Planners Assess Casualty Risks in an Iraq Strike

With possible casualties always a huge worry, Pentagon officials are racing to finish scenarios for how they might conduct a punishing two- to seven-day air campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom they see as wildly unpredictable and usually vengeful.

The planners say a key factor in achieving a successful mission, including guaranteeing the safety of U.S. personnel, will be just how effective American pilots will find the Iraqi air defense network, a system of thousands of antiaircraft guns and hundreds of surface-to-air missiles tied to radars and linked to an operations headquarters in Baghdad.

The Pentagon hopes to put much of the network out of commission within hours of the onset of the campaign.

The initial attack would likely start several hours before dawn, beginning with a barrage of ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and F-117A Stealth fighters. These would be aimed at the air defenses, communications and command-and-control centers and would be followed up with attacks by F-16CJ fighters escorted by radar-jamming Navy EA-6B Prowlers and EF-111A Raven aircraft.

The goal is to suppress the Iraqi defenses sufficiently that carrier-based F/A18 and F-14 fighters, and B-1B and B-52 bombers, can follow with their own attacks.

U.S. forces are more prepared than they were in the Persian Gulf War for airstrikes, officials say.

This time, the U.S. military should benefit from seven years of close surveillance of the Iraqi air defenses, as well as thousands of hours of practice flying over the terrain through enforcement of the “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq.

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Also, the Iraqi air defense network, modeled on Soviet equipment and partially built by the French, was damaged in the ’91 war and remains vulnerable. Most of its missiles are older, and the system’s five regional units are vulnerable if the headquarters operation is taken down.

Pentagon officials believe that some of the radar operators may be afraid to turn on their equipment, lest they be quickly found and struck by U.S. missiles.

Even so, the officials acknowledge that there could be surprises.

Hussein has succeeded in bringing in replacement parts to partially restore his defense network, and some analysts believe that he may have purchased more sophisticated weaponry as well. This could include big, tractor-mounted SA-10C surface-to-air missiles, a sophisticated weapon “that could cause some trouble,” said Robert W. Gaskin, a retired Air Force pilot who helped plan the Gulf War strikes.

Officials agree that with 1,000 to 3,000 sorties in all, some aircraft are likely to be hit by lucky shots--what pilots call the “golden BB.”

And while planners anticipate that the prospective air campaign would most likely generate only a handful of American casualties, as some planes fall to enemy fire, accidents or mechanical failure, there is risk from “friendly fire.”

In the ’91 war, 35 of the 148 Americans killed were lost in such incidents.

Planners have also been actively preparing for the possibility that Hussein could strike back with terrorist-style bombings targeting U.S. bases in the region, fire off Scud missiles--possibly with nerve-gas or germ warheads--or even mount a desperate tank attack in the direction of Kuwait.

If Hussein turns defiant with such a move--or just gets lucky--the death toll could spike into the hundreds or higher, Pentagon officials acknowledge.

Worries about casualties are great enough that U.S. officials have begun preparing public opinion.

“We will lose some people, and that weighs heavily,” Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned recently.

In the Gulf War, U.S. forces conducted 36,000 sorties and lost 22 aircraft in combat and five others to accidents, for a loss rate of 0.1%. Typically in a modern air war, that rate would be 0.25% or 0.5%, said Daniel Goure, an analyst at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Many analysts expect Hussein to simply hunker down and try to wait out the U.S. air campaign--then emerge to declare himself a triumphant survivor.

Seven years ago, Hussein absorbed the blows from the Desert Storm air campaign without visible military reaction for about two weeks--far longer than this campaign is likely to last.

But Hussein also has a history of wanting to show that he will strike back, raising the risks that casualty counts will mount on both sides.

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U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged their concern about the sharply higher risk of terrorist bombing, and they have further tightened security around U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait since the latest buildup began in November.

One senior Army official said such attacks were “probably the most likely kind of reaction” because Hussein has both the weaponry and the opportunity to attempt such a response.

In recent days, Pentagon officials have signaled that they recognize the possibility of an armored attack by adding to U.S. ground forces in Kuwait.

When all the troops arrive there, the force will include about 7,000 personnel, tanks and armored vehicles, attack helicopters and artillery to help discourage such “creative thinking” by Hussein, in the words of Gen. Anthony Zinni, the U.S. regional military commander.

Officials consider such a thrust unlikely because it would invite a powerful U.S. air and ground counterattack on Hussein’s concentrated forces.

Even so, it could run up U.S. casualties, especially because it would require American ground attack aircraft to fly at lower altitudes, into harm’s way, to destroy tanks and other vehicles.

The threat that Hussein will fire off his remaining missiles has sent panic through many corners of the region, including in Israel and Kuwait.

Hussein fired about 90 ballistic missiles in the ’91 war at targets in Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He is believed to have at least a handful of the Scuds left, and, the Pentagon asserted this week, 45 nerve-gas and germ warheads.

Hussein is also believed to have stores of such deadly substances as anthrax, the spore-encased bacterium that can kill in two days; sarin, the deadly nerve gas used in the 1995 terrorist incident in a Tokyo subway; and VX, sarin’s even more toxic cousin, which can kill when mere droplets come in contact with the skin.

Military officials and independent experts consider a conventional Scud strike unlikely. They view an effective strike by a Scud loaded with nerve gas or germ agents especially unlikely.

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Hussein will probably be deterred, they say, by the risk of a devastating counterattack by the U.S. forces or Israel. And the experts point out that the high technical sophistication required to effectively deliver a nerve-gas or chemical payload may be beyond Iraq’s capabilities.

Still, the officials do not entirely rule out a nonconventional strike.

President Clinton has argued that if Hussein is allowed to keep his “weapons of mass destruction” it is only a matter of time before he uses them. And some experts fear that Hussein might turn to those weapons if he feels cornered.

This possibility points up the continuing vulnerability of U.S. troops to chemical or germ-warfare attacks.

The Pentagon has made progress in developing detectors to warn of such attacks and has developed lightweight cleanup suits and other equipment.

But there are limits. The detectors, for example, cannot yet accurately identify approaching germ or gas agents in time for everyone in the area to safely prepare with countermeasures.

Related to this is another worry: Some of the 30,000 personnel in the region might, like the Gulf War veterans before them, later develop symptoms that they attribute to a mysterious “Gulf War illness.”