Jury Still Out on Army’s Sorely Needed Mine-Clearing Device : Weapons: Generals look on hopefully in field test. Without it, sending troops into the breach could be costly.

Out on a dusty firing range more than two weeks into combat, the generals descended by helicopter, taking a break from war planning to see whether the new weapon really worked.

On display was a rocket-powered explosive used to clear minefields from a distance, a much-desired tool in an expected U.S. advance against fortified Iraqi positions.

The arrival of the men with the well-starred Kevlar helmets pointed up the importance of this test, in a war certain to be a proving ground for dozens of untested weapons systems. It also underscored the teeth-gnashing tension in this lull before ground combat, when American commanders talk about heading into “the breach,” a first probe through Iraqi lines.

Trial runs conducted last fall at the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert at Ft. Irwin, Calif., have suggested that U.S. forces could suffer heavy casualties in any such crossing. One recommended prescription for cutting losses, the mine-clearing device, is unfamiliar to many infantry and armored commanders here. Their apprehension has increased in recent weeks as combat engineers have encountered chronic problems with the device in test-firings elsewhere in Saudi Arabia.

Without the mine-clearing device, commanders could be forced to rely on more primitive and far more dangerous breaching techniques that, as a last resort, could send soldiers armed with probing rods shoulder-to-shoulder into the open, seeking to open a path toward the well-defended Iraqi positions.

“This is make-or-break day for the engineers,” one officer said at the start of the morning-long mine-clearing display, as Maj. Gen. Ronald H. Griffith, commander of the Army’s 1st Armored Division, headed into the desert toward the test site in an armored vehicle. Aides said the general had previously witnessed only repeated failures in attempted demonstrations of the device, known as a mine-clearing line charge (MCLC), near his home base in Germany.

“You always get a better feel for this stuff if you see it function,” said Col. Montgomery C. Meigs, commander of the division’s 3rd Brigade and among the many senior officers who had never seen the mine-clearing device fired. “So I thought I’d come here and do just that.”

For this test, engineers from the 16th Engineer Battalion said they had spent weeks modifying the mine-clearing device to correct problems believed to have plagued the system in the past. And this time, the test went according to plan.

As the top brass watched, a vehicle converted for the task rolled forward and fired, launching the device upward in a snakelike string--the British call it the Giant Viper--that uncoiled and fell extended on a simulated minefield. Within seconds, the charge exploded in a massive concussion that left the earth scarred along a line that extended well forward, opening the way for a plow-equipped tank that rumbled along the path to complete the mine-clearing exercise.

A charge fired later in the morning failed to explode, a recurring malady that required engineers to climb out of their armored vehicle to detonate the device manually, a move that in combat would be highly dangerous. But the equipment otherwise performed well, and at least some of the morning’s unease appeared to have been allayed.

“There was a lot of apprehension here this morning,” said Lt. Col. Ronald H. Adkins, 41, of Rocky Mount, Va., “but I will tell you that after the demonstration here this morning, there is no apprehension at all.”

Nevertheless, other officers and veteran combat engineers made it clear later that no amount of technology could dispel their sense of dread in preparing for a potential path-breaking mission across the Iraqi lines.

Asked his preferred tools for such an assault, Sgt. Carl Curtice, a combat engineer from Seattle with 13 years of barrier-breaching experience, replied: “Carpet-bomb.”

“Or go around,” he added. “I don’t know who’s going to go through ‘em, but there’s going to be a lot to go through.”

In confronting Iraqi minefields believed to be hundreds of yards deep, the engineers noted, they could be forced to fire several mine-clearing charges consecutively, prolonging the time they would be vulnerable to enemy fire.

At the same time, they said, the threat of chemical attack during operations conducted within easy range of Iraqi forces will almost certainly mean that U.S. troops must wear cumbersome protective suits in any barrier-breaching mission.

And, in what engineers said remains their most significant concern, combat forces in the division began only Sunday to rehearse their role in such assaults. In the National Training Center mock attacks last fall, they noted, a lack of coordination among ground, air and artillery forces had been blamed for “heavy casualties.”

“All this needs orchestration,” said Capt. Tom Magness, operations officer for the battalion. “It’s not just engineers who need to go through it.”

With the quality of Iraqi fortifications believed to vary significantly along a front that stretches hundreds of miles from the Kuwaiti coast into the interior of Iraq, some officers hold out the hope that U.S. forces might not have to contend with the most formidable of the barriers, which include massive berms of sand and trenches filled with oil that could be set afire.

“The doctrine says the best course is always to go around them,” said Adkins, the engineers’ commander.

In pep talks to his soldiers, Gen. Griffith, commander of this Iron Soldiers division, has also sought to dispel the impression that his massive armored force would simply lurch head-on into dug-in Iraqi defenders if it came to a U.S. ground offensive.

“If we have to cross that line,” Griffith told the headquarters of one battalion the other day, “we’re going to be in good shape--without losing a lot of soldiers. That’s going to be the goal.”

Still, the young engineers who would be asked to contend with obstacles along the way appeared not altogether convinced.

At the end of the mine-clearing demonstration for the brass, one company commander praised his men and pointed out that Griffith had departed by the time the first misfire occurred.

“We were three-for-three when the general was here,” the captain said. “That’s what counts.”

There was a pause, then one soldier in the crew spoke up: “Not really, sir.”