TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082090/0820016.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.7 KB | 260 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 30

COVER STORIES

Planes Against Brawn


Pouring aircraft and ships into the gulf, the U.S. sets out to
checkmate Saddam's tanks and lay siege to Iraq and Kuwait

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Bruce
van Voorst/Washington


    A military maxim has it that amateurs talk about strategy
while professional soldiers discuss logistics. That is as true
in the age of intercontinental missiles as it was in Napoleon's
day. The hardest part of any war is moving fighting forces into
the field and supplying their gargantuan needs. When the U.S.
decided last week to draw "a line in the sand" of the Arabian
Peninsula, it took on an immense logistical task. Keeping
troops supplied with water in the desert's 120 degrees heat
will be as vital as keeping them supplied with ammunition.

    The first assignment for arriving U.S. units, said Secretary
of Defense Dick Cheney, is "to deter any further Iraqi
aggression" and, if deterrence fails, "to defend Saudi Arabia
against attack." Some in Washington are worried that the
dispatch of U.S. troops might provoke Saddam Hussein to launch
a pre-emptive blitz. "He sees us coming," says Les Aspin,
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "He could try
to seize the oil fields and hold them hostage before we have
enough men there to stop him."

    But deterrence is ultimately psychological. From Saddam's
point of view, it had to appear that the American deterrent
went into effect as soon as the first group of 82nd Airborne
Division paratroopers and F-15 interceptors touched down in
Saudi Arabia. To make the point, one F-15 squadron flew
nonstop, with midair refueling, from its base in Virginia. From
the moment the planes landed at Dhahran, the Iraqis were on
warning that if they launched their tanks into Saudi Arabia,
they would find themselves in a war with the U.S.

    Pentagon officials would not say how many American troops
were on the ground last week, but the total was probably about
6,000, along with about 60 first-line aircraft: two F-15
fighter squadrons from the U.S. and five AWACS (Airborne
Warning and Control System) aircraft. An additional 255
fighters and attack bombers were aboard three U.S. carriers
within striking distance of Iraqi forces in Kuwait or Baghdad.


    If the current buildup continues, in the next month the
expeditionary force will be increased to 50,000 soldiers and
Marines and 200 aircraft, including F-16 ground-attack fighters
and A-10 antitank planes. Marine units are being flown to the
Persian Gulf from the U.S. There they will meet two
prepositioned supply ships already under way from Guam and the
Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. These ships contain
everything necessary to fully equip a Marine brigade of 17,000
men. This includes 45 tanks, heavy artillery, armored personnel
carriers and food, water and fuel for 30 days.

    To enforce the United Nations trade embargo, Britain,
Canada, France and Australia are adding destroyers and frigates
to their naval patrols, though only the British moved quickly
to send men and planes. Whitehall ordered Tornado
fighter-bombers and a squadron of Jaguar ground-attack jets to
the gulf, along with Rapier ground-to-air missiles. If Saddam
intends to invade Saudi Arabia, he will probably have to do
it before those forces are in place. The military planner's
rule of thumb is that to be successful, attackers must
outnumber defenders by 3 to 1. When the U.S. deployment is
added to the Saudi armed forces of 65,000, defenders will add
up to more than 100,000. Iraq could call on the 170,000-man
elite invasion force it has in Kuwait, but it would have to
muster another 130,000 to attack with confidence.

    Such a concentration of troops would create serious
logistical problems for Iraq, which has little experience with
long-range offensive operations. In its eight-year war with
Iran, the attacking Iraqi army penetrated no more than 50
miles, and was eventually beaten back by Iranian troops, who
fought without much air support. The massing of Iraqi tanks and
men would offer easy targets for American attack planes.
"They'll know we're there," says Admiral William Crowe, former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "and they'll wish we
weren't."

    If a clash occurs, it will be a match of U.S. planes against
Iraqi brawn. The major role of American ground forces would be
to protect air bases from Iraqi tanks. As long as infantrymen
are in contact with base installations, they are assured of
adequate water, fuel and munitions. In the desert a soldier
normally consumes 6 gal. of water a day. For 50,000 men, that
adds up to 2.1 million gal. a week. If ground troops were to
storm off into the desert, the blistering temperatures and
swirling sand would be as dangerous an enemy as the Iraqis.

    The U.S. would count on its own and the Saudis' F-15s to
establish air superiority over the battlefield. While Iraq has
500 combat planes, only about 50 of its pilots are considered
first-rate. They were trained by France when Iraq was importing
more than $2.5 billion worth of French weapons, including 210
Mirage fighters and Exocet missiles. During the war with Iran,
the Iraqi air force showed little daring, dropping bombs from
30,000 ft. that often missed their targets. Coordination
between air and ground forces was usually lacking. Former
Defense Secretary Harold Brown says, "I think we would achieve
air superiority within a day or two." Crowe agrees, but adds,
"We'd lose some aircraft in the process."

    Iraqi armored and infantry units get good marks from
military experts for the way they carried out the invasion of
Kuwait. But they were operating against very light opposition.
Everything becomes much more difficult in heavy combat when
what Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz called "the
friction" of war confuses commanders, frightens troops and
disrupts plans.

    If a shooting war broke out, U.S. electronic-warfare planes
such as the Air Force's F-4G "Wild Weasel" and the Navy's EA-6B
would black out the radar and guidance systems of Iraqi
air-defense missiles. "Command, control and communications are
their Achilles' heel," says an Air Force officer. In this kind
of combat, "they would have to do everything visually."
Meanwhile, Saudi and U.S. AWACS planes would spot Iraqi
aircraft as soon as they left their runways and direct F-15s
and Navy F-14s to intercept them with Sidewinder and Sparrow
missiles.

    To invade Saudi Arabia, Iraqi tanks would have to head south
from Kuwait along a 40-mile-wide stretch of open terrain that
air force officers refer to as a "tank-shooting gallery." There
is no natural cover, and tanks can be spotted readily by the
tall, brown columns of dust they raise. These forces would be
vulnerable to F-16s, Saudi and British Tornados, and possibly
F-111s now on station in Turkey, carrying 2,000-lb.
laser-guided bombs and Maverick missiles. Armored, low-flying
A-10 Thunderbolts would riddle the tanks with armor-piercing
depleted-uranium slugs from rapid-fire guns.

    What should be most persuasive to Saddam, however, is U.S.
determination to take the war to him. James Schlesinger, former
Defense Secretary and CIA director, advises, "If Saddam moves,
it is imperative to put that army, that regime, out of
operation. And we would do it." Says a Pentagon planner: "There
will be no hesitation. We are not going to fight just in Saudi
Arabia."

    If Saddam attacks now, the Pentagon has prepared a list of
70 targets it will hit in Iraq, ranging from air bases, missile
installations, refineries, pipelines and pumping stations to
military barracks and weapons parks. High on the list are at
least four known nuclear facilities, where Saddam is pushing
work on an atom bomb, and several chemical-weapons plants,
where he produces some 1,000 tons of poisons each year. Such
freedom of action would not have been open to the U.S. even a
few years ago, when the Soviet Union would have warned that
escalation could lead to a nuclear confrontation.

    Iraq's ambassador to Greece, Abdel Fetah al-Khazreji, said
last week that his country's chemical weapons would be used
only "if we are attacked by a foreign power." But Saddam
dropped poison gas on Iran repeatedly during their war and used
it against Iraq's own rebellious Kurdish citizens. He could
fire it in rockets, missiles, artillery shells and bombs.
Mustard and nerve gases, while deadly, are not miracle weapons.
Both sides' troops are equipped with protective masks and
clothing and both are prevented from operating effectively
while wearing the cumbersome gear. Poison gas does not affect
planes in the air, the first line of U.S. defense.

    Moreover, Saddam would have to wonder exactly what George
Bush meant when he said gas attacks "would be dealt with very,
very severely." The U.S. has its own stockpiles of nerve gas,
but it is not likely to contemplate using either gas or nuclear
weapons to retaliate. World opinion might well turn against
Washington if it were to order an attack with weapons of mass
destruction. Even so, the unspoken threat might have some
deterrent effect.

    The U.S. has other means of delivering a devastating
counterattack. Strategic B-52 and B-1 bombers based in the U.S.
and on Diego Garcia could lay down carpets of high explosives
on Iraqi targets. They would be supported by F-14 interceptors
and attack planes from the U.S. carriers in the Indian Ocean
and Red Sea. Those ships are more than 600 miles from Iraq, out
of range of Iraqi jets and Exocet missiles, which in 1987 badly
damaged the patrolling frigate U.S.S. Stark, apparently
accidentally, and killed 37 of its crew. The carrier-based
planes would be refueled in air, six at a time, by KC-10
airborne tankers, and arrive over their targets ready to fight.
In addition, the battleship Wisconsin is soon to sail directly
into the gulf, where it will join the guided-missile ships of
the Joint Task Force Middle East. They are all armed with
Tomahawk cruise missiles that can hit targets in Iraq.

    Because the U.S. is a superpower and Saddam knows it, this
battle may never be fought. Unless he is literally a madman,
he is not likely to start such a war. But deterring Iraqi
aggression and defending Saudi Arabia was only part of
America's pledge. George Bush vowed that the Iraqi aggression
"will not stand" and demanded complete withdrawal from Kuwait
and restoration of the Kuwaiti government. That is much more
difficult than preventing Saddam from going further.

    Bush described the American forces arriving at Saudi bases
as "purely defensive." He meant it, for the arithmetic of the
offensive applies to the U.S. as well. If Washington intended
to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait at gunpoint, it would have
to mount a force of 300,000 men to begin with -- and more as
Iraqi re-inforcements joined the battle.

    One skill the Iraqis demonstrated during the war with Iran
was the defense of prepared positions. Iran lost thousands of
men in futile human-wave attacks against Iraqi lines. The U.S.
would not even try to engage an Iraqi army dug in across
Kuwait. "Militarily," says a high-ranking French officer, "the
reconquest of Kuwait is not within reach of even the West and
the Soviet Union combined."

    To defeat Saddam and cancel his annexation of his neighbor,
Bush is counting on the squeeze of the U.N.'s economic embargo
and the blockade being mounted by the U.S. Navy, with some help
from its friends. In the eastern Mediterranean, a battle group
led by the carrier Saratoga will keep watch over the port
serving two oil pipelines from Iraq. In the Red Sea the U.S.S.
Eisenhower, a nuclear-powered carrier, will be watchdog on the
Saudi Arabian pipeline terminal at Yanbu and stand ready with
85 combat planes. In the Gulf of Oman, the Independence will
check tankers to be certain Iraqi oil is not being exported
through the Persian Gulf.

    But even if Saddam knuckles under, the long-term threat that
Iraq presents to the gulf region and the world will not
disappear. A speedy withdrawal from Kuwait will keep intact the
million-man Iraqi army and the targets the Pentagon most wants
to destroy: nuclear, chemical and missile plants. Edward
Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington argues that if Iraq is forced to surrender Kuwait
but Saddam remains in power, he "would accelerate his
nuclear-bomb program and re-emerge in a few years even more
dangerous to us all." Commanders in Baghdad and Washington must
be pondering this irony as they plan their next move.