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Journalism of Courage
The United States fired the first shots of the Second Gulf War in the early hours of Thursday to target a residential area in South Baghdad in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein. The actual invasion was possibly delayed by the duststorm in the region on Wednesday.
In fact, army units were moving forward to battle positions for launching a ground offensive, no doubt timed to coincide with the large-scale air attacks seeking to overwhelm Iraqi defences militarily and psychologically.
US intelligence had reported that Saddam was to meet his senior advisers in that area and the US decided to take advantage of the opportunity (ahead of the main offensive) since the ultimatum had already expired.
Forty Tomahawk missiles and four one-ton satellite-guided bombs dropped by F-117 stealth fighters hit the target. These bombs are fitted with sensors to receive signals from at least three satellites (in the Global Positioning System) to determine their position and feed the data to the guidance system which then manoeuvres the bomb during its flight to the target.
Saddam appeared on television a couple of hours later in tune with his reputation as the proverbial survivor that he has been for so long. The accuracy of the air-strikes was not in doubt; but obviously the old lesson was re-emphasised that real time intelligence is not easy to get in time for it to be operationally usable. Intrinsically the US lost some advantage in the image of all-pervasive intelligence provided by an array of systems, including more than 1,000-strong Special Operations Forces operating inside Iraq, and Baghdad.
But the strike no doubt would have provided some key information to the US forces. The fact that air raid sirens were blowing and anti-aircraft batteries had opened up before the air-strike hit the target indicates that there is an early warning system working, probably relying on human observers, rather than radars.
However, it is also clear that US strike aircraft, using more capable and accurate weapons, will deliver their weapon load from heights even greater than those during 1991, and above the range of the thousands of anti-aircraft artillery guns concentrated in the Baghdad region.
Iraq in its turn demonstrated its limited ability to retaliate by the desultory firing of four missiles against targets in Kuwait.
Two surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, believed to be the 100-km range Ababil 100s (and not Scuds as reported in some quarters), fired by Iraq from south of Basra were intercepted by Patriot batteries deployed in Kuwait.
The third was a shorter-range missile, possibly an unguided 80-km range Frog, and the fourth an anti-ship missile.
Like in 1991, Iraq showed that it had not grasped the importance of concentration of force, especially when it comes to launching a surprise attack with missiles. US forces were densely deployed close to the border to enable its offensive to be launched, and vulnerable to a surprise attack.
Not only did Iraq fail to saturate the Patriot defences but it also alerted the US forces to the fact that such missiles were deployed in the southern region.
On the other hand, the US would unleash the full power of its military-technological superiority essentially with the launch of the actual invasion which is likely to be a concurrent air and ground offensive.
Meanwhile, the fact that Saddam Hussein got away this time is no guarantee that he would not be targeted again, or that he would get way every time. Knowing that a US invasion is now imminent after the air-strikes, Iraq is likely to set the 500-odd oilfields in Basra region on fire and even blow up the oil terminal in the Persian Gulf at Faw, not far from Kuwait, which could create very major oil spills, spreading to the water desalination plants in Kuwait.
Air Commodore (retd) Jasjit Singh, editorial consultant to The Indian Express, will analyse the US-Iraq war daily. Readers can send their queries to him at jasjitsinghexpressindia.com
