How Badly Crippled Is Saddam?

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

By some measures, the allied air campaign is easy to quantify. In the five weeks since the war began, U.S. and coalition aircraft have flown more than 94,000 sorties and dropped 120 million lbs. of explosives on targets in Kuwait and Iraq. But how successful has this awesome display of aerial firepower been in weakening Saddam Hussein's military machine? It all depends on who is answering the question.

According to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf's Central Command in Saudi Arabia, the answer is very successful, or Saddam would not be trying to extricate his army from Kuwait. Last week Schwarzkopf told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's armed forces had been so badly damaged that they were "on the verge of collapse." For the past two weeks, Schwarzkopf's aides maintain, allied smart bombs have been knocking out Iraq's main battle tanks at the rate of 100 a day. At week's end they announced Iraq had lost, at a minimum, 1,685 tanks (out of a prewar total of 4,280), 925 armored personnel carriers (out of 2,800), 1,450 artillery pieces (out of 3,110) and 375 fixed-wing aircraft (out of 800) -- including 138 stashed away in Iran.

To many in the U.S. intelligence community, these estimates are too optimistic. Just when accurate assessments of Iraq's battle strength are most needed, a kind of stats war has broken out in Washington. "Norman's numbers on Iraqi kills are too high," says a Defense Department analyst. "If this proves to be the case in battle, he's in real hot water."

The dispute exists because bomb-damage assessment is more an art than a science. Each of the agencies involved -- Central Command in Riyadh, the Air Force command, the Central Intelligence Agency and its military counterpart, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency -- has its own way of deciding whether a target has been destroyed. Not surprisingly, the different techniques have yielded divergent results:

-- Central Command maintains that the overall strength of the Iraqi forces has been reduced 40% to 50%, the goal allied commanders wanted to reach before launching a ground assault.

-- The Air Force, factoring in eyewitness reports from its pilots, says Riyadh's estimates are 15% to 50% too low.

-- The Defense Intelligence Agency claims Central Command's figures are 15% to 20% too high.

-- The CIA takes the most conservative line and would scale back Riyadh's numbers 20% to 25%.

Each of these estimates is based on the same raw intelligence: the flood of pictures and streams of computer data gathered by orbiting satellites and photo-reconnaissance aircraft soaring high over the battlefield. But the information must be interpreted by human analysts hunched over fuzzy photos and computer screens. Identifying tanks and soldiers in pictures beamed back from a KH-11 Keyhole satellite is often a matter of counting dots on a computer monitor. "With 6-in. resolution you get a pixel for each shoulder and one for the head," says John Pike, space intelligence expert at the Federation of American Scientists. "That's hardly enough even to differentiate between military and civilian."

Modern munitions complicate the damage-assessment task. In other wars, a gravity bomb had to blow a big hole or leave a tank upside down with its treads in the air to score a kill. Today a laser-guided missile may leave only a 2-in. hole in the outside armor of a tank but still destroy everything -- and everybody -- inside it. Such damage would not be visible to a satellite.

Analysts dispute every scrap of information. Will this bomb-damaged bridge support the weight of heavy armor? Is that dark smudge on the picture a burning tank or an Iraqi smoke pot? Was the division that was reported 20% destroyed the headquarters battalion -- in which case the whole division is probably out of the battle -- or just some infantry troops? "Damage is a continuum," says Bruce Blair, a Brookings Institution intelligence expert. "Generals want sharp Cheddar when the results may be cottage cheese."

Challenged to put up or shut up after the Baghdad bunker episode, Pentagon officials this week produced a rare aerial photograph (rather than a sketch based on a photo) of a mosque in Basra. Analysts were able to point out features (the absence of any rubble, burn marks or bomb damage) that suggest the mosque was not hit by U.S. bombs, as Iraq had charged, but was purposely dismantled as a propaganda ploy.

Central Command's analysts say they have an edge over their Washington-based counterparts. Long before their rivals get to see the material, the evaluators in Riyadh have access to reports from radio intercepts, ground-reconnaissance patrols, prisoner interrogations and pilots returning from their bombing runs. The latter is a mixed blessing, however. As one congressional staffer puts it, "Pilots since Billy Mitchell have exaggerated their success."

If this were just an internal squabble, it might safely be ignored. But U.S. ground troops are prepared to go to battle on the basis of Schwarzkopf's assurance that the enemy's capacity to fight has been reduced by one-half. If Schwarzkopf is mistaken and large numbers of Soviet-built T-72s that were supposed to be out of action start popping out of their emplacements and open fire on the advancing troops, allied casualties could run high. Some intelligence experts in Washington, fearing that the worst might occur, are darkly talking about the possibility of a postwar witch-hunt to find out exactly what went wrong.

Even by the most optimistic U.S. estimates, Iraq's military remains a force to reckon with. Saudi Arabia has only 550 tanks; Iran and Jordan have 500 and 1,131, respectively. Iraq, on the other hand, may still have more than 2,000. Saudi Arabia and Iran each own between 185 and 190 combat aircraft. Saddam Hussein has nearly that many parked out of harm's way on airfields in Iran, and he may have hundreds more sitting safely in hardened bunkers or civilian areas off limits to allied bombing. Meanwhile, most of his artillery pieces, the bulk of his short-range missiles and many of his chemical shells are presumed to be intact. Says Air Vice Marshal Sandy Wilson, former commander of British forces in the gulf: "If Saddam is allowed to retain his offensive weapons, he will have the potential to strike strongly and deeply against any of his neighbors."

In the end, there is only one sure way to find out how badly damaged an enemy's forces are, and that is to inspect them after the war is over. "Every country that attempted bomb-damage assessment in modern history has been proved wrong once analysts had a chance to visit the battlefield," says Anthony Cordesman, a Washington-based expert on Iraq's military. But Saddam Hussein probably has a pretty good idea what condition his troops are in. His last-minute attempts to strike a deal last week may be the best bomb-damage assessment of them all.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: CASUALTIES

including POWs and those killed, wounded or missing in action

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Dhahran, Frank Melville/London and Bruce van Voorst/Washington