The Tools Of War

By Mark Thompson/Washington

If some U.S. officials are right, Iraqi engineers and scientists are in a race with time. Deep underground in the Salman Pak, Samarra and Tuwaitha complexes near Baghdad, they are thought to be developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and perfecting ways to deliver them. If so, they are not the only ones racing. Inside the headquarters of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency outside Washington, Pentagon mapmakers are reviewing satellite imagery pouring in from Iraq every day. They are updating the Digital Point Positioning Database, made up of computerized maps showing the coordinates of Saddam Hussein's key weapons facilities, command posts and air-defense sites. Halfway across the country, just outside St. Louis, Mo., a Boeing factory has gone to two shifts a day building a revolutionary weapon geared for those targets. Workers are assembling computer-steered bomb tails that, once loaded with those Pentagon-supplied coordinates, harness gravity and wind to turn "dumb" bombs into weapons of amazing--and amazingly cheap--precision.

It was the when and the why of going to war with Iraq that Congress debated last week, before both houses overwhelmingly approved a resolution authorizing force. Now comes the how. If war erupts, the work of the weaponsmakers in both countries may be more central to the outcome than in any previous conflict. In a battle between the two armed forces, the U.S. is plainly equipped to prevail. But to achieve its aim of pacifying Iraq once the fighting is done, America must triumph over Baghdad without thrashing the country--which is why hitting the right targets and little else is so important. For Iraq, given the depleted state of its military, the odds can be shifted in its favor only one way--by deploying weapons of mass destruction against invading U.S. troops in the hope of slaughtering thousands of them.

The U.S. faced this threat before, in 1991, when it battled Iraqi forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait; that time Baghdad kept its nastiest weapons sheathed. But the Iraqis have never confronted what the U.S. military has in store for them should war come again. The last conflict introduced the world to the "smart" bomb, when Gulf War commanders narrated videotapes showing precision-guided munitions taking out discrete buildings they had targeted. Today's smart bombs make the old ones look dim-witted. What's more, newer smart bombs are far cheaper and easier to use, so there would be a lot more of them raining down on Iraqi targets. In 1991's Desert Storm, precision-guided munitions accounted for 7% of the bombs used. That share jumped to 30% in 1999's Kosovo conflict and to 60% in Afghanistan last year. Pentagon officials say they would aim for 100% in the opening days of any war with Iraq.

The improvement in weaponry traces back to what did not go right the last time U.S. warplanes attacked Iraq. In 1991 clouds and smoke coming from Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze by Saddam's troops forced many U.S. warplanes to return to their bases without dropping their ordnance because their laser-guidance systems could not see through the foul air. In a handwritten note he fired off to his weapons designers shortly after that conflict, Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak said, "We need to lay down a requirement for an all-WX PGM"--an all-weather precision-guided munition.

McPeak's notion was to produce a smart bomb that could be wedded to the constantly orbiting global-positioning-system (GPS) satellites so that bad visibility would not hamper targeting. His idea became a reality in 1998, when the Pentagon bought its first JDAM--joint direct-attack munition--from Boeing. By scrapping complicated procurement rules for this project, the Pentagon was able to keep the price of a JDAM at $27,000, pocket change compared with the $1 million price tag on a single cruise missile like the ones used in the Gulf War. JDAM tail kits are fastened onto standard dumb bombs of varying sizes. The bomb always knows where it is, based on information it gets from the plane or, after it is dropped, from GPS. Its aluminum fins steer it to the target, which is logged into the bomb's computer.

The JDAM is designed to land within 43 feet of its target 50% of the time, but an Air Force general who helped run the war in Afghanistan boasts that the system performed even better there. Bombs fell within 10 ft. of their target "nearly 100% of the time," he says. Even if an enemy jams the weak GPS signal, the JDAM remains relatively accurate, usually landing within 100 ft. of its target. Accuracy is critical because a top priority in a new war against Iraq would be to cause as few civilian casualties as possible; accidents would be well covered by the media and could incite more anti-Americanism in the Arab world.

JDAMs help protect pilots too. Unlike laser-guided bombs, which are guided to their target from planes flying at about 15,000 ft., JDAMs can be dropped from 35,000 ft., beyond the reach of much enemy fire. They can be unloaded 15 miles from their target, offering pilots additional protection. Plus, the bomb kits are user friendly. "It takes me about an hour's work to launch a cruise missile but only 10 minutes to launch a JDAM," says Lieut. Colonel James Dunn, a B-52 bombardier at Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base who lobbed the bombs in Afghanistan.

In the Gulf War, only a handful of planes could launch only a few guided missiles and accurate bombs at a time. Now virtually the entire armada of U.S. warplanes can dispatch such weapons. For the first time ever, a war can begin with one side able to wipe out, with near impunity, every key enemy building and other fixed target its intelligence has identified. Instead of F-117s buzzing Baghdad with a measly pair of 2,000-lb. laser-guided bombs, as in the 1991 war, the next conflict might start with B-2s over Iraq, each dropping 16 of the 2,000-lb. JDAMs. They would probably be followed by B-1s, each capable of dropping 24 JDAMs on a single pass.

In the Gulf War, notes U.S. Central Command chief Tommy Franks, "we used 10 airframes to a target. Now we assign two targets to an aircraft." The improved efficiency would probably make a new air war in Iraq shorter than the Gulf War's 38 days. Because the JDAM could so effectively cripple Iraq's military, senior Pentagon officials believe the U.S. could topple Saddam with a maximum of 250,000 troops, less than half the number it massed to drive his forces from Kuwait in 1991. The weapon's precision should minimize damage to civilian structures, making post-Saddam Iraq easier to rebuild.

Some war planners are concerned that the JDAM stockpile--about 20,000--would be insufficient for a new Iraq war. Thus the Boeing factory outside St. Louis is producing 2,000 kits monthly, and will soon increase production. McPeak says the biggest problem is that intelligence has not kept pace with the precision of the system. Too often JDAMs hit the right coordinates but the wrong targets. That happened in the system's debut during the 1999 Kosovo campaign, when a B-2 dropped three JDAMs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The U.S. bombed the site thinking it was a Yugoslav military office building. Similar debacles have occurred in Afghanistan, where a JDAM, apparently loaded with improper coordinates, last October missed its target, a helicopter, and instead killed four Afghans in a residential area.

What would U.S. forces program the JDAMs to hit in Iraq? Aside from the normal targets--suspected weapons facilities that could be safely hit from the air, air-defense installations and command-and-control centers--a new air war would take aim at Saddam's palaces and other manifestations of his power, such as television transmission stations. Saddam and his most loyal troops in Baghdad and his hometown of Tikrit would be key targets. "The U.S. is going to be applying some pretty awesome military technology," says Steven Simon, assistant director of London's International Institute of Strategic Studies. "The idea is to kick out the legs of the chair underneath the regime." At least initially, say Pentagon officials, the bulk of the Iraqi military would be out of bounds. According to the current game plan, the U.S. invaders would fire on regular Iraqi army troops only if they attacked first. Washington would rather keep Saddam's army intact so it could help hold the country together in a post-Saddam era.

Targeting Saddam's weapons of mass destruction would be an urgent but delicate task. Though Iraq did not unleash such weapons last time, U.S. war planners take seriously the prospect that Saddam would use them in a war aimed explicitly at removing him. In a letter from the cia to Congress released last week, the agency said the chance of Saddam's unleashing such weapons against U.S. troops once an invasion begins is "pretty high." That puts such weapons at the top of the Pentagon's hit list.

As a result, six U.S. intelligence satellites the size of city buses are prowling the skies over Iraq every day. Three KH-11 and three Lacrosse satellites are searching for places where Saddam might be producing such weapons, as well as for any signs that he is moving his Scud missiles into launching positions. This intelligence would not only help commanders draft target lists, it would also guide U.S. commandos to the right places once they secreted inside Iraq, something planners foresee in the early hours of a new engagement.

President Bush warned last week that any Iraqi troops who followed orders to use weapons of mass destruction would be "pursued and punished." But the Pentagon is not counting on deterrence alone. Bombing chemical and biological sites would be dicey, however, since blasted facilities could spew poisons hundreds of miles downwind, potentially over U.S. troops or Iraqi civilians. So the U.S. military is weighing the wisdom of attacking deeply buried facilities with "agent defeat" weapons designed to produce a heat so intense it kills the spores in biological weapons and breaks down the poisons in chemical weapons. This would keep toxins from being released into the atmosphere. Pentagon officials say another option would be to try to shut down Iraq's biological and chemical facilities as well as its missile-launch sites with high-powered microwave weapons called "E-bombs," which would fry the computer circuits needed to operate such systems. The U.S. used a similar technology to trigger widespread power failures during the 1999 war with Serbia.

Beyond those schemes, U.S. war planners are focused on attacking the delivery systems--missiles, planes and drones--that Iraq might use to deploy chemical and biological weapons. The U.S. Air Force remains profoundly embarrassed by its inability in the 1991 war to destroy a single Scud launcher, despite 2,400 missions aimed at just that. Better satellites, more deadly Apache helicopter gunships and improved--and armed--drones should enable the U.S. to do better should there be a next time.

Pentagon officials are betting that a new air war would have the same impact on Iraqi troops as it did last time. After 38 days of pummeling, they basically folded as U.S. ground troops moved in. In a new conflict, U.S. foot soldiers would probably enter Iraq more quickly. Ideally, the U.S. would send in land forces from three directions--south from Turkey, east from Jordan and north from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, although Iraq's neighbors have been reluctant to serve as staging points. Pentagon officials are optimistic that the Iraqi military, after more than a decade of sanctions, is a brittle force ready to snap under pressure. U.S. troops would face the most potent threat from the Republican Guard divisions and the Special Republican Guard, especially if they retreated to lairs inside Baghdad and challenged the invaders to a duel to the death.

While President Bush is considering the war options that are officially on his desk, U.S. ground forces are lining up for battle. Some 35,000 U.S. troops are already in the region. General Franks and 600 of his battle staff will soon move to a forward headquarters in Qatar as part of an exercise. Many of them are likely to remain in the area to prepare for an invasion. If it comes, they are hoping that the superior technology of the U.S. military will make their job less daunting. But they won't count on it. Central Command recently made an "urgent request" to its suppliers. It was for new nontoxic foam that removes chemical and biological agents from military gear without corroding it as the current decontaminant does.