Cheney Hints at an Early Ground War : Gulf conflict: Defense secretary says a land thrust could be used to drive Iraqi troops into the open. He and Powell dismiss suggestions of months of air strikes alone.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, offering the most direct indication to date of how and when a ground assault into Kuwait could begin, said early today that allied troops might launch a land offensive to draw Iraqi troops into a death trap well before warplanes have done their worst damage.

“We may reach the point where you could make the air campaign more effective by adding the other dimensions of the ground campaign, using ground forces to drive him (the enemy) out of his current positions, where they would become more vulnerable to air,” Cheney told reporters flying with him to Saudi Arabia to assess progress in the Persian Gulf War.

Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who accompanied him, dismissed suggestions that America and its allies would continue aerial bombardment for months against Iraqi troops entrenched in occupied Kuwait and southern Iraq before launching a ground offensive. Powell said a ground assault would be part of a seamless plan.

“It is a single, integrated campaign,” he said. “The air campaign will never end.”

In other developments:

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of allied forces in the Gulf, told ABC News on Thursday that it was too soon to say whether a ground assault would be necessary to free Kuwait. He also said he had reports that defecting Iraqi pilots had “bombed or tried to bomb” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his palace.

In France, President Francois Mitterrand said a ground assault is “inevitable.” He went on television to prepare his country. “It will be tough,” Mitterrand said, but he predicted that the war would last no longer than spring. He said that French forces will not use chemical or biological weapons.

The commander of an American armored brigade in Saudi Arabia said some of his tanks and attack helicopters were still aboard ships in the Gulf and that his brigade was not ready for a ground assault. The tanks are the mainstay of a land attack, and the helicopters are designed to provide cover for the armor and ground troops.

Baghdad Radio welcomed the Cheney-Powell trip to Saudi Arabia, saying Iraq was “waiting impatiently for its decisive battle against all the infidel forces.” The broadcast included a new call for terrorism against nations in the U.S.-led coalition. “Fight them,” it said, “by all available means.”

Iraq fired a Scud missile at the Saudi capital of Riyadh--but it was destroyed by Patriot interceptor missiles in a spectacular flash over the city. Wreckage traced fiery trails to the ground. There were no immediate reports of damage or injury. It was the first Scud attack from Iraq since last Saturday.

In the air war, the United States reported shooting down three Iraqi helicopters and updated its intelligence to confirm that Iraq had lost six jet fighters--and probably a seventh--in the 48 hours ending Thursday. All were believed to have been headed for refuge in Iran. U.S. officers estimated that 134 Iraqi planes are now on Iranian soil.

American officers also reported two noncombat air losses. They said an Army Huey helicopter crashed in Saudi Arabia, killing one soldier and injuring four others, and that a Navy F/A-18 jet disappeared over the northern Persian Gulf on its way back from a combat mission. Its pilot was listed as missing.

Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, deputy director of operations for the Central Command, provided this 48-hour breakdown of Iraqi losses: two MIG-21s on Wednesday; two Soviet-made SU-25 fighters, also on Wednesday; two SU-25s on Thursday, and the “probable kill” of an SU-25 on Thursday.

During the same 48 hours, American officers said, 34 Iraqi planes escaped coalition interceptors and made their way to Iran. That put a total of 109 Iraqi fighters and 25 transport planes on Iranian soil. Tehran television said five of the latest Iraqi aircraft to cross over had crashed.

It said one pilot was killed attempting an emergency landing on an Iranian road and that another was hospitalized after he ejected from his plane.

The plane was aflame after being hit by allied fighters, the broadcast said.

Cheney Mission

In their remarks today to reporters aboard their plane before it refueled at Shannon, Ireland, en route to Saudi Arabia, Cheney and Powell said that ousting Iraqi troops from Kuwait with a minimum loss of American lives was their first priority.

“It will figure very prominently,” Cheney said, “in the recommendations we make to the President.”

Powell acknowledged that casualties in any ground war could be heavy. But he added that “very large (casualty) estimates that flow from how Saddam Hussein would like to fight” may not materialize. Iraq’s designs for a high-casualty war would not be “necessarily the way such a war would be fought,” Powell said.

“The assumption is that a ground campaign is Mr. Hussein’s campaign,” he said. “(The assumption that) we’ll fight it his way is not necessarily an accurate one.”

Regardless of what Powell and Cheney find in Saudi Arabia, one highly decorated British commander said Thursday that nothing would spare the allies a bloody ground assault. Lt. Gen. Peter de La Billiere, took stock this way:

“This is a personal opinion. I believe a land war is inevitable. Saddam Hussein is a man who uses human life as a currency to buy what he wants in this world.”

The Sea War

At sea, the battleship Wisconsin moved into combat position in the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf, firing 11 rounds from its giant 16-inch guns. It reported demolishing an Iraqi artillery emplacement in southern Kuwait. This was the first hostile fire from the ship since the Korean War. The battleship Missouri has been shelling Iraqi fortifications on the Kuwaiti coast for several days.

The two battleships, whose shells are as big as small cars and whose explosive roar can be heard for miles, figure importantly in the American contingency plan for a Marine amphibious landing into occupied Kuwait.

In another naval action, U.S. warplanes attacked and reported hits on two Iraqi patrol boats. The Saudi military reported sinking one Iraqi patrol boat and chasing off two others involved in an apparent commando raid Wednesday aimed at the Saudi Arabian border town of Khafji.

The Battlefield

Except for three or four minor skirmishes with Iraqi patrols, the desert between the massive, half-million-soldier armies of Iraq and the allied forces was cool, clear and quiet. The skirmishes were described as efforts by the Iraqis to determine the positions of the coalition forces arrayed against them.

Only a short distance into Kuwait and Iraq, however, the ground shook with ever greater intensity. Allied warplanes concentrated their thunderous aim more tightly on what military strategists call the KTO--the Kuwait Theater of Operations--areas held by front-line Iraqi army troops and the territory to the rear held by the entrenched Iraqi Republican Guards. A senior U.S. military officer called it “isolating and shaping the battlefield.”

Most U.S. officials remained reluctant to tally the toll of the bombing, but a Saudi air force commander told reporters that Iraqi resupply capability in the battlefield region has been reduced by 80%. British forces said that repeated attacks on refineries, petroleum storage facilities and transportation lines were cutting Iraqi fuel resupply ability “to the point where it’s not going to keep up with demands of war.”

In response to the bombardment, U.S. pilots said, the Iraqis have moved their tanks and their artillery around Kuwait “like cockroaches.”

“You stomp some, and they move a little bit,” said Capt. Jon Eagle, who has flown over Iraq and Kuwait in an OV-10 observation plane since the start of the war. “But every time you hit one, you are getting one more. . . .

“We are doing a lot of damage every day,” he said.

American and British officers said they continue to receive reports that Iraq is moving military installations, such as command centers, into locations that so far have been off-limits to allied bombing raids, such as schools. Other reports told of antiaircraft positions being redeployed into residential neighborhoods.

British Gen. De La Billiere said Hussein “is quite deliberately deploying his weapons among civilians with the precise aim of killing civilians.”

U.S. Gen. Neal declined to give up on the possibility of achieving victory by air. But de La Billiere showed no such reluctance. A striking figure in his brown beret, arched eyebrows and Lee Marvin chin, he met with reporters to rattle his saber as if Iraqi President Hussein himself was watching. He said a ground assault is certain.

“We’re now moving into the next phase of this war,” he said, “toward the most difficult and certainly the final phase.” But that means another escalation in the air attacks, as well, he said, including more sorties and more of them focused on Iraqi troop positions.

“The bombing they’ve already been subjected to is minor compared to what they’ve got coming,” he said. At one point, the general said bombing could continue for weeks before coalition forces move forward.

But later he said he would not read too much into that timing.

Assault Countdown

One thing that Gen. Powell and Defense Secretary Cheney are likely to hear when they arrive in Saudi Arabia to discuss this timing is a report from the 3rd Armored Division at the front, where Col. Charles Burke told reporters that he still had not gotten all of his M-1A1 tanks and Apache helicopters.

The 3rd Armored, commanded by Gen. George S. Patton in World War II, is expected to be one of the “building blocks” of any ground war, said its commander, Maj. Gen. Paul Funk, a former commander of the National Training Center in California’s Mojave Desert and recognized as one of the Army’s most experienced desert generals.

“We’re the last division to come into the country, so we aren’t ready yet,” said Col. Burke, who leads a brigade of the 3rd Armored. “We’re still getting equipment off the boats. I do not want to go to war with only a part of my stuff. I want to go to war with all of my stuff.”

There have been sporadic reports of shortages among front-line U.S. combat units.

The 1st Armored Division reported in late January that some of its Bradley fighting vehicles had not yet arrived. Another combat unit was still awaiting the arrival of some of its artillery.

Both the 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions were deployed to Saudi Arabia from Germany, and their heavy equipment was shipped by sea. Burke said that a variety of problems have delayed the arrival of his tanks and helicopters. The problems, he said, included weather and fears among civilian crew members on the contract transports that they would be targets.

“Under the original plan, it all would have been here by now,” Burke said. “It’s not working out the way it should.”

Mitterrand

In France, President Mitterrand joined those who say an allied ground assault is certain.

“It is inevitable,” he told journalists who appeared with him on French television. “And it will be tough. . . . We are entering into a difficult phase of the war.”

Mitterrand asked the French people to be prepared for a “cruel proof of truth” in Kuwait. The last time he issued such an alert was on the eve of the opening of the war on Jan. 16, when he told the French people that efforts to maintain peace had failed and that “the arms will speak.”

Only hours after he made that statement, American and British aircraft roared into Iraq on their first bombing missions.

On Thursday night, Mitterrand defended his decision to allow American KC-135 refueling aircraft to land at French air bases--the first U.S. military planes to use French facilities since Charles de Gaulle withdrew from military participation in NATO in 1967.

Mitterrand also defended the allied use of B-52 bombers in the war, saying that their missions are protecting the lives of the French soldiers who will be involved in the ground conflict.

He did not comment on the resignation last week of French Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, except to say: “It was a matter of principle. He resigned. He has been replaced.” New Defense Minister Pierre Joxe said that French forces, including desert-tested units of the French Foreign Legion, will be on front lines.

Mitterrand said France’s objectives in the war are the “liberation of Kuwait” and not the destruction of the Iraqi war machine. However, he added that what the allies are seeing of the immense Iraqi military indicates that “if we had not fought this war now, we would have had to fight a bigger war in two to four years.”

Although defending what he said was “Israel’s right for security,” Mitterrand said any postwar settlement should include international conferences to resolve the Palestinian and Lebanon situations.

Call for Terrorism

An allied ground attack, Baghdad Radio said, would have grim results.

“All news reports confirm that the number of Americans killed will exceed tens of thousands,” the state-run radio said. “This means that tens of thousands of coffins will arrive, together with tribulations, after which (President) Bush will not be able to dodge the correspondents’ questions . . . .

“The American people are living in a state of panic, fear and chaos” because of allied casualty rates, it said.

Those casualties, it said, are far higher than Bush has admitted.

In a new call for terrorism against the allies, Baghdad Radio said this “mother of battles” is not like any traditional war. “It is the battle to liberate Mecca and the tomb of Messenger Mohammed . . ,” it said, “to liberate Palestine, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon. . . .

“Arab and Muslim brothers,” it exhorted the faithful, “fight them by all available means.

“Destroy the interest of America and its allies, and entrench yourselves with Iraq.”

Balzar reported from Riyadh and Healy from Shannon, Ireland. Times staff writers Douglas Frantz in Dhahran, Kenneth Freed in Nicosia and Rone Tempest in Paris contributed to this report.

Downed Planes

U.S. aircraft downed in Operation Desert Storm, with their approximate individual replacement cost in millions of dollars. PLANES: Total of 18 Hostile downings: NAVY: 1 F/A-18 Hornet ($30.8) 3 A-6 Intruder ($55.5) 1 F-14A Tomcat ($71.9) Air Force: 2 F-15 Strike Eagle ($50.4) 3 F-16 Falcon Fighter ($18.4) 1 F-4G Wild Weasel ($15.7) 1 AC-130 Gunship ($47.02) 1 A-10 Thunderbolt (out of production) Marine Corps: 1 OV-10A Bronco (out of production) 1 AV-8B Harrier ($19.66) Non-hostile downings: Navy: 1 F/A-18 Hornet ($30.8)1 B-52 STRATO-FORTRESS ($35.3) Air Force: 1 B-52 Stratofortress (out of production) Marine Corps: 1 AV-8B Harrier ($19.66) HELICOPTERS: Total of 6 Non-hostile downings 1 Army UH-60 Blackhawk ($6.55) 1 Army AH-64 Apache ($12.76) 1 Army AH-1 Cobra ($9.97) 1 Army UH-1 Medivac (Huey) ($3.8) 1 Marine Corps AH-1J Cobra ($9.97) 1 Marine Corp UH-1 Huey ($3.8) SOURCE: Department of Defense; Forecast International