Phase Two of the buildup began at a time of growing uncertainty in the large but awkward alliance arrayed against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. So far, economic sanctions and concerted diplomacy had failed to budge him from Kuwait, but to some, the military option looked even less promising. “We’re drifting,” said one source who has been deeply involved in planning the multinational operation in the gulf. “For the first time, there’s a sense that we’re not sure what to do next.”
This week Secretary of State James Baker plans to visit the region again to discuss the prospects for both military action and a peaceful settlement. Some of the Arab allies were unhappy about the lack of decisive action so far, and the Pentagon’s further delay for reinforcements did little to reassure them. “If we leave timing solely to the military, they will want to build up forever,” said a senior Arab source. “Of course, it’s always good to have more. But the fact is we have enough in place to do the job tomorrow if we have to.”
Pentagon planners disagreed, but in a sense they were victims of their own success. For a month or more they had assiduously fostered the impression/hat the United States had massive combat forces in the desert, raring to go get Saddam. The reality was vastly more ambiguous. When the buildup began, the Pentagon tried to make it appear more rapid than it actually was, in order to deter an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. Headlines announced the departure of a steady stream of Air Force and Army units destined for the gulf; the small print said that only “elements of” the units had actually left. In many cases, the initial deployments consisted of little more than headquarters companies, followed by the numerous support personnel needed to prepare for the arrival of combat forces, which often turned up weeks later. “It was a bluff, and it worked,” says a top military planner. “But now we’re paying the price. Everyone out there thinks we’ve been sitting around ready to go for weeks. That’s just not the case.”
From the start, the Air Force buildup had an offensive capability. Although it deployed ground-attack planes to fight off an invasion by Iraqi tanks, the Air Force decided that the best defense is a good offense–tactical strikes against Iraqi logistics, bombing of Iraq’s war-supporting industries. About 30 B-52 bombers were ordered to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia only hours after Bush spoke by telephone to Saudi King Fahd on Aug. 2, the day of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, even though the bombers took only the munitions they could carry with them.
The U.S. Army’s role, in contrast, was almost purely defensive. The first unit to deploy in force was the lightly armed but fast-moving 82nd Airborne Division, which is not equipped to stop Iraq’s Soviet-made T-72 tanks. “The 82nd was a tripwire, no more,” a senior Pentagon official acknowledges. “Its presence told Saddam Hussein that to conquer Saudi Arabia, he’d have to kill Americans.” Later on, heavier units arrived; by now the force includes the equivalent of three mechanized divisions. But the Army was still configured for defense. If Bush is to have a credible offensive military option, officials say, the Army needs a radical change of plan and a lot more punch, including another 400 to 500 heavy tanks and engineer troops to help them operate on the attack.
The initial buildup closely followed a contingency plan drawn up by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, now the U.S. commander in the region. Schwarzkopf’s top priority was always to get warplanes in first, for the obvious reason that it’s the quickest way to deploy firepower. But the planners underestimated the amount of support equipment the Air Force would need: tons of highly sensitive testing equipment, for example, plus computers to monitor the testing gear and cooling equipment to keep the computers running. The upshot was that Air Force needs pre-empted U.S. airlift capability for nearly all of the first month.
As a result, the overall buildup took longer than expected. Meanwhile Saddam Hussein was building up his own forces in Kuwait, from about 100,000 in early August to around 430,000 now. “We’re aiming at a moving target,” says a U.S. planner. “We have to put enough out there to counter what Saddam’s got. And he keeps upping the ante.” At first, the Iraqis were deployed for a possible attack on Saudi Arabia. But in mid-September, Saddam moved his forces into a multilayered defensive posture, with infantry, artillery and tanks dug in behind minefields and earthworks.
Initially the Pentagon accepted the Air Force view that Saddam could be defeated entirely from the air. “It was an expedient belief,” admits a Pentagon planner. “Air power would be cheaper in U.S. lives. And besides, we didn’t have the forces in-theater for a ground option.” Now the Joint Chiefs of Staff have reached the sober judgment that air power by itself will not suffice. A ground attack by armored forces will be needed to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and to chew up elite reinforcements poised in southern Iraq.
Battle plan: Still, if Bush decides on the offensive option, the attack will begin with a massive aerial assault, sources say. The plan is to mount 1,700 combat sorties in the opening two days. The first priorities are Saddam’s communications and his extended-range Scud missiles aimed at Israel; the assumption is that his immediate response to a U.S. assault would be to try to widen the conflict by attacking Israel. The second priority is to knock out Iraq’s other surface-to-surface missile batteries, which could hit targets in Saudi Arabia. Then American planes would destroy-power stations, knocking out the electricity for military bases and sending a message to the Iraqi people. That done, simultaneous assaults would be launched against Iraq’s air defenses and its armored forces. Plants developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons also would be targeted, but not all of them have been located so far.
The projected loss rate in early operations is around 7 percent, dropping to 3 percent or less as Iraqi air defenses are degraded. Those defenses are tough, but the Americans have at least one edge. Iraq’s best air-to-air missiles are the French-made R-530 Super and R-550 Magic, formidable weapons when fired from their Mirage F-1s. But NEWSWEEK has learned that France has told Washington how to jam the missiles.
Iraq’s armored forces are so well dug in that fighter-bombers will have a hard time knocking them out. B-52s will get that job, and the current plan is to send about 20 more of them to the Cairo West base in Egypt. The theory is that when the B-52s attack armored forces, their 2,000-pound bombs will set off tremors in the sand, burying dug-in tanks. The Air Force estimates that by D-plus-5 (the sixth day of hostilities) it can “attrit” half of Iraq’s armor. Knocking out the rest will require ground forces. The tactic now favored is for U.S. tanks to breach the Iraqi defenses on one or more narrow salients and then fan out to fight a mobile campaign. That would force surviving Iraqi tanks to come out of their dugouts to take on the American armor. At that point, U.S. air power can kill the Iraqi tanks out in the open. “You use armor to force him to move, then you use air power to kill him,” says one military source.
The Pentagon hopes Saddam will fold once his forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq have been crippled. If he doesn’t surrender, no U.S. or other Western ground forces will be sent into Iraq. Instead, sources say, the Americans will try to talk their Arab allies into sending tank columns toward Baghdad. “It will be called Arab peacekeeping force,” one diplomat says, deadpan. So far, the Saudis and the Egyptians, among others, say they will not send forces across the border into Iraq. In any case, the reality is that such a campaign would only be possible after U.S. air power and ground forces have knocked out the elite of Saddam Hussein’s Army.
