Hefty Planning Underpins Strikes

Despite its limited aims, the air assault on Iraq is the largest and most painstakingly planned U.S. military action of the Clinton administration, officials said.

The missile and aircraft assault probably will last until the weekend, but that period could be extended if warplanes aren’t able to hit key targets or if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein strikes at U.S. allies in the region. The targets of U.S. and British forces are scattered throughout Iraq and should ultimately number in the hundreds, experts predict.

Though officials have been skimpy with details, and for the most part spoke only on condition of anonymity, they confirmed enough of the particulars on Wednesday to suggest that they are largely following scripts that were written when Iraq was threatened with military strikes in the past.

In the assault’s opening day, warships launched hundreds of cruise missiles, as dozens of warplanes struck Iraqi air defense installations and other key targets, officials said. In the past, military officers have said they would aim to take down key command and control installations and military headquarters in the first wave of attacks.

In the days ahead, as about 200 U.S. warplanes now in the region are joined by the 60 aircraft from a supplemental air expeditionary force, pilots will hit a wide variety of locations where Hussein may be manufacturing and storing parts for his programs to develop missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

The Clinton administration often has been faulted for past “pinprick” attacks utilizing missiles so as to minimize risks. And many critics may complain that this attack is insufficient punishment for Hussein.

But this assault is one of the few cases in which the administration has risked manned aircraft; officials say that, by its end, this campaign will be larger than the attack that the Pentagon launched in 1995 on Bosnian Serb forces in the Balkans, which involved hundreds of sorties a day at its peak.

In mid-November, when the administration last threatened to bomb Iraq, officials said they had offered President Clinton plans for either a small-scale or large-scale, sustained attack. They said Wednesday that the current attack uses the larger alternative.

“It’s not cursory,” one senior officer said.

And it does involve risk to U.S. pilots. Senior officers acknowledge that they could lose one or two pilots a day to aircraft malfunction or hits by Iraqi defenders.

Though the military operation is the most ambitious of the Clinton years, officials were careful to point out that its aims are highly limited.

Officials said they don’t intend to destroy all of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction because that is not possible. Nor can they entirely limit his ability to attack his neighbors. But they can “degrade” those capabilities and set Hussein back by months or years, they said.

The Pentagon also is not aiming to extract more promises from Hussein that he will comply with U.N. resolutions calling for the dismantling of his weapons systems. Indeed, one official said he could not imagine what Hussein could say to convince U.S. officials that he would follow through.

An official said the air campaign also isn’t aimed at overthrowing Hussein, although the Clinton administration has said it wants desperately to find a replacement regime. Even so, if Hussein is somehow a casualty of the strikes, the administration would have no regret, this official said.

Although the Iraqi air defense system is far from what it was before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, it remains “sophisticated” and “robust,” one senior officer said. He said the U.S. military can only hope that if planes go down, they will do so in unpopulated parts of the country where the pilots may avoid capture.

With spy planes, satellite pictures and data from other sources, the Pentagon has been accumulating information since the Gulf War that it could use for such an assault. And it has a pile of information from the work of the United Nations Special Commission, which sought to ferret out the Iraqi weapons programs.

Even so, officials acknowledged that they may be able to destroy only a fraction of the weapons stock that the Iraqis have hidden around the country. Indeed, experts note that some of Hussein’s most precious weapons--his chemical and biological stores--are easily concealed underground and were never discovered by the United Nations inspectors.

Another complication is the military’s intention to avoid civilian casualties, which means that it may not be willing to risk strikes in populous areas around the capital, Baghdad.

“We can’t have 100% success,” one top official said.

Because the attack is aimed at destroying certain key targets, planners will review damage after each strike using satellite photographs and decide whether they need to strike the same target again.

Officials said they do not expect to use the approximately 1,500 additional troops that are to be added as part of the supplemental deployment order issued by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen on Wednesday evening. Rather, those forces will be sent to Kuwait as a precaution in case Hussein tries to send his forces south into that neighboring nation--a scenario that has long been a concern to Pentagon planners.

There are already about 24,100 U.S. military personnel in the Persian Gulf region, 22 ships--eight armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles--and 201 military aircraft, among them 15 Air Force B-52 bombers also equipped with cruise missiles. The bombers are based on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

The U.S. aircraft carrier Eisenhower is in the region; a second, the Carl Vinson, is expected to arrive this weekend.

In addition, officials ordered not only 60 more warplanes but also Patriot surface-to-air missile units from Ft. Bliss, Texas, and the 1,500 Army troops from Ft. Stewart, Ga.

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U.S. Weaponry at the Ready

The following is a list of key U.S. weapons in the Gulf area:

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AIRCRAFT

201 aircraft in region now

* On the way:

Warplanes

F-16 fighters

F-15 fighters

B-1B bombers

B-52 bombers

EA-6B radar-jamming aircraft

Marine Corps F-18 fighters

45 support planes

U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, transport and cargo planes, and in-flight refueling aircraft

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TROOPS

* 24,100, including Army troops mostly in Kuwait, sailors and Marines, air personnel and joint staff

* In addition: 3,000 Army armored troops will join those already in Kuwait.

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SHIPS

* Aircraft carriers Enterprise (with70 warplanes) and Carl Vinson (shown below)

* 22 combat ships. Eight have sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.

* Belleau Wood Marine amphibious assault group

* The Essex, Duluth and Anchorage. These ships carry more than 2,000 U.S. Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, plus five AV-8 Harriers, four Supercobra attack helicopters and 20 other helicopters.

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Main Munitions

* Tomahawk Land-Attack Cruise Missile: The range has improved since the Gulf War, and it now has a satellite guidance system.

* Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW): A new glide bomb can be accurate up to 50 miles.

* Conventional AGM-86C Air-Launched Cruise Missile: Air Force version of the Tomahawk

* Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM): Has a range of more than 80 miles

* Laser-Guided Bombs: Very accurate bombs, can carry 500, 1,000-, 2,000- or 5,000-pound warheads.

* Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS): Guidance kit converts existing unguided bombs into accurate guided weapons.

* General Purpose “Dumb” Bombs: Older, unguided bombs

* High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM): Seek out and destroy the source of defense radar systems

Sources: Reuters, Jane’s Information Group, CNN, Dept. of Defense, U.S. Navy, Associated Press