Israeli Strategist Urges ‘a Mobile War’ : Military: ‘It means outflanking, surrounding, cutting off,’ rather than a frontal attack, experts say.

Plans outlined by top U.S. officials to launch limited ground action to flush Iraqi troops out of their entrenched positions will require delicate and dangerous maneuvering, with no guarantee that the professed goal of limiting American and allied casualties can be attained, Israeli experts say.

An effort to root out Iraqi troops and armor to make it easier for air strikes to batter men and equipment is among the novel elements in the plan. U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney discussed the tactic with reporters last week.

To be successful, the tactic will require clockwork coordination and perhaps daring moves to avoid a static, World War I-style of entrenched combat. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may also have some tricks available, including his own brand of mobile warfare to counter allied thrusts.

“It strikes me that the ground war is going to be very complex,” said Joseph Alpher, the deputy director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. “It means outflanking, surrounding, cutting off. It has to be a mobile war.”

Israeli military planners are carefully watching the development of the Persian Gulf War to see what lessons apply to Israel itself and to gauge its own relative strength in a region where its military edge is being challenged.

The success or failure of the Americans to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait will go a long way in determining Israel’s faith not only in its own forces but also in its alliance with the United States.

According to plans sketched by Cheney, a ground offensive “could make the air campaign more effective by . . . driving (the Iraqis) out of their current positions where they could become more vulnerable to air.”

Other U.S. officials have suggested that repeated bombing of entrenched Iraqi tanks and soldiers is reaching the point of diminishing return and that ground troops must be sent in soon. About half a million soldiers on each side are deployed in the Kuwait theater, an area encompassing Kuwait itself, southern Iraq and north and eastern Saudi Arabia.

In talks with half a dozen observers familiar with Israeli military thinking, there were suggestions that the American-led troops should try to outflank the Iraqi front lines rather than try to punch through heavily mined terrain that is protected by tanks and artillery.

Assault troops could make an end run from the west, others could land by sea in the east and still others might be parachuted or transported by helicopter behind Iraqi lines into Kuwait or Iraq itself.

“Once the Iraqis see them coming, they will have to move,” predicted Alpher, a former army intelligence officer.

Zeev Eytan, an expert in Middle Eastern military forces, suggested that combined outflanking and frontal breakthrough maneuvers might be used.

“You don’t try to crash through the whole line, but find a weak point, while other forces go in a roundabout way,” he said.

Frontal attacks carry the obvious risk of tramping onto minefields and running up against walls of tank and artillery fire. The Iraqis are said to be arrayed in numerous triangular defensive positions with heavy artillery standing at the far apex, as if at the end of a funnel. Iraqi troops have dug and fortified bunkers not only along the Kuwait border with Saudi Arabia, but also west along the Iraqi-Saudi border.

Outflanking these positions in order “to cut off and kill,” in the words of Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a delicate maneuver. Much depends on the ability and willingness of Iraq’s most seasoned troops, the Republican Guard, to move and confront the mobile American and allied forces.

Theoretically, a move by the guard would bring its forces into the open and create ready targets for allied aircraft.

“Without air support, there is some question whether Saddam can pull this off,” said Alpher.

But if the encounters are close, jets and certainly B-52 bombers would be useless because of the danger of hitting the allies themselves.

“The way the battlefield is arrayed, I’m not convinced the flanking maneuver can work. Suppose Saddam refuses to send his troops out? Then what do you do?” asked Dore Gold, a defense analyst at the Jaffee Center. “You still have to go in and push out the Iraqis and that can mean a lot of allied blood is spilled.”

Even the weather could play a decisive role.

“A big question mark is the cloud cover. Clouds could hide moves by the Republican Guard,” Alpher advised.

A scenario involving a mobile defensive strike by his troops would suit Hussein’s purpose of trying to raise American casualties in hopes of increasing anti-war pressure in the United States.

“This is a man to whom tens of thousands of casualties means little,” said an Israeli military official. “He thinks the Americans will cave in first.”

The Israeli experts caution that the strength of the Republican Guard, which has been under heavy bombing for at least two weeks, is hard to gauge. The U.S. military is keeping precise information under wraps, Israeli officials say.

In any event, part of the key to allied success will be the effectiveness of Apache attack helicopters armed with Hellfire missiles and A-10 Warthog planes armed with infrared-guided Maverick missiles that can be launched against tanks from a distance that keeps the aircraft themselves out of harm’s way.

“This is the air power that might be the most important factor,” suggested Zeev Eytan. “They are like flying tanks.”

Whatever the outcome, the evident difficulties in moving Iraq out of Kuwait have already led to some second-guessing by analysts.

President Bush first relied on economic sanctions to weaken Iraq while working to get U.N. and congressional approval to go to war. There is little indication that the sanctions prevented the Iraqis from storing food, fuel and water on the front lines. All through the 5 1/2-month lead-up to war, the Iraqis transported hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces and tons of ammunition to Kuwait and southern Iraq while constructing the bunkers that have proved so difficult to destroy.

“In a way, rapid deployment was undermined by the long lead time in getting combat under way,” said Gold of the Jaffee Center.

Some observers counseled against starting any ground offensive quickly.

“It is important to pound hard at their weaponry in order to achieve the goal of eroding the army,” said Aharon Levran, a retired brigadier general. “Anyone who thinks this can be done in one blow is very mistaken.”