Fri, Mar 21, 2003 page2

• US takes a leap in the dark with assault on Iraq

  TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY The world's most powerful military risks losing support should it get bogged down in urban warfare and have to take Baghdad street by street

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  The battle for Iraq will be significantly different from any war that has gone before. US and British commanders will be using tactics and weapons that have only been tested in exercises, and despite their overwhelming technological superiority, Operation Iraqi Freedom will run along a knife edge between triumph and disaster.

  Much of the 350,000-strong Iraqi army is poorly equipped, demoralized and probably primed to surrender at the earliest opportunity. But from a poor hand, the Baghdad regime can count on four wild cards: chemical and biological munitions, the destruction of oil wells and dams, house-to-house fighting in the cities and the prospect of high civilian casualties.

  Each could be devastating for the coalition cause, and much of General Tommy Franks' strategy in the days ahead will be dictated by the need to control the substantial risks these worst-case scenarios represent.

  It is the ultimate manifestation of "asymmetrical warfare." Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's conventional forces are no match for the high-tech juggernaut bearing down on him. In terms of technology and sheer might, the coming conflict is likely to be one of the most unequal in history.

  But the Iraqi leader's proven readiness to embrace desperate and unconventional measures makes him potentially a far more dangerous foe than any the Pentagon has taken on in recent years.

  In the first hours, the US strategy will be driven by psychology, and in particular the Pentagon's two favorite words, shock and awe. It is no accident that the one element of the Iraq war plans the Pentagon has been happy to discuss with the press has been the intention to drop 3,000 precision-guided bombs in the first 48 hours, an overwhelming prospect to anyone who lived through the first Gulf war. The US has more than 30 ships and submarines in the Gulf and the Red Sea capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles. The first blasts will come from cruise missiles and bombs from stealth aircraft.

  Batwing B-2 stealth bombers will fly out of the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, while shorter range F-117A Nighthawk stealth aircraft will take off from airfields in the Gulf.

  They will aim at destroying Iraq's air defenses, command posts and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites.

  Such opening salvos are typical of most US-led military operations of recent years, but what follows will not be so familiar.

  The bombing went on for more than 40 days in the last Gulf war, annihilating much of the Iraqi force as it stood in the sand, before US commanders sent in ground troops.

  This time, there will be more urgency, because of the risk of sabotage to oilfields and dams, together with the strong possibility that if Saddam does indeed have workable chemical or biological weapons, he will use them. Furthermore, the longer the bombing goes on, the higher the risk of anti-American unrest around the world.

  And this time massed conscripts will be given a chance to survive. The sheer scale of the aerial bombardment is aimed at terrifying regional commanders and their men into standing aside.

  Electronic warfare plans have already begun broadcasting messages on Iraqi military frequencies giving precise instructions on how to avoid obliteration. Iraqi troops have to point the gun barrels of the tanks toward the ground and withdraw to barracks. Officers will be allowed to retain their side-arms and their dignity.

  The coalition commanders want passivity rather than mass surrenders. They do not want to be bogged down dealing with tens of thousands of disconsolate and hungry Iraqi soldiers on the race to Baghdad.

  Thousands more US army rangers and British SAS troops will cross into western Iraq from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where they have been secretly gathering for months. They will secure vital airfields in the west, known as H2 and H3, which can then be used to land airborne troops and their equipment.

  Everything will be happening at the same time. While the massed armor of the US 3rd Infantry Division, the US 1st Marine Division and the British 1st Armoured Division rumble over the border, the highly mobile troops of the 101st and 82nd Airborne and Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade will fly over the heads of the Iraqi troops to seize targets deep inside enemy territory, most importantly the oilfields in the north and south-east, and the volatile border between the Kurds and Turks. In the jargon-filled corridors of the Pentagon, the key buzzwords are "swarm tactics" attacking from all directions at once, and "vertical envelopment," descending on the enemy from above, encircling and overpowering them.

  If the entire brigade of paratroopers from the US 82nd Airborne Division now in Kuwait are used, as seems likely, it could involve the biggest parachute assault the world has witnessed since World War II.

  Meanwhile, a whole division of helicopter-borne troops from the 101st Airborne will leapfrog ahead of the main northern thrust toward Baghdad, their 72 Apache helicopters knocking out Iraq's outdated Soviet-made tanks along the way. The 101st, or Screaming Eagles, will also be sent to secure oilfields, dams and possible sites of weapons of mass destruction. .

  This is the kind of warfare that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other advocates have tried to force on the uniformed commanders of the Pentagon, who have traditionally favored huge armored assaults by the army's heavy mechanized divisions.

  Four US armored divisions were slated for action under General Franks' original plan. Of those four, only the 3rd Infantry Division is being used, partly because of the refusal of Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Jordan to host large numbers of troops. Paradoxically their defiance of the Pentagon has helped Rumsfeld change US military doctrine.

  The great unanswered question dogging the coalition strategy is whether the psychological impact of all the "shock and awe" and "vertical envelopment" will be enough to deter Saddam's most loyal lieutenants from setting off biological or chemical warheads, setting light to the oilfields and mounting a bloody last stand in the streets of Baghdad and Tikrit.

  It is a huge gamble. Complete victory depends on paralyzing the inner core of the regime, and it relies on countless factors beyond the control of the US and British military planners, such as the true intentions of the Iraqi generals the Pentagon has been trying to contact over the past few weeks.

  Whatever happens, the endgame will be played in Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein has been massing his most reliable troops, the Republican Guard. If they mount a last stand, the planned US response is not to launch a frontal assault or pummel the city and its 5-million strong population with artillery, but to carry out rapid night-time special forces assaults at command posts within the city.

  If those missions fail, however, coalition forces will not have the luxury of waiting for weeks while the last-ditch Iraqi defenses crumble. International public opinion would not countenance the suffering of Baghdad residents.

  The marines, the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions have spent much of the past few months rehearsing urban warfare in mock towns made of plywood in Louisiana, California and the Kuwaiti desert. They learnt that it is not going to be easy. Projected casualties could be as high as 70 percent.

  It would be the first time US forces have been involved in such intense urban warfare since the battle for Hue during the Tet offensive in Vietnam. It is not a happy memory, and if American soldiers have to clear Baghdad street by street, the Pentagon strategy will have failed to a significant degree. It has been a long time since the most powerful army in the history of the world took such a leap in the dark.
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