War’s Climax: Big Battle Against Iraq’s Elite Units : Strategy: The allied assault is modeled on a ‘hammer and anvil.’ It is the centerpiece of Desert Storm.

By throwing the heaviest concentration of armor since World War II against Saddam Hussein’s vaunted Republican Guard, trapping it between a lethal “hammer and anvil,” allied forces have launched the climactic battle of the Persian Gulf War.

The engagement is the centerpiece of Operation Desert Storm, the objective of a seven-month political and military campaign that began Aug. 6 when the United States dispatched the first squadron of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Pentagon strategists said they expect the combination of U.S., British and French forces to trap and crush the 150,000-man guard, considered the backbone of Hussein’s power. Once the guard is disabled, Iraqi armed resistance will effectively cease, they said.

U.S. commanders have orders to press the attack until the entire Republican Guard force is demolished, officials in Washington said, but it was not clear how much resistance Iraq’s elite units would offer.

Allied commanders, capitalizing on unexpected early successes in the ground war, moved up the attack on the Republican Guard by a full day and initiated assaults even before they had completed the planned encirclement of the Iraqi force.

One gap remained along the northern section of the allied cordon, Pentagon officials said late Tuesday, but they expected to fill it with air power until ground forces could be maneuvered into place.

Commanders had expected to employ helicopter-borne Marines from ships off the Kuwaiti shore to attack the guard from the rear, around Basra, but that operation may prove unnecessary, military officials said.

Some officials predicted that the battle could be concluded in as little as 48 hours.

“This is a beaten army, utterly devastated,” a senior Pentagon official said.

Others cautioned, however, that the Republican Guard--Hussein’s best-trained, best-equipped and most loyal force--would fight to the death.

The allied assault is being carried out by a huge armored and airborne force that has quietly maneuvered into place over the last three days while the world’s attention was focused on the dramatic lunge into Kuwait and the drive to liberate its capital.

The massive and intricate enveloping maneuver followed established Army principles of speed and deception. It was moving in so many directions at once that the overall thrust of the attack became apparent to the Iraqis only as the battle was actually joined, officials said.

Even then, the Iraqis were uncertain which movements were allied attacks and which were feints, officials said, because their communications have been crippled. The U.S. battle plan relies heavily on deceptive action and disrupting enemy radio traffic.

“We can see half of his hand, and he can’t see any of our cards,” a senior Pentagon official said.

The main allied assault force consists of the heaviest U.S. armored corps assembled since World War II, accompanied by the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, British and French tank divisions and U.S. armored cavalry regiments.

The attacking force is the operation’s “hammer,” while U.S. and Arab forces surging north through western Kuwait and the threat of a Marine helicopter operation near Basra will serve as the “anvil,” preventing the Iraqi force from falling back to new defensive positions.

“It is a very deliberate and methodical plan. We will set the timetable and the terms of the battle,” a senior Army planner said. “They’re checkmated, no matter what they do. We want them to recognize their predicament and cease resistance in order to save their own lives. But we’re prepared for any course of action they choose.”

“They’ve run into something they couldn’t conceive of before this battle began,” said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Military officials said that because the encirclement of the guard was not complete as the operation began, there remained a narrow escape route to the north for Iraqi troops who wished to flee. But they will be “relentlessly pursued” by A-10 ground-attack aircraft and Apache assault helicopters flying from captured Iraqi airfields or improvised landing strips, officers said.

The guard will be surrounded and given the choice of dying in place or surrendering, officials said.

“The Republican Guard will go to POW camps in Saudi Arabia and will be repatriated without any weapons,” a senior military official said. “We will capture it, process it and disarm it.”

In the first two days of the land campaign, U.S. and allied troops, led by fast-moving cavalry and airborne units, moved as far north as the Euphrates River and on Tuesday wheeled eastward for their rendezvous with the Iraqi force. Bridges over the Euphrates were bombed to seal off the guard units before the land battle began.

The main battle was preceded by several smaller skirmishes, including one that destroyed 35 of Iraq’s modern, Soviet-made T-72 tanks. Pentagon officials said the Republican Guard units encountered Monday and Tuesday fought no better than other Iraqi forces, who were described as utterly ineffective against allied troops.

“There have been tank engagements with the Republican Guard, and in each case the result has been positive for us,” Kelly said.

Asked how the U.S.-led assault force would react if the guard hunkered down and refused to come out of its defensive fortifications, Kelly said: “We will deal with the Republican Guard whether they’re in their defensive positions or not. If they elect to stay in their defensive positions . . . they’re in deep, deep trouble.”

Army officials said the plan to destroy the guard is a smaller version of the overall campaign plan and is built around the Army’s war-fighting doctrine, known as AirLand Battle.

The doctrine calls for speed, maneuver, firepower and air supremacy to concentrate strength against enemy weakness.

Although the size of the opposing forces is roughly equal, at 150,000 members, the allies possess superiority in every important measure of combat power--aircraft, tanks, artillery, communications, logistics--as a result of 41 days of aerial bombardment of the Republican Guard.

Kelly said the guard force consists of eight divisions: four infantry, two armored, one mechanized and one special forces. He said that although the armored and mechanized units suffered substantial damage from the air war, the guard as a whole remains an effective force.

The four infantry divisions are located north of Iraq’s border with Kuwait; the armored and mechanized forces are to the west, apparently deployed as a blocking force to prevent an allied sweep directly into Basra, officials indicated. U.S. officials have not identified the specific area in which the special forces are deployed.

The allied attacking forces will isolate individual units, confront them with superior power at the point of attack and “dismantle them piece by piece,” a senior Army officer said.