Of more than 90,000 allied sorties, only about 11,000 actually dropped bombs and hit targets. They were strikes of unprecedented accuracy, but allied suggestions of high-intensity bombing seem overstated. For example, hitting the Republican Guard divisions in southern Iraq has become “a priority item” for the allies, according to U.S. military leaders. On a typical day last week, the allies directed 100 sorties against the seven guard divisions - most of which did not drop bombs. Even if all of them had, the campaign would have been lighter than the 400 bombing runs per day the Israelis mounted against three Egyptian divisions in 1973.
The U.S. military claims to have killed 1,685 of Iraq’s estimated 4,280 tanks. But the Iraqis are adept at digging in their armor and planting decoys, as many returning U.S. pilots have testified. CIA analysts examining photo reconnaissance believe the true number of tanks killed may be only half the Pentagon estimates. And by way of comparison, in 1973, the combined Israeli Army and Air Force knocked out 2,554 Arab tanks in 18 days. “Even taking our maximum claims, Iraq’s losses are reasonable,” says Kenneth Brower, a tank-warfare expert and international research fellow at Britain’s Sandhurst military academy. Pentagon figures would still leave Iraq with more tanks than any Mideast country save Israel and Syria.
General Schwarzkopf says the allies have interdicted 90 percent of a 20,000-ton-per-day flow of supplies from Iraq to its forces in Kuwait. But the immobile Iraqis, who had six months to stockpile food and munitions, and who have at least some access to water from Kuwaiti desalination plants, are apparently keeping their forces from starving. The hungry, lice-infested prisoners taken early in the war came from offshore islands. More recent captives have been in better shape. “Their overall condition does not indicate they are not being fed,” Col. Larry Stovall, an Army officer who has examined the latest Iraqi POWs, told reporters. The 2,500 deserters reported so far represent less than .5 percent of the 540,000-man Iraqi Army in the theater.
Except for a handful of Vietnam vets, almost no Americans in Desert Storm have combat experience. The U.S. Army’s historical record in first battles is five defeats, four costlier-than-expected victories and only one easy win, according to “America’s First Battles, 1776-1965,” edited by Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft. Some first battles, notably the defeat of U.S. tank forces at the Kasserine Pass in 1943, rank among the worst disasters in the annals of American arms.
Historically, the United States has had trouble in first battles for two reasons: a shortage of commanders with battle-bred initiative and imagination, and a lack of realistic exercises before the fight. American plans in Kuwait call for fast-paced combined arms maneuvers involving tens of thousands of troops across thousands of square miles. Yet U.S. forces have never practiced such maneuvers on that scale. Says Maj. Gen. Paul Funk, commander of the Army’s Third Armored Division, which just got the last of its equipment from Europe: “The intensity level for all of us is going to go up. There will be a hell of a lot of smoke and confusion and nothing will go as we’d planned.”
First battles are also proving grounds for weapons and equipment. American high-performance missiles and aircraft have so far passed the test with flying colors. American Army material is designed for high performance, but in the smoke and dust of ground combat, reliability is most important. Part of the reason the Iraqis have set smoky oil-well fires is to confound the delicate laser-targeting systems of the American Apache helicopter and other smart Army weapons.
Then there is the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which will ferry thousands of U.S. soldiers into battle. It carries fuel and ammunition inside steel side walls that are vulnerable to Iraqi antitank weapons. When one Bradley was hit by an Iraqi shell last month, the vehicle filled with smoke; “There was a lot of screaming. My intercom got disconnected, so I couldn’t hear the driver,” recalled “Trey” Garrison, an Army specialist wounded in the incident. Last week troops from the Second Cavalry Division practiced firing TOW antitank missiles from a Bradley for the first time in the gulf: three out of six missed.
Allied troops will almost certainly attack burdened by hot, bulky chemical-warfare suits dating from the 1960s. One nightmare scenario envisions the Iraqis slowing an allied punch through the line with a barrage of chemical agents. The allies could then be hammered by Iraq’s long-range conventional artillery.
It may not happen this way. If not, some other rude surprise is likely. “Every war is going to astonish you,” the World War II commander Dwight D. Eisenhower once said. For all the effort the military put into coming up with “battle damage assessments,” and packaging them for the public, there was, in the end, only one sure way to tell how much fight the Iraqis had left: go in on the ground and find out.
OPINION WATCH FITNESS REPORT Is the military effort against Iraq going as well as U.S. officials report?
Current 1/25 Yes 69% 66% No 25% 25%
From the NEWSWEEK Poll of Feb. 22, 1991
