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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Envelope Needs A Good Stretching

Barbara Starr Jane'S Defence Weekly

Saddam Hussein seems to be practicing the “revolution in military affairs” that the U.S. Defense Department is still dreaming about.

Without a hint of physical military action, Saddam has skillfully dumped the realities of 21st-century warfare on the front steps of the Pentagon.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen has already sounded a note of reality in the debate on the efficiency of military strikes against Iraq’s suspected sites of weapons of mass destruction - such as “hard target” underground bunkers made of reinforced concrete and steel.

Referring to potential air strikes, Cohen said, “We should not overestimate what they can achieve.”

Cohen said strikes would be “substantial” and not the “pinprick” attacks of the past, after which Iraq has readily rebuilt air defense and radar sites. Key targets this time include not just command and control facilities but Republican Guard units as well.

But when asked if air strikes could eliminate Iraq’s suspected capability in weapons of mass destruction, Cohen answered “probably not.” The U.S. goal against Saddam now is to “curtail his ability to manufacture or reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction.”

However, Cohen also added that a complete elimination of weapons of mass destruction could not be achieved by air attack alone.

Without an appetite for a large ground-troop deployment, air strikes appear the only feasible option. Defense planners are reviewing whether some air-deployed technologies not yet in full-scale production could be sent to the region for serious operations.

Tests have demonstrated the feasibility of various new technologies for countermeasure weapons such as deep penetrators, incendiary warheads and smart fuses.

The inventory of potential new weapons to use against Iraq is no secret by now, but each has potential challenges for success at this point. The Air Force has an inventory of 5,000-pound GBU-28 guided bombs with the BLU-113 warhead. But with Persian Gulf nations wary about allowing U.S. aircraft to attack Iraq from bases on their territory, the use of F-15s would be difficult. And the GBU-28 can only be launched from an F-15E.

As for deep-penetrating weapons, the 2,000-pound “Advanced Unitary Penetrator” - or AUP-3 - may be able to penetrate up to 118 feet of soil and 11 feet of concrete.

But only an earlier version of the AUP-1 has undergone significant tests and those were against so-called cut-and-cover targets, not deep and hardened facilities.

In January, the Air Force tested an incendiary warhead filled with rocket-motor propellant against a bunker target. The device worked but was tested by being “emplaced” on the target, not by being deployed from a weapon.

Many experts feel that the “Hard Target Smart Fuse” is still the critical technology for achieving a kill against a deep target, such as weapons of mass destruction buried deep in the ground in a concrete bunker. Several test versions are available for use against Iraq.

In recent days some claims of successful penetration depth have been stretching the laws of physics. Defense Department officials say privately that some experimental weapons could penetrate to 100 feet - which would include underground rooms and other voids rather than just solid material. But the realities of terradynamic coefficients make it unlikely that current-generation technology could provide weapons to penetrate deep rock or reinforced concrete beyond a 30-foot range.

All of the advanced, precision-guided munitions, however, will not resolve the shortfall in current U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction sites.

“We are not confident that we know where they are, what has been destroyed and what it would take to get (Iraq) back to their production and development of all of these weapons of mass destruction,” said Phyllis Oakley, assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, at a recent hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Today, without a declared conflict, Saddam has tied up hundreds of U.S. aircraft, dozens of warships and thousands of troops in the Persian Gulf. In the near future, the acquisition of computer viruses, commercial global positioning-system technology and commercial high-resolution imagery by Saddam could put those U.S. forces right in Baghdad’s crosshairs.

It is not all that clear that precision-guided munitions will keep that war-fighting scenario at bay.

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