was reported 20% destroyed the
headquarters battalion -- in which case the whole division is
probably out of the battle -- or just some infantry troops?
"Damage is a continuum," says Bruce Blair, a Brookings
Institution intelligence expert. "Generals want sharp Cheddar
when the results may be cottage cheese."

    Challenged to put up or shut up after the Baghdad bunker
episode, Pentagon officials this week produced a rare aerial
photograph (rather than a sketch based on a photo) of a mosque
in Basra. Analysts were able to point out features (the absence
of any rubble, burn marks or bomb damage) that suggest the
mosque was not hit by U.S. bombs, as Iraq had charged, but was
purposely dismantled as a propaganda ploy.

    Central Command's analysts say they have an edge over their
Washington-based counterparts. Long before their rivals get to
see the material, the evaluators in Riyadh have access to
reports from radio intercepts, ground-reconnaissance patrols,
prisoner interrogations and pilots returning from their bombing
runs. The latter is a mixed blessing, however. As one
congressional staffer puts it, "Pilots since Billy Mitchell
have exaggerated their success."

    If this were just an internal squabble, it might safely be
ignored. But U.S. ground troops are prepared to go to battle
on the basis of Schwarzkopf's assurance that the enemy's
capacity to fight has been reduced by one-half. If Schwarzkopf
is mistaken and large numbers of Soviet-built T-72s that were
supposed to be out of action start popping out of their
emplacements and open fire on the advancing troops, allied
casualties could run high. Some intelligence experts in
Washington, fearing that the worst might occur, are darkly
talking about the possibility of a postwar witch-hunt to find
out exactly what went wrong.

    Even by the most optimistic U.S. estimates, Iraq's military
remains a force to reckon with. Saudi Arabia has only 550
tanks; Iran and Jordan have 500 and 1,131, respectively. Iraq,
on the other hand, may still have more than 2,000. Saudi Arabia
and Iran each own between 185 and 190 combat aircraft. Saddam
Hussein has nearly that many parked out of harm's way on
airfields in Iran, and he may have hundreds more sitting safely
in hardened bunkers or civilian areas off limits to allied
bombing. Meanwhile, most of his artillery pieces, the bulk of
his short-range missiles and many of his chemical shells are
presumed to be intact. Says Air Vice Marshal Sandy Wilson,
former commander of British forces in the gulf: "If Saddam is
allowed to retain his offensive weapons, he will have the
potential to strike strongly and deeply against any of his
neighbors."

    In the end, there is only one sure way to find out how badly
damaged an enemy's forces are, and that is to inspect them
after the war is over. "Every country that attempted
bomb-damage assessment in modern history has been proved wrong
once analysts had a chance to visit the battlefield," says
Anthony Cordesman, a Washington-based expert on Iraq's
military. But Saddam Hussein probably has a pretty good idea
what condition his troops are in. His last-minute attempts to
strike a deal last week may be the best bomb-damage assessment
of them all.