War Plan One of the Most Carefully Guarded Secrets

It is known simply as The Plan, and it is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world today.

No more than 15 top U.S. officials are privy to the exact scheme under which U.S. forces will confront the Iraqi military if the current crisis in the Middle East erupts into a war.

“I’m not going to tell you the sequence or what the timing of that sequence would be,” says Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “because I want (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) to sit there in beautiful downtown Baghdad and worry his butt off about it.”

But the array of multinational forces already in the gulf makes it evident that the war would ultimately become a combined onslaught of air, ground and sea forces.

And, as every military strategist knows, a battle plan remains intact only until the first shot is fired. Then, the course of battle is decided by thousands of factors, and tactics must be constantly honed to address the real-life twists and turns of war. As Powell explained in describing the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama: “A plan only exists up to the time of execution. Then you’re into audibles”--the football term for improvising at the line of scrimmage.

So the campaign quickly becomes one of crucial choices. Some are easy to predict well before the fighting begins. But most of them hinge on the uncertainties of how Iraq’s military will respond at every step.

Moreover, although commanders would prefer to keep politics out of battlefield decisions, they inevitably must weigh whether their actions could shatter the fragile coalition of widely divergent national interests that have aligned themselves against Iraq. As war progresses, most analysts agree, the political strains on the alliance will only grow.

With every option offering both opportunity and risk, here are some of the most important questions that would arise in the first hours and days of the war, as U.S. forces attempt to force Iraq out of Kuwait.

Which forces will go into battle?

Launching the fight from the air is considered highly likely, because U.S. fliers would probably incur far fewer casualties than would ground forces battling Iraqi tanks and heavy artillery. Air power is also where the United States has the clearest superiority over Iraq, whose regular army and elite Republican Guards have had long experience in desert fighting against Iran. By comparison, Iraq’s air force and air-defense system are relatively weak.

And nowhere, it would seem, is there a better bombing target than the barren desert, where troops, weapons and supply lines are relatively hard to hide. On the other hand, the desert is a hellish place to launch ground warfare. The first of Napoleon’s 115 maxims concerning war includes the warning that of all obstacles to an army, “the most difficult to overcome are deserts.”

With combined allied air forces capable of flying thousands of sorties a day in the earliest stage of the war, some experts have argued that it is possible to win the war with air power alone, and to avoid the huge U.S. death toll that a ground war could bring.

Eliot Cohen, director of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, predicts that a massive air campaign would “either lead Saddam to yield or lead others to depose him and deal with us.”

But Powell and other U.S. strategists have made it clear that they do not see an air attack as an easy solution.

“Many experts, amateurs and others in this town believe that (forcing Iraq from Kuwait) can be accomplished by such things as surgical air strikes or perhaps a sustained air strike,” Powell says.

“And there are a variety of other nice, tidy, alleged low-cost, incremental, may-work options that are floated around with great regularity all over this town. . . . But one can hunker down, one can dig in, one can disperse to try to ride out such a single-dimension attack.”

Military strategists are also haunted by lessons from past wars in which the massive use of air power failed to do the whole job--most recently in Vietnam, where the North Vietnamese, even amid carpet bombing, continued to fight and resupply their forces through capillary-like trails in the dense jungle.

Although more modern equipment and the desert terrain should make an air strike against Iraq more effective, “the fundamental flaw in such strategies,” Powell says, “is that it leaves the initiative in Saddam’s hands. He makes the decision as to whether or not he feels he has been punished sufficiently so that he has no choice but to withdraw.”

Adds retired Air Force Gen. Charles L. Donnelly Jr., former chief of the U.S. Military Training Mission in Saudi Arabia: “I don’t believe you are ever going to see a scenario where ground forces are not going to have to be used. . . . I am one of those airmen that still believes that the way you know you have won a war is when a soldier stands on the ground with an M-16 in his hand and no one is shooting at him.”

When will ground forces be unleashed?

This decision is not likely to be made until U.S. leaders see how effective the initial air strikes will be. “They’ll probably be making that assessment by the hour,” says Jeff Shaffer, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Experts believe that to keep casualties as low as possible, the United States would prefer to hold back its ground forces until the Air Force achieves its first priority: control of the sky.

That means destroying the air defenses in Iraq--aircraft, airfields and surface-to-air missiles. Quick success depends on how and how well the Iraqis fight back--whether, for example, they put their aircraft into the air or leave them on the ground in camouflaged bunkers, where they might be more difficult to demolish. It is almost as crucial to flatten the Iraqi command structure in Baghdad and in the field, an achievement U.S. strategists believe would cripple the centrally controlled Iraqi military.

U.S. air forces would also want to take out ballistic missiles, preventing Hussein from following through on his vow of making Israel his first target. Israel has promised to respond in what Housing Minister Ariel Sharon has described as “the harshest possible manner,” which could fracture the U.S.-Arab alliance by putting Arab countries in the politically impossible position of fighting on the same side as Israel.

Although military sources have said the initial air phase could accomplish its goals in 10 days or less, retired Lt. Gen. William E. Odom warns that some of Iraq’s shorter-range missiles are mobile and scattered throughout the desert, which means that it could take at least two weeks to find and destroy them.

What is the best way to penetrate Iraq’s formidable ground defenses?

Once U.S. leaders have decided to launch a ground attack, they must decide how and where to hit the Iraqi forces entrenched along the heavily mined borders that separate Saudi Arabia from Kuwait and southern Iraq. Presumably, this will happen after those Iraqi defenses have been “softened up” under a heavy pounding by formations of B-52s.

Powell has publicly dismissed the idea of a frontal assault as “mindless.” Therefore, U.S. forces appear more likely to try to punch a hole in the most vulnerable parts of the chain of 3,000-man infantry brigades that Iraq has stationed along the borders. Iran was quite effective at picking such weak spots during its eight-year war with Iraq, and there is no reason to think the United States cannot do as well, Shaffer says.

After that, the United States and its allies will have the option of pushing deeper as quickly as possible, or moving left and right to methodically “roll up” the rest of the front-line defenses, before confronting the heavy armor stationed in central Kuwait. Throughout, they would be backed up by continuing air strikes.

If allied forces choose to rush deep into Kuwait without defeating the entire front line, “there’s always the threat of those (Iraqi troops) crossing your rear,” engaging U.S. forces in firefights or cutting the resupply lines that are critical to a land war, Shaffer says. “Saddam may find a whole line of ripe targets and bring you screechingly to a halt.”

On the other hand, he notes, defeating a large section of the front line could be a relatively slow process, which would give Hussein’s second-line forces, including his elite Republican Guard divisions, a chance to mount a counterattack.

“It’s hard to assess from D.C.,” Shaffer says. “A lot will depend on what the Iraqis do when attacked. Once they’re breached, what kind of fighters are they?”

If large numbers quickly surrender, military tacticians would probably opt for a quick, deep strike, assuming that the Iraqi forces they leave behind pose little danger, Shaffer speculates. “Other forces can mop up as they go through. You don’t have to devote your front echelon to it.”

However, mass defection by the Iraqis could also pose problems in itself. Caring for them could become a major challenge in the harsh desert. There has even been some speculation that Iraq may encourage large numbers of its front-line troops to surrender, so that dealing with these prisoners diverts the first echelon of U.S. forces from their attack.

How should the U.S. and its allies respond if Iraq uses chemical or biological weapons?

Hussein has threatened both, but it is unclear, despite their great psychological power, how effective either would be in battle. Iraq may find it difficult to hit targets with much accuracy, and the potency of chemical weapons could quickly dissipate.

Once such weapons were used, however, U.S. military leaders would have to weigh whether the move called for a punishing blow that would discourage other nations from using them in future conflicts.

That could require a sharp change in tactics that includes stepping up air attacks, changing targeting plans and more quickly depleting supplies of guns, bombs and bullets.

What is the best way to liberate Kuwait city?

Once again, air power alone would appear to be the first method of attack against the Iraqi defenses in and around Kuwait city. The ultimate task of retaking the Kuwaiti capital would probably fall to Marines now stationed on warships in the gulf.

It is unclear whether that would mean grisly house-to-house combat that could leave large numbers of civilian and military casualties, as well as reduce the city to rubble.

Unless Iraq forces a fight there, “I think we’re probably going to bypass Kuwait city,” says retired Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., a military analyst. He and other experts suggest that it would be preferable to encircle the city and concentrate on fighting in other parts of the theater.

“They can sit there in Kuwait city, and the Kuwaitis will take care of them,” Summers says.

How much fighting should be carried from Kuwait into Iraq itself?

In military terms, a decisive victory would seem to mean a major assault on Iraq. Anything less would leave Hussein with the ability to invade one of his neighbors again.

Political considerations, however, may overrule that decision, particularly when it comes to a sustained ground war on Iraqi soil.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has conceded that the countries of the 28-nation alliance against Iraq have “varying levels of commitment in terms of willingness to use offensive military action.” Many Arab countries in particular have signed on strictly for the purpose of driving Iraq out of Kuwait--period.

“You can free Kuwait without carrying the land battle deep into Iraq,” Shaffer says. But he warns that a long face-to-face confrontation in Iraq “threatens to divide the coalition.”

Shaffer notes, for example, that the majority of Iraq’s Shiite Muslims are in the south around Basra. If fighting occurs there, he speculated, Iran’s government might find it difficult to resist coming to the aid of fellow Shiites. That area is also the site of sacred Muslim shrines.

Unless the United States can hold its Arab allies, the war could ultimately be seen in the Middle East as an example of Western aggression, leaving the region more hostile than ever to the United States.

Broadening the war also risks losing support at home. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) says the basic premise behind the use of the military is: “Our forces would attack strategic and military targets in Iraq and seek to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. It would not be a war to punish the Iraqi people or seize Iraqi territory.”

What is victory?

Many analysts have suggested that the United States and its allies should seek a balance that is extraordinarily delicate and may be impossible to achieve: leaving Iraq too shattered to threaten its weakest neighbors again, but strong enough to fend off such strong and expansive regional forces as Syria and Iran.

“I don’t see any way to fight this war without creating a big vacuum. It’s the aftermath that’s the problem,” Odom says. “If we succeed over there, we’ll have our forces deployed in that region forever.”

As the United States and its allies try to sort out that question, they may find themselves continuing the battle, even after Iraq has left Kuwait. Such was the case in South Korea, where war dragged on fully two years after Communist forces were driven out.

“The main question that we don’t seem to be addressing is war termination,” Summers says. “How do we end the thing?”