Allies Ready Air Armada for Possible Strikes : Military: NATO forces prepare ships and fighters already in the region near Bosnia. Officials say weaponry is designed to lessen civilian casualties.

The United States and its European allies began gearing up Wednesday for possible air strikes in Bosnia, using allied aircraft already in the region and equipped for nighttime bombing, and laser-guided munitions designed to minimize civilian casualties.

Pentagon officials said the air armada would employ more than 100 fighter-bombers from the United States and five other NATO countries, with support from dozens of airborne tankers, reconnaissance aircraft, electronic spy planes and AC-130H gunships.

All are currently enforcing the U.N. “no-fly” zone over Bosnia from air bases in Italy and Turkey and from the U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga, which is in the Adriatic Sea. The Navy also has two guided-missile cruisers on station near the Saratoga.

Officials said any attacks would not be confined to those specific artillery batteries located in violation of the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization ban. Instead, allied aircraft would be free to destroy any heavy weapons, or related targets, such as ammunition dumps and logistics depots.

For the moment, officials appear to have ruled out massive allied bombing of Bosnian Serb command centers, bridges and other large structures, in hopes of limiting any military moves to narrow-gauge “enforcement” action.

Pentagon strategists said they have pinpointed about 100 heavy weapons--including tanks, artillery, heavy mortars and multiple-launch rocket systems--within the 20-kilometer zone around Sarajevo from which such weapons are supposed to be excluded. Most belong to the Bosnian Serbs.

But officials stressed that the NATO warplanes would be equipped with special night-bombardment capability and precision-guided munitions that provide unusual accuracy--a move that they said they hope would limit casualties among innocent civilians.

“We don’t want anyone to get into a position of creating our own Saturday,” a Pentagon official said, referring to the mortar attack on a marketplace in Sarajevo last weekend that prompted NATO to issue Wednesday’s ultimatum.

Besides the U.S. warships, the allied flotilla off the Bosnian coast is expected to include vessels from France and Britain, which ordered aircraft carriers to the area.

U.S. officials said there still is a chance that NATO will use TPQ-37 counter-battery radar units, which are capable of locating artillery and mortar by tracking their projectiles when they are fired. So far, however, no country has volunteered to assign soldiers to the radar units.

Military officials said the primary reason NATO decided to allow 10 days before it begins enforcing its pullback order is to give U.N. peacekeeping troops now in Bosnia time to reinforce their defenses.

Allied war planners have long feared that the Serbs would respond to air attacks by retaliating against the peacekeepers. The peacekeeping units--British, French, Spanish, Canadian and Greek troops--are lightly armed.