 AP Photo
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Posted on 03/19/2003 5:20:16 PM PST by Happy2BMe
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON - U.S. warplanes are likely to drop 10 times as many precision-guided bombs on the first day of a war against Iraq (news - web sites) as they did to open the 1991 Gulf war (news - web sites), a senior Air Force planner said Wednesday.
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"I don't think the potential adversary has any idea what's coming," said Col. Gary Crowder, the chief of strategy at Air Combat Command, which is responsible for all Air Force warplanes.
At a Pentagon (news - web sites) news conference, Crowder said 300-400 precision-guided weapons were dropped on the first day of the 1991 air war and suggested at least 3,000 would be used on the first day this time.
War planning also has become much more efficient, Crowder said. In the first Gulf war, U.S. warplanes attacked each element of Iraq's air defenses in sequence — early warning radars, followed by air defense operations bunkers, followed by airfields and surface-to-air missile sites — before getting to the ultimate target: the Iraqi leadership.
This time, due to more accurate weapons and a fuller understanding of targets in Iraq, the leadership will be attacked at the same time that communications, transportation and air defense targets are bombed, Crowder said. Examples of leadership targets are palaces and command centers expected to be used by President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and his senior generals.
This more efficient approach is based in part on improved weapons technology and more advanced means of matching weapon types with the kinds of damage desired, Crowder said. For example, if the goal was paralysis of the Iraqi electrical grid, the war planners might single out a small number of power stations or transmission towers as targets rather than striking every power station in the grid.
Crowder also said that the experience gained from patrolling "no fly" zones over southern and northern Iraq since shortly after the first Gulf war gives American and British forces a big advantage.
"Having lived over the no fly zones for the last 12 years, it is a significantly less hostile place than it was in northern and southern Iraq on the opening night of the (1991) Gulf war," he said.
"That simple fact will make the jobs of our men and women aircrews out there doing this a whole lot easier," he added.
The routine of patrolling the zones also provides a form of cover for allied aircraft preparing to launch an all-out air war.
On Wednesday, U.S. and British planes attacked nine military targets in southern Iraq. The headquarters for allied air forces in the Persian Gulf announced that the strikes were in response to Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery.
The targets included long-range artillery near the southern city of Basra and the nearby Al Faw peninsula near the Gulf coastline, plus three military communications sites. Also targeted was a mobile early-warning radar and an air defense command and control site at the H-3 airfield complex in western Iraq near the Jordanian border.
U.S. aircraft also dropped nearly two million leaflets over southern Iraq with a variety of messages, including, for the first time, instructions to Iraqi troops on how to capitulate to avoid being killed.
The Army announced Wednesday it was buying more than $66 million worth of equipment which could be used in a war with Iraq.
The first contract gave $48.5 million to the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin joint venture that makes the Javelin anti-tank missile for 378 launch units. The portable weapons are to be delivered by the end of the month, the Army said.
The second contract gave Mabey Bridge and Shore Inc. of Elkridge, Md., $17.6 million for a total of 960 yards of bridging equipment. Bridging gear is vital for the troops expected to push through the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys toward Baghdad.
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| Wed Mar 19, 6:11 PM ET |
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Aviation Ordnance Airman Recruit Jeremy Andrews, of Richmond, Va., left, Airman Kenneth Harrison, of Inglewood, Calif., center and Aviation Ordnance Airman Leroy McCarthy, right, struggle to move a 2,000 pound GBU-10 laser guided bomb aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk in the Gulf Wednesday, March 19, 2003. The bombs are carried by the F/A-18 Hornets that can take off with them, but cannot land with them attached. If no target is found, the bombs are jettisoned into the sea. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) |
Seems like a waste. Couldn't they put them down on targets that have already been hit, just to hit them again?
Not to worry, Honcho - the targets were "painted" when our U2 spy planes flew their "U.N." surveillence missions three weeks ago.
Nary a bomb will go to waste.
Well and good.
Landing on a carrier is sort of a 'controlled crash'. Too risky with bombs on board. It's cheaper to buy more bombs than new planes and the repairs to the carrier.
All that said, the Air Force does good work.
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I promise you Saddam is not in that bunker!
He has at least six dead-ringer doubles and at least twenty palaces with underground bomb bunkers.
Sadpoop just ain't gonna give it away that easy - he is a greasy rat. Greasy rats slide through all kinds of $hi$ without getting any on 'em.
I doubt he is even in Baghdad.
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