Saudi Road From Kuwait: U.S. Defenders Like the Advantages : Military strategy: The American forces call it a perilous ‘high-speed avenue of attack’ for Iraq’s armor.

Beneath the 190-mile road that leads from Kuwait down Saudi Arabia’s east coast is a pool of oil that many believe to be the richest in the world. But at ground level, in shimmering heat and a litter of abandoned cars, the scene for hundreds of miles is one of desolation.

Camels lope alongside the road, and onto it, oblivious to the occasional car. Here and there in the distance, a bleached Bedouin tent rises out of the sand. Herds of long-haired black sheep stand in the unrelenting sun.

At dawn, before the haze forms on the Persian Gulf and obscures the view, you can see reminders of how close the region has come to returning to the troubles of the recent past, the gulf war between Iran and Iraq. The prow of a sunken ship juts up out of the blue water of the gulf, an antenna angled accusingly toward Kuwait city, where Iraqi occupation troops have settled in.

Now that trouble threatens to breach the Saudi border, the road, which begins as a modest two-lane highway and broadens to three about 100 miles south of the frontier, has become the gateway to this kingdom’s riches.

U.S. military men call it a “high-speed avenue of attack” for the 1,500 Iraqi tanks in Kuwait.

But if Iraq’s Saddam Hussein sends his army into this bleak wasteland, the coastal road is more likely to be the road to hell.

This is so not only because the U.S. forces here would have the edge in training, technology and firepower, but also because of the desolation of this land, which would betray them to its defenders.

“ Mafee moshkelah --no problem,” Marine Capt. Patrick Gould said.

Gould, a blue-eyed Marine from Des Moines, Iowa, commands the most forward U.S. unit here, an anti-tank company with truck-mounted TOW missiles. The Arabic phrase, one of several Gould has learned, delighted a pair of Saudi officials escorting two reporters along the road.

“This is a tanker’s dream come true,” Gould said as he surveyed the open expanse of desert in the clear light of early evening. “But most of all, it’s a pilot’s dream come true, and an anti-tanker’s dream come true. Where else are you going to find a shot like this?”

He said his TOW missiles are accurate at nearly double the range of the gun on the best tank the Iraqis have--the Soviet T-72. Even if they are equipped with protective “reactive armor,” which deflects anti-tank shells by deflecting the blast, the T-72 “won’t be a problem,” he said.

The Army’s AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and the AH-1 Cobra used by the Marine Corps and the Army; the Marines’ F/A-18 fighter-bomber; the Air Force’s F-16 fighter and A-10 tank killer--all are here in substantial numbers. If these aircraft can operate without harassment by the Iraqi air force, they will find the Iraqi tanks easy prey, military officials say.

Indeed, a Saudi official compared fighting tanks from the air to the Saudis’ “sport of kings,” in which falcons hunt down hubara (bustards) in the desert.

Many commanders believe the Iraqi tanks would probably succumb to the weaknesses of their faltering supply lines. At the border crossing between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, 20 Bangladeshi laborers who had fled their homes in the Iraqi-administered “neutral zone” said they had been stopped by Iraqi soldiers who had no food or water and demanded theirs. When seven refugees said they had none, they were shot, the refugees said.

If Iraqi soldiers have such shortages on the coast road, they will find the sparse settlements along the way ill-equipped to supply them. Between El Khafji and the massive Al Jubayl oil-pumping complex, about 150 miles to the south, there is just one settlement, a ghost town of tumbledown shacks with a single working gas station and a modest grocery store, plus a few sheep.

“He’d have vastly outstripped his supply lines by the time he got here, and we would own the air,” Gould said. “In open terrain like this, where there’s no place to hide, I just don’t see the Iraqi military even trying to come across.”

Nor would the Iraqis be able to hide at night. The lead Marine unit prowls the desert after dark with night-vision equipment. Vehicles, men and features of the terrain retain the sun’s heat and show up red with this equipment.

Anti-tank helicopters like the Apache and the Cobra are also fitted with this equipment.

For now, the more heavily armed U.S. forces would have the benefit of warning if Iraq were to attack. Several encampments of Arab forces are scattered across northern Saudi Arabia. These are little more than a tripwire, but they could provide early intelligence on enemy movements.

But if terrain and technology are among the U.S. forces’ most powerful allies in the defense of Saudi Arabia, the distances and the desolation could as easily become a fearsome foe if they go on the offensive.

One obstacle to a U.S.-Saudi offensive--and many are saying it will come about--is visible from just outside El Khafji, and it is of the Saudis’ own making. Just west of the coastal road, beginning at the border crossing and stretching 140 miles to Hafr-al-Baten, is a ditch 10 feet deep and with a high embankment.

A Saudi border official said the ditch was built to stop smugglers of drugs and alcohol. It would not stop tanks--but it would certainly slow them down.

Farther north in Kuwait, hundreds of miles from U.S. staging areas in Saudi Arabia, U.S. forces would encounter oil wells, pumping stations and a pipeline that extends across their path. Cutting the line would be difficult and economically costly, but going around it would take time, and it would expose the force to ambush and air attack.

Moreover, officials said, a U.S. offensive could increase the possibility of Iraq’s using chemical weapons. Military men said that while advancing Iraqi soldiers would be reluctant to use chemical weapons on areas they intend to take, they would be less inhibited in using them on their pursuers as they fall back.

Provoking a chemical attack could also raise doubts at home about whether it is worth the price to restore Kuwait to its leaders. The Marines are confident that as long as the United States is ready to defend Saudi Arabia, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein will not dare send his troops over.

“There’s no way he can win,” one Marine said. “It’s the ultimate paranoid’s dream over here--everyone’s against him.”

But as the number of tanks increases, U.S. and Saudi officials think pressure will increase to go on the offensive. For U.S. ground troops and their new-found Arab allies, a Saudi official conceded, “ Moshkelah --that could be a problem.”