A Focused Strike Awaits Iraq

Israel Rafalovich

by Israel Rafalovich

Washington - While President Bush continues to talk the United States into a war against Iraq the generals in Washington are working in the meantime on contingency plans for future military action that if decided to go to war could be started in a matter of hours depending on the mission.

So far there is no timetable but, the period of March is the most likely time to launch an attack. Military experts suggest that an offensive as late as March would still leave enough time to complete an attack and install an interim government before the hot weather intervenes.

If enough data on activity such as preparation for chemical and biological attacks accumulates, it will give the Americans the justification, they are looking for, for an American-British attack even without a new U.N. resolution.

The rhetoric inside the American Defense Department suggests that it is more a question of how and when to overthrow President Saddam Hussein. The low-level warfare between American and British pilots and Iraqi air-defense gunners is intensifying and could be considered the opening volleys of the second Gulf War. The latest strikes appear to be part  of a changing pattern. Instead of going after the missile launchers that target them American and British pilots attack command and communication centers as well as radar networks for those launchers. Although it is a little bit too early to say that the conflict has started the strikes are more oriented toward targets of opportunity, targets that if a military campaign were ramping up military planners would want to hit.

This military campaign is going to be a sophisticated military campaign. The plan that is preferred by the American Defense Department, would not involve a major ground attack on Iraq and the urban fighting that would entail. It would begin, with heavy bombing and cruise missile attacks to break down air defenses and command and control, air defenses, weapons of mass destruction, palaces and locations that harbor the Iraqi leadership.

A key element of the American planning is to leave enough top-level communications intact to prevent a blind retaliatory attack against Israel and other countries which will be allied with the United States. The war on Iraq show radically new weapons which will have their debut in this war and other classified weapons  that have been used in the war in Afghanistan. There will be unconventional battlefield tactics and closer ties between the uniformed military and the different American intelligence agencies.

The first, would be used expendable high-power microwave(HPM) weapons against chemical and biological storage, manufacturing and missile-launch facilities. Damaging their controls could eliminate the need for conventional weapon attacks that throw plums of agents into the air. Those clouds could drifts for many miles and injure civilians. It will be the first use of high-power microwave(HPM) weapons that produce a split-second spike of energy powerful enough to damage electronic components and scramble computer memories critical to running chemical and biological facilities or launching missiles.

They are, initially, designed for use from cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft. By using unmanned aircraft, there is no risk to a pilot,and there is greater degree of accuracy in hitting the target. The combination of unmanned vehicles and HPM(high-powered microwave) weapon also provides a way to attack the toughest targets in any enemy's arsenal. If we combine directs energy with UCAV's, we get a combination that uses stealth to go into heavily defended territory.

Electronic warfare in any new conflict will include information operations, which can involve the placing of false targets via computer penetration. Because of HPM's limited range, which now is just getting the 1,000ft. make -planners look at unmanned aircraft as the perfect platform to go into heavily defended areas to damage air defense radars, communications, command and control computers, and chemical and biological storage or production facilities. High-power microwave weapons that are now available to be used against Iraq are not the kind of things American's like to talk about openly. They are built, like  bombs, as expendable one-time use weapons. Many of the payloads are designed for carriage by cruise missiles like the Tomahawk, JASSM or England's Storm Shadow.

Two systems have been used to produce HPM. An older technology explodes high explosives wrapped around a coil with an electrical field to produce a blast of HPM. A higher tech version uses a new generation of capacitors. These are discharged, and the pulse of energy focused in a relatively tight area in front of the missile. This class of weapon is expected to be effective against command and control centers and weapons production sites buried deep underground as a fence against allied air attacks. While these buried sites may be immune to bombs, they have vulnerabilities to high power microwave. They must have access to the surface for water ventilation, electricity and communications. All these provide conduits for bursts of energy into the underground structure.

High-power microwave and lasers are the primary directed-energy weapons available to the American military, but on the horizon is a third called plasma weapon. A plasma weapon is slower than a laser beam of HPM spike, but it can cause much more physical damage.

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