If War Begins

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

"A short one that would be over in days."

-- Lieut. General Sir Peter de la Billiere, British commander in Saudi Arabia, describing a potential war with Iraq

"History tells us there can be no antiseptic war, and history is right."

-- Retired U.S. Army General John Merritt

The battle is the payoff, as the ancient saying goes, and only battle can settle the question of what a war between the U.S.-led alliance and Iraq would be like. Would it be a brief though explosive clash in which American air power would quickly prevail with relatively light casualties? A long, grinding struggle on the ground with the killed and wounded on both sides counted in the scores of thousands? Or something in between?

On one thing all shades of opinion agree: the war that may begin in about six weeks would involve so many weapons never before fired in anger, and so many strategic and tactical doctrines never yet pushed to the ultimate test, that it would be unlike any ever fought before.

If extensive ground fighting is required, it could be described as World War III against World War I. On the U.S. side, there would be laser-guided bombs, heat-seeking missiles, devices to lay down an "electronic blanket" suffocating all communications between enemy headquarters and troops in the field, infrared devices supposed to turn night into day for soldiers drawing a bead on hostile troops and armor. The Iraqi forces in Kuwait would rely on an extensive network of minefields, earth berms, razor wire and trenches designed to make an enemy frontal assault as fruitlessly bloody as the British Somme offensive of 1916.

The imponderables range from the nitty and literally gritty (how badly will the fine desert sand foul the gears of tanks and the breeches of rifles?) to the conceptual (could U.S. troops bypass the dug-in Iraqi forces in Kuwait with a flanking attack?). They include questions of psychology: Is the Iraqi army battle hardened from eight years of war against Iran, or battle weary? Would the troops on the front line, many of whom are thought to be ill-trained draftees who know they are cannon fodder, fight hard or give up quickly? For that matter, how battle ready are American soldiers, hardly any of whom below the rank of colonel have ever been in combat?

There are political conundrums too: Would Saddam Hussein respond to American air raids by bombing or missile attacks on Israel, and if so, would the inevitable Israeli counterattack speed a U.S. military victory or be outweighed by the defection of Arab governments and armies so far committed to the anti-Saddam cause? "War is an unpredictable art, not a calculable science," says Admiral William Crowe, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a comment that in relation to a Persian Gulf war seems an understatement.

But planners must draft their scenarios despite all the uncertainty, and on the U.S. side they have been at it since a few days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2. Specifics of the plans are military secrets, but enough is known to allow some educated guesses about how a war in the desert would be fought.

It might begin sometime after Jan. 15, the date on which the U.N. has authorized the alliance to use "all necessary means" to evict Saddam's soldiers from Kuwait, with selective air raids on military targets in Iraq. But those supposedly "surgical strikes," all sources agree, could quickly escalate to a massive aerial bombing campaign carried out by 700 American attack planes flying out of ground bases in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, plus 200 more taking off from the six aircraft carriers the U.S. will have stationed in the region.

The initial targets will be the Iraqi air force and its bases -- perhaps 20 of them, plus around 60 missile sites that will have to be taken out. Iraq is believed to have 400 to 500 operational combat planes, including 30 to 35 French-built Mirage fighters and 110 to 140 Soviet-made MiGs -- all first- line, modern warplanes equipped with air-to-air missiles and some electronic-warfare gear. Some might be destroyed on the ground, but a good many would probably get into the air to give battle. One estimate is that they would be able to shoot down about 50 American planes.

Nonetheless, the superiority of the American aircraft in both numbers and technology might be able to sweep the Iraqis from the skies in two or three days. The air offensive would then shift into a phase of low-level bombing (from as little as 200 ft.) in contrast to the high-altitude dogfighting of the first few days. Targets could include some war-related industries in northern Iraq and some command-and-control centers. But the bombing would probably be concentrated on military targets -- tank parks, antiaircraft and artillery concentrations, roads and bridges, fuel and water depots -- in southern Iraq and Kuwait. The aim would be to turn the area between Basra, a major southern command-and-control center, and the Kuwait border into a "parking lot" -- an area leveled flat, through which nothing could move.

Iraqi antiaircraft defenses are formidable: they include hundreds of Soviet- built surface-to-air missiles and perhaps 4,000 modern antiaircraft guns. "A hundred or more lost U.S. aircraft would be a fair estimate" for this phase of the campaign, says retired Marine General Bernard Trainor. Other predictions range up to 300.

If the strategy succeeds, the Iraqi troops in Kuwait would be isolated, their supply lines so thoroughly broken that they could get no food, fuel, ammunition or equipment beyond what they had stockpiled before the war began, or any reinforcements. This point could be critical. The 450,000 troops the Pentagon estimates to be in and around Kuwait are at least a match in numbers for the American, British, French and Arab forces confronting them, but they are far from Saddam's best. The dictator's elite troops, 105,000 well-paid, well-trained Republican Guards, are being held in reserve, some around Baghdad, most in southern Iraq. From there, they could be rushed to any point at which American and allied forces are threatening to break through the Iraqi front. That strategy worked to blunt several Iranian offensives during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, but U.S. planners are hoping that this time many Republican Guards will never get through the incessant bombing and strafing to reach the front.

Even if Saddam Hussein does not give up after a week or so of this aerial pounding, some U.S. strategists think no ground fighting would be necessary. They advocate continued exclusive reliance on air power, with expansion of the bombing to such civilian targets as oil refineries, electricity-generating plants, manufacturing sites, hydroelectric dams.

Most military experts, however, believe that a ground offensive would have to be launched about a week after the air campaign begins, for both military and political reasons. Saddam, for example, could parade captured U.S. flyers through Baghdad on their way to execution. Or he could fire missiles, perhaps carrying chemical or bacteriological warheads, against Saudi oil fields and transmission lines. Any such moves would build pressure on the U.S. and its allies to win the war more quickly and certainly than could be done by bombing alone.

A ground assault to liberate Kuwait would be the largest tank battle ever fought in the desert -- and potentially one of the bloodiest. Some analysts figure the U.S. must anticipate the destruction of 100 to 200 tanks, each with a four-man crew, and an equal number of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, each carrying a dozen soldiers -- a total of perhaps more than 2,000 casualties from that source alone. The Pentagon is bracing itself: it has dispatched the hospital ships Mercy and Comfort to the area. Each has beds for 1,000 wounded men. Says Brigadier Patrick Cordingley, commander of Britain's Seventh Armored Brigade: "You can't expect two forces of this size not to cause considerable casualties."

The Pentagon had originally hoped to hold down the losses by having U.S. and allied forces swing about 100 miles inland around Kuwait and slice into Iraq west of the emirate, cutting off Iraqi occupation forces still more completely. That would not be so easy now as it would have been two months ago: the Iraqis have extended their elaborate defensive fortifications considerably to the west past Kuwait and along the Saudi border. A head-on assault on the Iraqi trenches (some of which can be filled with burning oil) and massed tank columns in Kuwait is still viewed as a last resort. The U.S. would rely in part on paratroop drops behind the lines and possibly on amphibious landings by Marines. But at some point the allies will have to try to break through some Iraqi front, probably choosing a narrowly focused attack on what looks like soft spots or gaps in the lines. That could be risky. The Iraqi defensive positions are deliberately set up to channel attackers into narrow "killing zones," where they could be subjected to a withering crossfire.

The tactical doctrine that would take over then is called Air-Land by Pentagon planners. As described by American commanders in Saudi Arabia, it would go like this: first the Air Force, while continuing to interdict supply lines, would switch to direct bombing and strafing of Iraqi troops, possibly including carpet bombing by B-52s based in Saudi Arabia and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to clear out Iraqi minefields. American artillery firing Copperhead shells, which use a laser-guided homing device, and multiple-rocket launchers would subject Saddam's troops to a murderous hail of ground fire. Missile-firing Cobra and Apache helicopters would hit Iraqi armored units from distances beyond the pilots' sight; A-10 antitank planes belching more than 4,000 cannon rounds a minute would blast away from closer range. The battleships Wisconsin and Missouri might chip in with Tomahawk missiles launched from far out in the gulf. "When you concentrate that kind of firepower, you can kill an entire regiment in less than five minutes," says one American general.

But unless the Iraqi troops collapsed quickly and began surrendering en ( masse, allied infantry and armor would have to go on the attack. On paper the ratios seem extremely unfavorable. Conventional military wisdom is that attackers should have a 3-to-1 superiority in numbers to blast defenders out of well-entrenched positions; in Kuwait and Iraq the numbers would be only equal. American tanks would actually be outnumbered 3-to-1 by Iraqi armor, though the numbers of heavy tanks would be approximately even, and the American M1 Abrams is thought to be superior in speed, maneuverability and firepower to Iraq's top-of-the-line Soviet-built T-72. The relentless hammering that Saddam's troops would take from U.S. airplanes is the main factor that allied commanders believe would enable them to win, despite the numbers, but there are others:

INTELLIGENCE. American satellites can pinpoint every Iraqi deployment and troop movement and pick up electronic signals chatter among enemy units as well. They proved their capability during the Iran-Iraq war, when they supplied Saddam's forces with enough intelligence largely to offset Iran's advantage in numbers. Deprived of this assistance, the Iraqi troops this time will be fighting virtually blind.

COMMUNICATIONS. The U.S. hopes its sophisticated jamming devices can so disrupt Iraqi communications that Saddam will be unable to phone his generals, who will be unable to talk with their field commanders, who will be unable to give orders to the troops on the front line. Anticipating that difficulty, Baghdad has reportedly given field commanders sealed orders on paper, but the rapid pace of battle could quickly render those orders obsolete. And many Iraqi commanders are believed to have been too terrified by Saddam's frequent purges and executions of officers to be able to improvise strategy or tactics effectively.

NIGHT-FIGHTING CAPABILITY. U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia have been conducting their training exercises almost exclusively at night, with soldiers peering through infrared goggles that are far superior to anything the Iraqis have. Many American combat planes are fitted with night-vision devices like FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) equipment, so many air as well as ground attacks will be carried out at night. Thus Saddam could not reinforce or resupply his troops by sneaking truck convoys through the "parking lot" during the dark hours. American pilots could find them almost as easily, and bomb and strafe them quite as mercilessly, as they could by daylight.

The Iraqis would have some advantages too, beyond numbers. Saddam's vaunted chemical and bacteriological weapons are not among them. They might be useful as terror weapons at cities in Saudi Arabia (or Israel). But the missiles that would deliver them are too inaccurate, and desert winds too tricky, to make them very effective against battlefield targets. Iraqi artillery, however, may well be superior to American gunnery. And during the long war with Iran, the Iraqis proved themselves to be tenacious fighters, at least when they had time to dig in hard on defense.

On the other hand, nothing the Iranians threw at the Iraqis came close to resembling the high-tech offensive the U.S. and its allies would conduct. As one British officer puts it, trying to see the war through the eyes of an Iraqi soldier: "If you are an isolated young man and you are in a unit that hasn't received any orders and are under air attack, not receiving food and water, haven't any ammunition left, then you are an unusual man if your morale doesn't start to crumble." Morale will crumble so much, the allies hope, that Iraqi units will break and run or surrender, and the war will be over quickly.

And if not? According to an old military adage, "Amateurs talk strategy; generals talk logistics." That would favor the U.S., especially if the struggle turns into a protracted war of attrition. It would not be easy to keep materiel coursing through American supply lines that stretch halfway around the world, nor to maintain complex equipment in desert sand and heat. American planners fret particularly about the M1's excessive fuel consumption and the Apache helicopters, which are subject to mechanical breakdowns.

But the Iraqi logistical troubles would be much worse. It is true that aerial bombing never completely cut enemy supply lines in Vietnam, but those lines ran through jungles, not deserts in which there is no place to hide. Also, Iraq no longer has any outside arms suppliers: the Soviets, French and others who once sold Saddam weapons have joined the coalition against him, and the worldwide embargo on arms to Iraq seems to be holding tight. Thus Saddam's soldiers would have no way to replace tanks, missiles or other weapons destroyed or used up in battle, and their weaponry would become less effective every day.

Adding up all these factors, military experts have no doubt that the U.S. and its allies would win. The big questions are how soon and at what cost in % casualties. Fundamentally they are unanswerable now, but there are some guidelines, at least to the second, and they are far from reassuring. Air power may be decisive, but it is most unlikely to win a war by itself. At least some Iraqi troops will fight doggedly, and troops storming well-dug-in defensive positions, with however much firepower, must always expect to take casualties. So even a short war, fought with the intensity that planners now expect, could be bloody. British officers expect to suffer about 2,000 killed and wounded out of 25,000 troops that might be engaged, in the first few days of war.

As for Americans, analyst Edward Luttwak figures that, under the most favorable circumstances, including the quick destruction of 95% of Iraq's artillery, the U.S. would suffer "several thousand killed in action." Trevor N. Dupuy, a retired Army colonel, has worked out methods of predicting casualties that have proved startlingly accurate (for the invasion of Panama they would have forecast 26 dead; the actual figure was 23). For a war with Iraq, he calculates 1,200 to 3,000 dead, 7,000 to 16,000 wounded -- in the first 10 days.

Such figuring may or may not be right. As always, the battle will be the payoff. But one thing seems sure: a war with Iraq might be short, but in this case quick is emphatically not synonymous with either easy or cheap.

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CAPTION: What the U.S. might do

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CAPTION: What Saddam might do

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IRAQI FORCES

With reporting by William Dowell/Cairo, Frank Melville/London and Bruce van Voorst/Washington