U.S. ground forces that would be called upon to sweep across Iraq and into Baghdad as part of the Pentagon’s promised “shock and awe” assault on Saddam Hussein’s forces would face an awesome challenge of their own.
U.S. forces would confront varied terrain that includes roads, bridges, marshes, waterways, mountains and open desert. The challenge of refueling and supplying thousands of tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters could combine to make the march on Baghdad far more daunting than political leaders have let on, according to military officials and analysts.
“As in most wars, logistics plays a very big role,” Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters this week. While the backstage work of war rarely draws attention, he said, it defines the “art of the possible.”
Challenges to be faced
At the start of a ground war, U.S. and British forces would be expected to advance on Baghdad from two or perhaps three directions, with the largest invasion force–perhaps more than 60,000 British and American troops–driving north from Kuwait and southern Iraq. Those forces would be backed by air forces with likely nearly complete control of the skies, but the Iraqi battleground presents some of the same challenges that have plagued armies throughout history. Water, for example.
Southeastern Iraq is a sponge of marshes and canals that owe their existence to the confluence of two fabled rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. Modern armies can move almost anything by air, but a good deal of arms, ammunition and equipment still moves overland. Even the 68-ton M1-A2 Abrams tank is usually ferried to the battlefront on flatbed trucks.
The road from the port city of Basra to Baghdad, Highway 8, has nearly 60 bridges, said John Warden, who as an air force colonel was a chief architect of the 1991 bombing campaign.
U.S. planners expect that Iraqi troops would destroy those bridges if war begins. Several large reservoirs are above the fertile region, held back by dams that could be breached to flood the path of oncoming U.S.-led forces.
Advance U.S. forces could deploy to secure key bridges, and bridging equipment — metal structural bridges and platforms that float on large pontoons that are strung together–has been moved into Kuwait.
U.S. forces, Warden said, “have good bridging equipment. But there’s a lot of bridges.”
Supplying forces along the 300-plus-mile drive to Baghdad also presents a difficult challenge. An Abrams tank has a range of 265 miles on a single 500-gallon tank of fuel, sucking up nearly 2 gallons a mile. During the 1991 gulf war, some U.S. tank forces moved so quickly they outran their fuel supplies, a potentially deadly mistake that no U.S. ground commander is eager to repeat.
“People say you’ve got too much tail-to-tooth,” said one Pentagon official, using a common military expression. “But it’s really the logistics that allow your mobility, it’s not your trigger-pullers. Amateurs think tactics, but professionals think logistics.”
To deliver fuel, water and ammunition, the Army would likely establish logistics bases inside Iraq, well ahead of the advancing force. These “log bases,” used to full effect in the 1991 war, feature huge rubber fuel “bladders” that are buried in sand and filled by 5,000-gallon tanker trunks driven into the desert. In other instances, 500-gallon bladders are filled and then ferried by helicopter to locations that serve as temporary fuel depots.
A typical armored division during Operation Desert Storm consumed 300,000 gallons of water a day, provided by mobile purification units or ferried in 3,000-gallon bladders.
In 1991, logistics teams covertly ventured 90 miles into Iraqi territory to set up sprawling fuel depots in advance of the ground war.
“You set up logistical bases that are forward, like we did, and then the columns will pass through those logistical bases to be able to refuel,” said Gus Pagonis, the retired Army general and Sears vice president who mounted what is regarded as a skillful supply campaign during the gulf war. “Logistics is no longer a rear function like it used to be.”
Bypassing obstacles
For ground troops heading north to Baghdad, possible delays posed by the wet, broad Tigris-Euphrates delta surrounding Basra might be avoided by going around it.
In the event of war, U.S. forces may array themselves west of Kuwait in the southern Iraqi desert, familiar terrain to U.S. commanders who encountered it during the gulf war. The route would add 100 miles, but the land is flat to rolling desert with broad wadis, suitable for tanks and wheeled vehicles traveling in a well-worn path.
While Iraq has an estimated six regular army divisions — including two armored divisions — near Basra, any U.S. invasion force is expected to wheel wide to the west, bypassing the city and relying on U.S. aircraft to protect its right flank.
“You can bypass a lot of things,” said a Pentagon official. “The more you learn about the centers of gravity, the more you can focus on the targets that matter, rather than the targets that slow you down and mean nothing.”
In Pentagon parlance, the centers of gravity are Baghdad, the capital and home to Hussein’s extensive security apparatus, and Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown. Last week Hussein moved an elite Republican Guard division from Mosul to near Tikrit, a move that U.S. officials believe signals his intention to fortify his primary residences and leave the rest of the country less defended.
The extent of a northern front would likely depend on Turkey’s cooperation, which remains in question. Turkey’s parliament voted to deny U.S. forces use of the country’s bases, though it could reverse itself. Its approval would allow the U.S. to post more than 60,000 troops at up to 10 Turkish bases and airfields. Without approval, the U.S. would have to ferry troops and supplies from ships in the Mediterranean and bases in Germany and Kuwait.
U.S. Special Forces teams would hunt for mobile Scud missile launchers, secure oil fields near Kirkuk and Mosul, and seize key airfields, including those in Mosul and Irbil.
Air bases in the region would be busy in the first days of a war, planners say, as troops conduct a frightening array of attacks, dropping an estimated 1,000 bombs on carefully chosen Iraqi targets in just the first hours.
Shorter air attack seen
Unlike the gulf war, in which a 39-day air assault preceded the ground attack, a concentrated bombardment this time might precede a ground invasion by a shorter time span.
Military planners say the air component fits in a “shock and awe” strategy, named after a 1996 book whose principal author was Harlan Ullman, a military strategist and writer. U.S. war planners hope an overwhelming initial blow would lead many Iraqi forces to conclude that resistance was suicidal.
“You create this perception of hopelessness,” Ullman said. “The idea is you would have massive surrenders as we did in Desert Storm. You want to collapse everything so–boom–you’re there and they can’t fight.”
