Planes Against Brawn

By Bruce W. Nelan

A military maxim has it that amateurs talk about strategy while professional soldiers discuss logistics. That is as true in the age of intercontinental missiles as it was in Napoleon's day. The hardest part of any war is moving fighting forces into the field and supplying their gargantuan needs. When the U.S. decided last week to draw "a line in the sand" of the Arabian Peninsula, it took on an immense logistical task. Keeping troops supplied with water in the desert's 120 degrees heat will be as vital as keeping them supplied with ammunition.

The first assignment for arriving U.S. units, said Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, is "to deter any further Iraqi aggression" and, if deterrence fails, "to defend Saudi Arabia against attack." Some in Washington are worried that the dispatch of U.S. troops might provoke Saddam Hussein to launch a pre- emptive blitz. "He sees us coming," says Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "He could try to seize the oil fields and hold them hostage before we have enough men there to stop him."

But deterrence is ultimately psychological. From Saddam's point of view, it had to appear that the American deterrent went into effect as soon as the ^ first group of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers and F-15 interceptors touched down in Saudi Arabia. To make the point, one F-15 squadron flew nonstop, with midair refueling, from its base in Virginia. From the moment the planes landed at Dhahran, the Iraqis were on warning that if they launched their tanks into Saudi Arabia, they would find themselves in a war with the U.S.

Pentagon officials would not say how many American troops were on the ground last week, but the total was probably about 6,000, along with about 60 first- line aircraft: two F-15 fighter squadrons from the U.S. and five AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft. An additional 255 fighters and attack bombers were aboard three U.S. carriers within striking distance of Iraqi forces in Kuwait or Baghdad.

If the current buildup continues, in the next month the expeditionary force will be increased to 50,000 soldiers and Marines and 200 aircraft, including F-16 ground-attack fighters and A-10 antitank planes. Marine units are being flown to the Persian Gulf from the U.S. There they will meet two prepositioned supply ships already under way from Guam and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. These ships contain everything necessary to fully equip a Marine brigade of 17,000 men. This includes 45 tanks, heavy artillery, armored personnel carriers and food, water and fuel for 30 days.

To enforce the United Nations trade embargo, Britain, Canada, France and Australia are adding destroyers and frigates to their naval patrols, though only the British moved quickly to send men and planes. Whitehall ordered Tornado fighter-bombers and a squadron of Jaguar ground-attack jets to the gulf, along with Rapier ground-to-air missiles. If Saddam intends to invade Saudi Arabia, he will probably have to do it before those forces are in place. The military planner's rule of thumb is that to be successful, attackers must outnumber defenders by 3 to 1. When the U.S. deployment is added to the Saudi armed forces of 65,000, defenders will add up to more than 100,000. Iraq could call on the 170,000-man elite invasion force it has in Kuwait, but it would have to muster another 130,000 to attack with confidence.

Such a concentration of troops would create serious logistical problems for Iraq, which has little experience with long-range offensive operations. In its eight-year war with Iran, the attacking Iraqi army penetrated no more than 50 miles, and was eventually beaten back by Iranian troops, who fought without much air support. The massing of Iraqi tanks and men would offer easy targets for American attack planes. "They'll know we're there," says Admiral William Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "and they'll wish we weren't."

If a clash occurs, it will be a match of U.S. planes against Iraqi brawn. The major role of American ground forces would be to protect air bases from Iraqi tanks. As long as infantrymen are in contact with base installations, they are assured of adequate water, fuel and munitions. In the desert a soldier normally consumes 6 gal. of water a day. For 50,000 men, that adds up to 2.1 million gal. a week. If ground troops were to storm off into the desert, the blistering temperatures and swirling sand would be as dangerous an enemy as the Iraqis.

The U.S. would count on its own and the Saudis' F-15s to establish air superiority over the battlefield. While Iraq has 500 combat planes, only about 50 of its pilots are considered first-rate. They were trained by France when Iraq was importing more than $2.5 billion worth of French weapons, including 210 Mirage fighters and Exocet missiles. During the war with Iran, the Iraqi air force showed little daring, dropping bombs from 30,000 ft. that often missed their targets. Coordination between air and ground forces was usually lacking. Former Defense Secretary Harold Brown says, "I think we would achieve air superiority within a day or two." Crowe agrees, but adds, "We'd lose some aircraft in the process."

Iraqi armored and infantry units get good marks from military experts for the way they carried out the invasion of Kuwait. But they were operating against very light opposition. Everything becomes much more difficult in heavy combat when what Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz called "the friction" of war confuses commanders, frightens troops and disrupts plans.

If a shooting war broke out, U.S. electronic-warfare planes such as the Air Force's F-4G "Wild Weasel" and the Navy's EA-6B would black out the radar and guidance systems of Iraqi air-defense missiles. "Command, control and communications are their Achilles' heel," says an Air Force officer. In this kind of combat, "they would have to do everything visually." Meanwhile, Saudi and U.S. AWACS planes would spot Iraqi aircraft as soon as they left their runways and direct F-15s and Navy F-14s to intercept them with Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles.

To invade Saudi Arabia, Iraqi tanks would have to head south from Kuwait along a 40-mile-wide stretch of open terrain that air force officers refer to as a "tank-shooting gallery." There is no natural cover, and tanks can be spotted readily by the tall, brown columns of dust they raise. These forces would be vulnerable to F-16s, Saudi and British Tornados, and possibly F-111s now on station in Turkey, carrying 2,000-lb. laser-guided bombs and Maverick missiles. Armored, low-flying A-10 Thunderbolts would riddle the tanks with armor-piercing depleted-uranium slugs from rapid-fire guns.

What should be most persuasive to Saddam, however, is U.S. determination to take the war to him. James Schlesinger, former Defense Secretary and CIA director, advises, "If Saddam moves, it is imperative to put that army, that regime, out of operation. And we would do it." Says a Pentagon planner: "There will be no hesitation. We are not going to fight just in Saudi Arabia."

If Saddam attacks now, the Pentagon has prepared a list of 70 targets it will hit in Iraq, ranging from air bases, missile installations, refineries, pipelines and pumping stations to military barracks and weapons parks. High on the list are at least four known nuclear facilities, where Saddam is pushing work on an atom bomb, and several chemical-weapons plants, where he produces some 1,000 tons of poisons each year. Such freedom of action would not have been open to the U.S. even a few years ago, when the Soviet Union would have warned that escalation could lead to a nuclear confrontation.

Iraq's ambassador to Greece, Abdel Fetah al-Khazreji, said last week that his country's chemical weapons would be used only "if we are attacked by a foreign power." But Saddam dropped poison gas on Iran repeatedly during their war and used it against Iraq's own rebellious Kurdish citizens. He could fire it in rockets, missiles, artillery shells and bombs. Mustard and nerve gases, while deadly, are not miracle weapons. Both sides' troops are equipped with protective masks and clothing and both are prevented from operating effectively while wearing the cumbersome gear. Poison gas does not affect planes in the air, the first line of U.S. defense.

Moreover, Saddam would have to wonder exactly what George Bush meant when he said gas attacks "would be dealt with very, very severely." The U.S. has its own stockpiles of nerve gas, but it is not likely to contemplate using either & gas or nuclear weapons to retaliate. World opinion might well turn against Washington if it were to order an attack with weapons of mass destruction. Even so, the unspoken threat might have some deterrent effect.

The U.S. has other means of delivering a devastating counterattack. Strategic B-52 and B-1 bombers based in the U.S. and on Diego Garcia could lay down carpets of high explosives on Iraqi targets. They would be supported by F-14 interceptors and attack planes from the U.S. carriers in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Those ships are more than 600 miles from Iraq, out of range of Iraqi jets and Exocet missiles, which in 1987 badly damaged the patrolling frigate U.S.S. Stark, apparently accidentally, and killed 37 of its crew. The carrier-based planes would be refueled in air, six at a time, by KC-10 airborne tankers, and arrive over their targets ready to fight. In addition, the battleship Wisconsin is soon to sail directly into the gulf, where it will join the guided-missile ships of the Joint Task Force Middle East. They are all armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles that can hit targets in Iraq.

Because the U.S. is a superpower and Saddam knows it, this battle may never be fought. Unless he is literally a madman, he is not likely to start such a war. But deterring Iraqi aggression and defending Saudi Arabia was only part of America's pledge. George Bush vowed that the Iraqi aggression "will not stand" and demanded complete withdrawal from Kuwait and restoration of the Kuwaiti government. That is much more difficult than preventing Saddam from going further.

Bush described the American forces arriving at Saudi bases as "purely defensive." He meant it, for the arithmetic of the offensive applies to the U.S. as well. If Washington intended to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait at gunpoint, it would have to mount a force of 300,000 men to begin with -- and more as Iraqi re-inforcements joined the battle.

One skill the Iraqis demonstrated during the war with Iran was the defense of prepared positions. Iran lost thousands of men in futile human-wave attacks against Iraqi lines. The U.S. would not even try to engage an Iraqi army dug in across Kuwait. "Militarily," says a high-ranking French officer, "the reconquest of Kuwait is not within reach of even the West and the Soviet Union combined."

To defeat Saddam and cancel his annexation of his neighbor, Bush is counting on the squeeze of the U.N.'s economic embargo and the blockade being mounted ( by the U.S. Navy, with some help from its friends. In the eastern Mediterranean, a battle group led by the carrier Saratoga will keep watch over the port serving two oil pipelines from Iraq. In the Red Sea the U.S.S. Eisenhower, a nuclear-powered carrier, will be watchdog on the Saudi Arabian pipeline terminal at Yanbu and stand ready with 85 combat planes. In the Gulf of Oman, the Independence will check tankers to be certain Iraqi oil is not being exported through the Persian Gulf.

But even if Saddam knuckles under, the long-term threat that Iraq presents to the gulf region and the world will not disappear. A speedy withdrawal from Kuwait will keep intact the million-man Iraqi army and the targets the Pentagon most wants to destroy: nuclear, chemical and missile plants. Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington argues that if Iraq is forced to surrender Kuwait but Saddam remains in power, he "would accelerate his nuclear-bomb program and re-emerge in a few years even more dangerous to us all." Commanders in Baghdad and Washington must be pondering this irony as they plan their next move.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Bruce van Voorst/Washington