U.S. invasion force is taking shape

The U.S. military is assembling a ground force for a possible invasion of Iraq that could exceed 100,000 troops and include three to four heavy army divisions, an airborne division, a marine division and an assortment of special operations forces, according to defence officials and analysts.

Although the exact makeup of the ground force has yet to be decided, the army has summoned commanders of four of its best-equipped and most capable divisions for an exercise called Victory Scrimmage at the end of the month. In it, commanders will use computer simulations to run through Iraq war scenarios, defence officials said. The units include the 1st Armoured; the mechanised 1st Infantry; the 1st Cavalry, with its mix of tanks and helicopters; and the copter-heavy 101st Airborne.

The 3rd Infantry Division received orders last week to deploy to the Gulf, as did elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. The 3rd Infantry, based at Fort Stewart, already has one of three brigades in Kuwait, and the Marine force, based at Camp Pendleton, has 1,000 Marines from its headquarters staff in Kuwait.

The military buildup in the Gulf has been underway for some time, but has accelerated as the January 27 deadline for the first major report by UN weapons inspectors to the UN Security Council approaches.

Although it has generally been understood that the size of the U.S. force could reach as high as 250,000, the approximate mix of combat units that would be involved in an invasion of Iraq has started to come into focus only since Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed a major deployment order December 24. Additional deployment orders are expected this week, according to defence officials.

Numerically, a U.S. invasion force of about 100,000 soldiers would be roughly equivalent in size to Iraq's Republican Guard, with about 80,000 troops, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussain's elite Special Republican Guard, with about 15,000 troops. There are an additional 300,000 forces in Iraq's regular army.

But the U.S. ground force would have enormous advantages in technology, firepower and mobility, and would almost certainly begin any invasion with the benefit of near total air supremacy, according to defence officials and analysts.

The 1st Armoured Division, based in Wiesbaden, Germany, has 159 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 173 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 36 Paladin howitzers, 18 Multiple-Launcher Rocket Systems and 18 Apache helicopters. The M1A1 has almost twice the range of Iraq's remaining 600 T-72 tanks, which can be targeted and destroyed by laser-guided Hellfire missiles from miles away by the Apaches.

The 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., has more than 70 Apaches and more than 100 Blackhawk and 40 Chinook troop transport helicopters, enabling it to stage 100-mile air assault missions involving 4,000 soldiers in a single operation.

"If we get three heavy divisions, plus the 101st and a Marine division, they will manhandle the Iraqi military in 21 days," said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry Division during the 1991 Gulf War.

But McCaffrey said he was concerned that some civilian leaders in the Pentagon might try to invade Iraq with as small a force as possible, keeping heavier forces in the rear as reinforcements.

"The forces we've apparently got targeted on Iraq are more than enough to do the job, but the opening moves shouldn't be modulated force to see if we can do it on the cheap," McCaffrey said. "The biggest mistake you can make in boxing and combat is to lead tentatively into battle, instead of dominating it from the start."

One senior defence official said there is no "light" invasion option still on the table. "The goal of armed conflict is not to defeat your enemy," the official said. "It's to take away your enemy's will to fight. And the best way to take away your enemy's will to fight is to bring overwhelming force to bear."

Another senior official said there is a "debate about risk at every level of planning." But the official added: "They all know that mistakes in planning yield dead bodies on the battlefield."

A key assumption underlying the U.S. war plan is that Saddam's government would be rocked from the outset by a massive air bombing campaign coupled with simultaneous Special Operations attacks against airfields and sites of weapons of mass destruction.

The air war, which could involve as many as 500 to 1,000 sorties in the first day, will strike leadership targets, presidential palaces, air defences, weapons facilities, and concentrations of Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard forces across the country, as well as regular military units that resist, defence officials and analysts said. The air war would be designed to spare traditional infrastructure - bridges, rail lines and industrial plants - as well as population and cultural centres, they said.

The Air Force and Navy have more than 1,000 aircraft capable of dropping laser- and satellite-guided bombs and attacking multiple targets per mission. At the beginning of the 1991 war only 100 Air Force planes -and almost no Navy aircraft - could drop precision-guided bombs.

The development of the satellite-guided bombs gives U.S. aircraft the ability to strike targets with precision in all weather conditions, day and night. They have also enabled lumbering B-52 bombers produced in the 1950s and B-1 bombers built at the height of the Cold War to drop satellite-guided bombs from high altitude in a close air support role for ground troops.

© Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service