Temperamental New Technology Rushed To Front
On the first night of the war against Iraq, the United States
will detonate "E-bombs" over President Saddam Hussein's key
command-and-control bunkers in and around Baghdad, according to a
report in the current issue of Newsweek about the plans
for war. An E-bomb is a warhead, delivered by a cruise missile,
that explodes to emit a high-energy pulse that, like a bolt of
lightning, will fuse any electrical equipment within range. It has
been more than a little temperamental in testing, and engineers
would still like another year to work out the bugs.

That's The Night The Lights Went Out In Baghdad
But if all goes according to plan, on the first night of an
attack against Iraq, lights will blink out, computers will melt
down and phones will go silent. Saddam and his lieutenants will be
left shivering in silent darkness, alone and waiting to die, report
Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and National Security
Correspondent John Barry in the February 17 issue of
Newsweek
(on newsstands Monday, February 10). The desired
effect of the first night's bombing, in the expression commonly
used by military planners, is "shock and awe." The overall goal of
the American blitz against Iraq will be to so stun and demoralize
the Iraqi Army that Saddam's forces will quickly give up. In the
first 48 hours of the attack, the U.S. armed forces are expected to
rain some 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles on Iraqi air
defenses, command-and-control, WMD sites and "leadership targets,"
which is to say they will try to kill Saddam, his sons and their
closest followers.
Updated Arsenal
Thomas and Barry report on the high-tech arsenal that the U.S.
has for this gulf war, which will be different from the first gulf
war. It may be the first War of the Information Age. Gulf War I
"was the last of the machine-age wars," says Maj. Gen. Robert
Scales, who ran the Army's official history of the gulf war and,
more recently, the Army's study of its future, the "Army After
Next" project. Many of the weapons will look the same: Abrams main
battle tanks, Apache helicopters, F-14, -15, -16, -18 warplanes.
But the helicopters have a new targeting system poised over its
rotor shaft, called a Longbow, that allows the chopper to target 16
enemy tanks at once. The Abrams has GPS -- Global Positioning
System -- which allows every vehicle commander to know precisely
where he is. And the bombs hanging from the warplanes are JDAMS,
equipped with minicomputers and GP systems to steer themselves
within, on average, 10 feet of their targets.
From the outset, America will try to seize the Iraqi airwaves.
Having used the E-bomb to knock out Saddam's ability to communicate
with his troops and the Iraqi people, America will wage a war of
psy-ops (psychological operations), Newsweek reports,
often using EC-130J aircraft to spread the word (below, right). The
goal is not to massacre Saddam's army. Saddam's soldiers will be
told, in essence: we need you for the new Iraq; don't die for the
old one.
Cajoled by his impatient boss, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Gen. Tommy Franks has adopted a model that
draws on the lessons of Afghanistan. The Taliban's defeat was
widely seen as a triumph of Special Operations: elite Army A-Teams
and CIA operators, bearded and sometimes on horseback, riding to
victory.
In Gulf War II, the ground troops are expected to jump off
within three or four days of the first bombs' falling, and some
Special Forces will move into Iraq sooner. The assault will more
closely resemble the invasion of Panama in 1989-a sudden,
go-for-broke "vertical envelopment" from many directions to take
down the Manuel Noriega regime (it may not bode well that Noriega
himself escaped and evaded a nationwide manhunt for several
days).
Saddam Still Has Claws
Saddam is not completely defenseless against American
technology. Top Pentagon officials worry that he will try to jam
the GP systems that give American soldiers such precision. The
jamming devices mostly have short ranges, however, and the
transmissions of more powerful ones would instantly attract
American EA-6B Prowler aircraft, which would home in with HARM
missiles.