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.

FMI: www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp