Allied Airstrikes in ‘No-Fly’ Zones Could Benefit Iraq

Despite stepped-up bombing runs by the U.S. and Britain over Iraq’s “no-fly” zones in recent months, President Saddam Hussein’s air defense network has probably improved since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, defense analysts say.

The flights are designed to gather intelligence on Iraqi weapons capabilities and degrade Iraq’s air defenses in the run-up to a possible invasion, experts say. While precise data on the targets of the strikes are closely guarded by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, analysts concur that the bombings have limited Baghdad’s ability to organize and execute coherent military actions.

Nevertheless, Hussein has acquired new air defense equipment in the last decade from Ukraine and Serbia and has probably learned a significant amount about U.S. tactics from the continual airstrikes in the zones. The latest strike came Thursday against military command and communications targets in southern Iraq, three days after Iraq shot down a U.S. unmanned surveillance drone. The drones and other aircraft have been patrolling the two zones established by the U.S. and Britain after the Gulf War.

Iraq considers the flights violations of its sovereignty and has been trying to shoot down allied planes since 1998.

The southern no-fly zone, covering a vast swath of Iraq below the 33rd parallel, was established to protect Shiite Muslims in the south from Hussein’s military. The northern zone was established to protect Iraqi Kurds above the 36th parallel. When threatened by Iraqi air defenses, U.S. and British pilots are authorized to fire missiles at and drop bombs on such sites.

Over the years, the air patrols have kept tensions high between Iraq and the U.S. and Britain, with pilots flying daily missions over Iraqi air defenses and sometimes being targeted by Iraqi fire. As the U.S. has stepped up pressure on Iraq to give up what Washington says is a covert weapons of mass destruction program, senior U.S. officials have acknowledged that the air patrols are assigned to do as much surveilling of Iraqi weapons capabilities as protecting of the Kurds and Shiites.

“The targeting has shifted as we have gone on war footing,” said one former military officer who closely tracks U.S. activities in Iraq. “We are hitting more valuable military targets, command and control centers. We realized at some point that trying to hit individual radar sites was futile. They would just move them, and we were risking pilots’ lives for little return.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters last month, said U.S. pilots patrolling the zones routinely perform “aerial inspections” of Iraqi weapons sites. But Iraq’s continued targeting of U.S. jets has given the Pentagon an excuse to begin dismantling Iraq’s network of surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns.

In addition, the missions have provided significant fodder for U.S. analysts seeking to gauge Iraq’s military capabilities. Planes patrolling the no-fly zones are equipped with sophisticated sensors that can gather data on large areas of Iraq outside the zones.

“We fly these missions primarily for reconnaissance purposes. They provide a vast amount of detailed information on Iraq,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

However, some analysts say the U.S. and British airstrikes may be counterproductive to some degree.

With U.S. air power as great as it is, “there’s a strong argument to be made that we would be better off mapping Iraq’s air defenses in detail in peacetime but holding our fire so we can take them out very quickly in wartime, rather than giving Iraq a decade to learn about what we do and how we do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst with the Brookings Institution.

U.S. warplanes enter Iraq through aerial “gates” from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and carriers in the Persian Gulf. Roughly 10,000 U.S. military personnel fly and support about 200 planes to maintain the zones, with some British help. As the U.S. and Iraq move closer to war, both sides are using encounters in the zones to probe each other’s capabilities and tactics, said William Schneider Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board, an influential Pentagon advisory panel.

“There are reciprocal motivations to have more incidents,” Schneider said. “The Iraqis are anxious to learn more about how the U.S. has adapted over the past dozen years. The U.S. is interested in seeing how Iraqi air defenses have been reconfigured.”

Iraq’s decision to send two of its fighter jets to shoot down a U.S. surveillance drone 100 miles south of Baghdad last week seemed at least partly designed to test whether the U.S. would move to protect the unmanned aircraft, Schneider said.

Iraq took considerable risk in pitting the jets against the Predator drone, Schneider said, because Iraq’s air force is so depleted it can ill afford any losses.

Iraq has only about 300 warplanes, Schneider said. The country never recovered 100 or more planes it evacuated to Iran during the Gulf War. And the existing fleet continues to shrink amid a chronic shortage of equipment and parts.

“They have difficulty in keeping them flying,” Schneider said. As a result, even senior Iraqi military pilots get only about 120 hours of flying time a year, he said. Junior pilots are lucky to get 20. By contrast, U.S. pilots are required to fly at least 20 hours a month just to retain their status.

Overmatched in the air, Iraq has concentrated its resources on bolstering its air defense system and has made significant progress despite trade sanctions and constant U.S. surveillance.

Schneider said that although the Iraqi military has deteriorated substantially since the Gulf War, there is evidence that its air defense network has improved, aided by important new radar and optical equipment from Serbia and Ukraine.

The equipment is designed to allow antiaircraft batteries to target enemy planes even when radar is jammed or fails, he said.

“Their ground-based surface-to-air missile capacity is probably greater” now than it was before the Gulf War, Schneider said.

Benjamin Works, executive director of the Strategic Issues Research Institute, said the air defenses set up immediately around Baghdad and out of range of bombers patrolling the no-fly zones are of particular concern.

“The air defense system around Baghdad is far more lethal than it was in ‘91,” Works said. “Pentagon planners take this very seriously.”

Hussein’s forces have also been moving more materiel into the no-fly zones, Works said.

Iraq has also gone to great lengths to conceal and protect its communications infrastructure.

In the Gulf War, Schneider said, the U.S. discovered communications cables buried under the Tigris River. Since the war’s end, he said, Iraq has spent millions of dollars linking its military command centers with fiber-optic cables buried deep in the sand.

“But eventually, they have to connect to something,” Schneider said, “and what they connect to has to be aboveground, a radar station or a command center that supports the radar and the missile.”

The allied airstrikes Thursday probably targeted such facilities. But even when these are hit, they are often repaired within weeks, Schneider said.

U.S. officials believe that many command facilities are hidden in mosques or hospitals or other locations surrounded by civilians. It is not clear how much intelligence the United States has on those sites.

“You don’t know how much the U.S. knows,” Schneider said. “They may be waiting until the last minute to strike some facilities so Iraq will not have time during the conflict to make repairs.”