ANALYSIS : Fast Knockout in Air War Not a Sure Thing

If the United States goes to war with Iraq, some U.S. officials believe that the outcome will be decided within the first few minutes of battle--when America uses its clearly superior electronic warfare capability to wipe out Iraq’s airplanes and missiles.

Once that’s done, says one senior planner, “it’s all over.”

But will it be that fast and smooth? There are nagging doubts among knowledgeable analysts as to whether American forces can accomplish the complete destruction of Baghdad’s air power as quickly, or as free of snags, as proponents suggest.

Although on paper, at least, the war should go much as forecast, technical experts say there still are enough uncertainties to make planners uneasy about predicting such instant success.

“The analyses say that with our superior technology, numbers and training, we’ll wipe them out in days,” one well-placed analyst says. He figures “a day for their ground-based defenses” and “a day for their aircraft.”

But he quickly points out that the Iraqis have acquired some new equipment, and a few new tricks as well, since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when the United States made its initial assessment of Baghdad’s military performance.

“History always shows that in wars, everyone gets surprised,” the analyst cautions. “The other side somehow always comes up with something not expected, or something goes wrong, and it throws off plans.”

The strategy for wiping out Iraq’s planes and missiles within minutes or hours, part of the information that Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan was fired for talking to the media about, is technically still secret, but it has been widely discussed within the Pentagon.

Concerns that the scenarios of swift success may be too optimistic arise because of factors such as these:

Within the last two years, Iraq has acquired 30 Soviet-built MIG-29 Flogger aircraft, top-of-the-line interceptors whose combat capabilities are largely unknown to U.S. forces.

* Baghdad also has increased to 100 its arsenal of French-German Roland anti-aircraft missiles--powerful and effective weapons that destroyed 12 U.S.-made fighters during the Iran-Iraq War.

* Iraq has captured from Kuwait 144 U.S.-made Hawk missiles, whose latest guidance system makes it deadly against low-flying planes, and it may even have commandeered a Kuwaiti-based U.S. Patriot air-defense system, the most advanced such unit in America’s arsenal.

One important irony is that while the United States has a great deal of intelligence on most Soviet-made aircraft and missiles now in Iraqi hands, it knows far less about those that Iraq has purchased from U.S. allies, such as France, Germany and Italy.

Some industry experts believe that Iraq also may have a new mono-pulse radar system, a sophisticated, difficult-to-detect technology for which the United States has only cumbersome countermeasures.

Whether the Iraqis have learned to use these weapons effectively still is unclear. But private intelligence reports say they have shown considerable ingenuity in integrating weapons from different countries into “hybrid” systems. So far, the United States has little firm intelligence about these hybrids--or how to deal with them.

“There are several Iraqi weapon systems that our existing systems cannot handle,” a former Pentagon electronics warfare specialist told Aviation Week magazine recently.

What makes the timing of any initial U.S. strike especially important is that America must quickly destroy Iraq’s medium-range Hussein missiles--modified Soviet Scud missiles with an extended range--before Baghdad has a chance to launch them against Israel, a move that would change the entire character of a Middle East war.

Although the Israelis are holding back now under pressure from the United States, Bush Administration strategists fear that if the Israelis actually came under a direct attack, they would quickly obliterate Baghdad with nuclear bombs in retaliation.

Besides wreaking horrendous civilian casualties, that action, in turn, would drive Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries out of the anti-Iraq alliance, cripple Western support for the U.S.-led intervention and open up a dangerous new era in global relations.

“(Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein might be dead by then, but he would have won,” a senior U.S. official says.

To be sure, the danger may not be as daunting as it may seem.

Although Iraq may have as many as several hundred of these Hussein missiles, it has far fewer launching pads. The missile has a relatively primitive guidance system. And it takes at least two hours to fuel a Hussein for launching.

Also, the United States now has a squadron of 24 to 26 radar-evading F-117 Stealth fighter-bombers in the Persian Gulf area that can be used to penetrate Iraqi defenses. U.S. experts say neither Iraq nor any other country has effective ways to counter these.

Today, in the gulf region, U.S. and Iraqi forces are regularly testing each other in grim cat-and-mouse games involving electronic weaponry. U.S. warplanes routinely fly simulated attack missions, hoping to tempt the Iraqis into turning on their radar transmitters.

When they succeed, the signals are picked up by special U.S. electronic-surveillance aircraft, ground stations and satellites, which then pinpoint the location of the Iraqi radar. Repeated surveillance is needed, however, because much of Iraq’s radar is mounted on trucks.

Not surprisingly, the United States has developed a sophisticated specialized missile for wiping out such ground-based radar. Called HARM (for high-speed anti-radiation missile), it homes in on the enemy’s radar beam and explodes in a spray of shrapnel to shred the antenna.

But each HARM can destroy only one or two antennas, and defenders usually deploy an array of dozens, often hundreds of radar antennas, spread over considerable distances and usually linked into wide-coverage networks.

And the United States has another problem involving the HARM: It works best when launched from specially equipped but now-aging F-4G fighters, two squadrons of which are in the gulf region, but it does not work as well on newer aircraft such as the F-15.

Besides the other potential problems confronting U.S. planners, there also is the age-old risk in any combat situation--that unexpected, and seemingly minor, snags can prove decisive in a crunch.

Just such a mishap occurred three years ago when the U.S. Navy frigate Stark was hit--and badly damaged--by a French-made Exocet missile launched from an Iraqi plane. Thirty-seven American sailors died.

A Navy investigation later found that the ship’s anti-missile defense system gave the proper warning. However, the ship’s “chaff” launchers--designed to shoot clouds of aluminum strips to confuse the missile’s radar system--were locked in a “safety” mode and could not be fired, the Navy found.

The defect has since been corrected, but military planners concede that problems of this sort cannot be ruled out.

Still, analysts agree that the odds are clearly on the U.S. side. American forces have the clear advantage, both in technology and in superior numbers and training.

“The doubts can’t be expressed as clear-cut,” one expert admits. “Technically, when you examine all the pieces and parts, you conclude that we should do exceptionally well. But the underlying uncertainty is always that when something should work perfectly, it never does.”