Boston Globe 23 January 2003
US readying launch of high-tech attack
By Robert Schlesinger
WASHINGTON - The computers controlling a biological weapons facility deep in Iraq might mysteriously short out. Or a 2,000-pound cruise missile, unseen by radar, could slam into an operations center for the country's air defenses. Or perhaps a single US soldier will fire a rocket at the most heavily armored part of an Iraqi T-72 tank and destroy it.
If the United States does attack Iraq, the military will use the conflict to debut its newest weapons: helicopters, missiles, bombs or even microwave weapons years in the making that are finally ready for use. For reasons of secrecy and security, the US military will not discuss in detail which new systems will be deployed, but military officials and defense specialists cited weapons that range from the surreal to the familiar, but upgraded.
''War entails the sacrifice of blood and treasure,'' said John Pike of the think tank GlobalSecurity.org in northern Virginia. ''The American style of war has always been to substitute treasure for blood. Particularly American warfare has always been about technological innovations. ... You'd rather break toys than boys.''
Virtually every major US conflict over the past dozen years has introduced a new weapon: The Persian Gulf War featured stealth aircraft, the Kosovo conflict saw the first use of GPS-guided bombs, and the Afghan war marked the introduction of armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
According to some, none of the newest weapons would mean the difference between victory and defeat - few military experts believe the Iraqi armed forces stand any chance against the United States - but, in some cases, arms could shorten the conflict or limit the blood spilled.
''They're enhancements and augmentations to ensure a cleaner, quicker victory,'' said Rear Admiral Stephen H. Baker, a retired officer whose last job in the armed forces was as the Navy's top tester of new systems.
Microwave weapons are the most unusual ones. The Air Force has developed the weapons, also known as ''E-bombs,'' which fire millions of watts of energy in microwaves that can burn out electronic equipment or wipe out computer hard drives. (By contrast, domestic microwave ovens use less than 1,500 watts.)
''It enables you to achieve a speed-of-light engagement with extraordinary precision and discrimination, while leaving civilian infrastructure intact,'' said Loren Thompson, a military specialist at the Lexington Institute. ''Buildings aren't falling down; people aren't even aware that most of these attacks are under way.''
E-bombs could be directed at facilities suspected to house weapons of mass destruction, shutting them down without risking explosions that would disperse toxic substances. Or the new weapons could be aimed at power plants in cities, knocking them out without collateral damage.
An Air Force spokesman declined to discuss whether the weapons are ready for deployment.
''Those technologies are right now caught up in a lot of security issues,'' said Juventino Garcia, a spokesman for the Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. But he downplayed the possibility that such weapons would be deployed - in an overt way, anyway - in Iraq.
''I know high energy microwave weapons are getting a lot of visibility lately, but I don't think the public is going to see use of them any time soon,'' he said.
The Air Force is ready to deploy the Joint Air to Surface Stand-off Missile, or JASSM, the next-generation cruise missile. The 2,200-pound missile is stealthy, undetectable by radar, and equipped with a guidance system designed to make the missile impervious to jamming.
''If they can't pick it up on radar, they don't know it's coming,'' said Jake Swinson, a spokesman for the Air Armaments Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. ''If you don't know something's coming, how do you jam it, or how do you shoot it down? ... Can you imagine putting a stealthy missile on a stealthy bomber? It's quite awesome.''
Other new bombs could be dropped on Iraq. For example, a smarter version of the ''bunker buster'' penetrating bomb, designed to hit buried or reinforced facilities, counts the number of empty spaces through which it passes and detonates when it reaches a certain floor, according to Swinson.
Baker said another weapon, called Stop, ''would dispense about 4,000 titanium penetrator rods, to puncture the storage containers for chemical and biological agents, rendering them useless and limiting the area of exposure during the attack.''
Swinson said: ''We're not going to deny it exists. We're just not going to talk about that at all.''
Iraqi tanks could face new ''smart'' cluster bombs that use a Global Positioning System and heat sensors to hit targets. ''In a desert environment or when you've got lots of tanks coming across [a demilitarized zone] you've got a devastating weapon,'' Swinson said.
During the Gulf War, the Patriot missile drew media attention disproportionate to its effectiveness. The latest iteration, the Patriot PAC-3, is designed to destroy a variety of missiles, but has never seen combat. It has been deployed to southwest Asia in recent weeks, said Jean Offutt, spokeswoman for the US Army Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas.
Army soldiers and Marines will be armed with a new antitank rocket launcher, the Javelin, which Robert Sherman of the Federation of American Scientists called ''the first weapon in history that gives a foot soldier the ability to take out any tank from any angle.''
Once fired, a computer on board the rocket constantly updates what the target looks like, tracking a tank even if it changes direction and eventually hitting it from above, where the armor is weakest.
Of greater concern to Iraqi tank commanders, however, could be the AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter. According to Baker, ''the system can detect and classify more than 128 targets out of visual range from about 5 miles away and prioritize the 16 most dangerous. Those targets can be attacked by a 30mm machine gun that fires 650 rounds a minute'' as well as two types of rockets.
The US Army could also deploy its Stryker brigades, which are centered on the new 19-ton, eight-wheeled Stryker personnel carrier. It is described as extremely mobile, more heavily armored than older personnel carriers, and loaded with computers.
Robert Schlesinger can be reached at schlesinger@globe.com.
This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 1/23/2003.
Copyright © 2003, Globe Newspaper Company.
