Cheney to Urge More Bombing Before Land War, Officials Say : Gulf conflict: Area remains ‘target-rich,’ a general declares. U.S. loses first warplane in a week as raids on Iraqi troops in Kuwait are stepped up.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney will recommend to President Bush today that he allow warplanes to continue bombing Iraqi troops for a while longer before ordering a ground assault into occupied Kuwait, senior Bush Administration officials said.

The officials, who declined to be identified, made the statement Sunday as military officials said another two to four weeks of allied bombardment in the Persian Gulf may be needed before allied ground troops are sent against Iraqi forces across the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.

At allied military headquarters, Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, deputy operations director of the Central Command, told reporters that there is no shortage of Iraqi targets for allied warplanes to hit.

“It remains a target-rich environment,” Neal declared.

Cheney, who spent two days in Saudi Arabia being briefed by officers, will take recommendations for the timing of a ground attack to a meeting with Bush at the White House. Cheney said after his briefing that “the question is when” such an attack will be launched.

As Cheney departed for the United States, jets streaked low over the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait and stepped up the tempo of their attack on Iraqi troops in the Kuwaiti theater of operations. Allied pilots flew 2,800 sorties in 24 hours, an increase of 400 flights over previous days. This pushed their total so far to 59,000.

One American plane, a Marine AV-8 Harrier, was shot down in southern Kuwait, officers said. Its pilot was listed as missing and was not immediately identified. The aircraft was the first American warplane lost in combat in more than a week.

Because of the increased bombing, one U.S. officer said, airspace over Iraq and Kuwait got so crowded that traffic was harder to coordinate than in the skies of Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas combined. Each target destroyed, a British officer said, means fewer casualties when the ground offensive opens.

He said British planes hit four bridges, a Silkworm missile factory and two hardened aircraft shelters--one with a plane inside.

In addition, American officers said, 75 more Iraqi soldiers surrendered to allied forces. Some brought their AK-47 assault rifles with them, the Americans said. This pushed the total of Iraqi prisoners of war to more than 1,000.

In other developments:

* An Iraqi prisoner of war reportedly told U.S. officials that two POWs, a man and the only American woman to be taken prisoner by the Iraqis, have been moved to Basra, a heavily bombed city that serves as headquarters for Iraq’s campaign in Kuwait. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has said that allied prisoners of war will be placed at strategic sites so they can be used as human shields.

* Iraq said it was hit by 164 air raids in 24 hours. The Iraqis said the bombing concentrated on “residential targets.” Allied officers said they targeted only military facilities, but that civilian sites are sometimes hit by accident. The Iraqis said three allied planes were shot down--but gave no details. To ease growing shortages, the Iraqi government canceled all duties on imports.

* Soviet Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, who is President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s senior military adviser, offered a sobering caution. He predicted that any ground assault is apt to be brutal and that it would take longer than the allies expect. “The Iraqi forces,” he said, “are not the kind of forces that will flee the battlefield from the first blow. They will offer stiff resistance.”

* Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle urged Bush to let the air war continue substantially longer before committing U.S. troops to a land battle. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said a ground assault should be mounted only when it could hasten the war’s end. And he said any ground action should be “limited.” For emphasis, Dole repeated the word limited.

At a briefing for reporters, Gen. Neal said half the extra sorties flown Saturday night and Sunday were against the Republican Guard, considered to be Hussein’s top troops. Neal called them “a significant slice of the sortie pie.”

One senior military official said it remains a mystery why the Iraqis have not responded to the relentless allied bombing with poison gas attacks.

Chemical warheads are among the most feared weapons in Hussein’s arsenal.

The military official, who asked to remain anonymous, said allied officers are concerned about the possibility that a chemical attack might be imminent because “they (the Iraqis) have been taking such a pounding, and there has been no response.”

Ground Assault

At a news conference early Sunday before leaving Riyadh, Cheney made it clear that he is returning to Washington with a firm recommendation that the President order ground troops into action.

“If Saddam Hussein left (Kuwait) tomorrow, that’s the only thing that would stop” a ground assault, said one senior Bush Administration official, who asked to remain anonymous.

But it was equally clear that Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would counsel patience. Powell came to Saudi Arabia with Cheney and was also briefed by allied commanders.

“I am struck by the enormous size of the Iraqi military establishment--the size of the army, the enormous number of tanks, the hardened aircraft shelters, the redundant communications systems,” Cheney said after the briefing. “This clearly was a military force designed for major combat.”

While Cheney said the Republican Guard has been “hard-hit” by waves of allied warplanes, he also acknowledged that some of its units might not have been seriously hurt.

According to one knowledgeable military official in Riyadh, there is growing concern about how difficult it is to disable the Republican Guard by targeting its combat vehicles. The Guard’s top-of-the-line T-72 tanks and many of its armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces are secured under concrete slabs dug deeply into the desert, the official said.

Nothing short of a direct hit by a powerful bomb can destroy them, he said.

“They may be so deeply dug in that we may never get more than 20% of the Republican Guard forces with air power alone,” one knowledgeable officer said.

Pentagon officials have said that allied air forces have set a target of destroying 50% of Iraqi combat vehicles across the military theater before recommending that ground forces enter the fight.

But, in the case of the Republican Guard, officials said that benchmark might have to be scaled back if Bush wants to commit ground troops to action anytime soon. Not only is a 50% benchmark more difficult to achieve with the Republican Guard than expected, the officials said, but also some of the intended damage can be accomplished in other ways--attacking the guard’s supply lines, for instance, and its communication networks.

In such circumstances, one high-ranking officer said, the Guard might have 90% of its tanks left but only 10% of its effectiveness.

One senior officer involved with war planning suggested that, in the case of the Republican Guard, the need to destroy 50% of its combat vehicles might be overstated. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, this officer said, other Iraqi units often fought with 50% of their forces lost, but the Republican Guard retreated when only 20% to 30% of its combat capability was destroyed.

In any case, Cheney said the air war could not go on by itself forever.

There is no “magic trigger point at which you could begin the next phase of the campaign,” he said. But “I think there’s a limit to how long we can” bomb without a ground assault.

“There’s a point of diminishing returns,” he said. “When you’ve struck all the targets you can strike from the air, when you’ve done all you can do to limit the resupply, when you’ve destroyed all the armor and artillery that you can get at from the air, you might then have to use other forces in order to achieve your objectives.”

At that point, Cheney said, commanders might send in ground troops to flush Iraqi troops out of their defensive positions and make them more vulnerable to air power.

And at that point, Cheney said, air power might even be stepped up.

Quite apart from any ground assault, he said, the combat power of some Iraqi army units already has been cut by “as much as 40%.”

En route to Washington, Cheney told reporters with him that allied warplanes have neutralized Iraq’s ability to threaten its neighbors with military force “for a good long time.”

This means, Cheney said, that one of Bush’s long-term objectives already has been reached--to remove Iraq as a military threat to the stability of the Middle East.

Woman POW

The report that the only American woman prisoner of war had been taken to Basra, in southern Iraq, was aired on NBC-TV, which attributed the information to an Iraqi prisoner of war.

The information could not be independently confirmed, but the POW reportedly said it was his Iraqi unit that had moved the woman and her male American colleague. NBC said the Iraqi POW’s description of the woman matched that of Army Spec. Melissa Ann Rathbun-Nealy, 20, of Newaygo, Mich.

Rathbun-Nealy and her unidentified colleague were reported missing 10 days ago near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.

Military officials said a jeep carrying the two soldiers was found on a desert road. It contained gas masks and protective suits.

But there was no sign of either of its occupants.

Damage in Iraq

The damage in Iraq was reported by Associated Press correspondent Salah Nasrawi in Baghdad, who said air strikes had hit several government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization.

Additional strikes hit two major bridges over the Tigris River, he said. Nasrawi identified them as the July 14 Bridge and the Martyrs Bridge. He said the July 14 Bridge was destroyed and the Martyrs Bridge was damaged.

Residents of Baghdad, he reported, are suffering from shortages of food, drinking water, medicine and fuel.

Iraq imposed new penalties for shopkeepers convicted of profiteering, Nasrawi reported. In addition, the Iraqi government instituted sweeping rules aimed at punishing those who hoard ever-diminishing supplies of fuel.

There has been no running water or electricity in Baghdad for weeks.

Soviet Union

In spite of the toll taken by allied planes and the inexorable decline of the Iraqi army, a sobering word of caution came from Soviet Marshal Akhromeyev, who said in a televised interview that Hussein’s forces will mount a determined stand against any allied ground offensive.

“I think the warfare will not be completed within a short order of time,” he said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“The Iraqi ground forces and Iraqi air force have a rich experience of conducting warfare. And the Iraqi forces are not the kind of forces that will flee the battlefield from the first blow.

“They will offer stiff resistance,” the Soviet marshal said. “And I believe the upcoming ground battle, if it does take place, the nature of the ground warfare will be a bitter one. And I think they (the ground war battles) will last for a considerable length of time.”

Congressional Counsel

Members of Congress said Bush should base his decision about a ground assault on military advice.

But Sen. Dole, the minority leader, and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) insisted that the air campaign can be usefully prolonged.

“I think we ought to continue to do what we are doing,” Dole said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are being very successful in the air. In my view, we ought to continue it. It’s not just an air war, then a ground war, then an amphibious war. It’s a combination.

“And I think we’re seeing now continuation of the pulverizing by air, which I think ought to continue until we decide that we can hasten the end by some limited ground action--limited ground action.”

Mitchell agreed with Dole’s assessment that valuable military targets remain for allied air strikes.

“If the objective is to eliminate the capability of the Iraqi army to make war,” he said, “there are still many targets. The Iraqi army possesses a large quantity of materiel, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, that remain and are targets for air action. I think the air war can continue successfully for some time.”

Airliners

In Tunis, Tunisia, a newspaper reported that five Iraqi Airways planes had landed to take shelter.

The daily Assabha, citing an unidentified source, said two Boeing 747s were at an airport in southeast Tunisia and that three Boeing 727s were at an airport in the southwest.

The newspaper did not say when the planes arrived.

It was not certain what would happen to the aircraft. Tunisian officials informed the United Nations of their presence. Tunisia opposes the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

But it has kept a low profile in the crisis.

Healy reported from Shannon, Ireland, where the defense secretary’s plane refueled en route to Washington. Kennedy reported from Riyadh. Times staff writer Rudy Abramson in Washington contributed to this story.