PENTAGONS
WASHINGTON - On the second day of Operation Desert Fox, American and British forces stepped up their airstrikes against Iraq, in two distinct waves. And judging from the vast array of new warships and planes streaming into the Persian Gulf, the third day is likely to exceed the first two.
US officials, from President Clinton on down, have repeated over and over that the mission of the campaign is simply to ''degrade'' and ''diminish'' Saddam Hussein's ability to build nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
However, some of the air campaign's targets suggest that a larger aim may be Hussein's regime itself, although Defense Secretary William S. Cohen denied the suggestion.
Cohen announced yesterday that over 200 cruise missiles had struck 50 targets on Wednesday night, when the operation began. He did not say - it may be impossible at this point - how many of these targets were destroyed. Nor, by yesterday evening, had the second day's strikes been quantified.
British Tornado jets also went into action for the first time last night, against targets outside Baghdad. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, talking with lawmakers, would not disclose details of the operation. Britain has 12 Tornado bombers in Kuwait and six Tornado reconnaissance aircraft in Saudi Arabia.
Iraqi Health Minister Umeed Madhat Mubarak said airstrikes killed at least 25 people and wounded 75 in Baghdad alone. Trade Minister Mohammed Mahali Saleh said that in Tikrit, Hussein's home town, a food store stocked with 2,600 tons of rice was demolished.
The New York Times reported that the Pentagon said yesterday that US and British forces avoided hitting plants that might produce chemical and biological weapons out of fear of unleashing the poisons and killing civilians.
Earlier yesterday, Clinton allowed, ''There is always the prospect that ... missiles will miss'' their targets, and that people will die as a result. Such a risk, he added, was why he delayed striking Iraq until now.
Cohen emphasized that all the targets were military in nature.
Satellite photographs of two of those targets, released by the Pentagon, reveal much about the air campaign's aims, which may be more expansive than officials say.
The photos showed ''pre-strike'' and ''post-strike'' views of, in one case, Iraq's military-intelligence headquarters and, in the other, a row of five barracks occupied by the elite troops that guard Hussein.
John Pike, a weapons analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, inferred from this that ''the objectives of the campaign must also be to weaken his regime.''
William Arkin, a private weapons analyst and former US Army intelligence officer, found it noteworthy that airstrikes, not only in Baghdad but across Iraq, have been aimed at Hussein's private security apparatus and the units responsible for moving Hussein around.
''The two things that have made this guy survive for 20 years,'' Arkin said, ''is his security apparatus and his mobility. And we are trying to rip that apart. ... We're hoping that when this guy is naked - when his transportation is destroyed and his security apparatus is reeling - that will precipitate a coup.''
Arkin also noted that seven years of UN inspections have provided a lot of intelligence on where Hussein's network is vulnerable to attack.
Then again, officials in 1991 also hoped that the strikes would topple Hussein. An Air Force report, written a few weeks before the air war, predicted the assault would trigger ''the systematic collapse of Saddam Hussein's entire war machine and regime.''
If the destruction of Hussein's regime is not an objective of Desert Fox, then its official aims seem vague. ''To `degrade' his capabilities - that's easy,'' Arkin remarked. ''The first hour, we `degraded' them. We can't lose, in that regard.''
But how then do such strikes make Hussein easier to control or contain? And how does Clinton know he has degraded Hussein enough?
Whatever the actual goals of the air campaign, it will intensify greatly over the next 24 hours, as over 80 additional combat planes join the US arsenal in the region. These include 10 F-117 Stealth aircraft, which were the stars of the 1991 air war but have not yet appeared in this operation.
Nearly all of these planes are loaded with laser-guided bombs, which, while by no means miracle weapons, are much more accurate than conventional weapons. In the last war, only a small fraction of planes had these ''smart bombs.''
Even advanced weapons do not always hit their targets. In the targets photographed yesterday, the intelligence headquarters - two vast complexes of buildings - was apparently obliterated by the attack. However, just three of the five barracks appear to be destroyed. Although one of the others is heavily damaged, the other is barely scarred.
The conclusion: Some strikes work better than others.
General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made this point. ''Much'' of the attack, he said, was ''as successful or more successful'' than the results shown in the two photos, while ''some of it'' was ''not quite as successful.''
Officials did not reveal yesterday how many weapons were fired at various targets, but Pike estimated that the destruction of the intelligence headquarters might have required a dozen missiles or more.
The Tomahawk's warhead releases the explosive force of 2,000 pounds of TNT, enough to obliterate small structures, but not nearly enough by itself to topple a large office building.
All the attacks in Baghdad so far have been carried out by Tomahawks, fired from Navy ships and Air Force B-52 bombers. Since the missiles have a range of 700 miles, the pilots and sailors can shoot them while staying far from danger.
More than 70 Navy planes have also been involved in attacks outside Baghdad, though officials were vague about details.
Despite a barrage of Iraqi air-defense fire, Cohen reported yesterday that no US or British planes have been shot down. He also said Iraqi fighter planes - which shot down a few dozen allied planes in 1991 - have not been in the air during these strikes.
These airstrikes have been much lighter than their predecessors nearly eight years ago. On Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of Operation Desert Storm, allied forces mounted 1,223 airstrikes - more than three times the 280 launched Wednesday. There were 811 strikes the second night, again far more than anything seen this week.
The difference is that in 1991, Iraqi troops had invaded Kuwait and the allied mission was to repel them. Most of the airstrikes were aimed at Iraqi tanks, bridges, airfields and other combat infrastructure. Hussein's military machine was much larger than it is now, and was at full alert.
Desert Fox involves far fewer targets and therefore requires far fewer weapons.
The other big difference in this campaign is the US military's almost total reliance thus far on Tomahawk cruise missiles.
In 1991, the attack began with F-117s swooping into Iraqi airspace, invisible to their radar, to destroy a variety of targets with laser-guided bombs.
Last time, the performance of Tomahawks, despite much advance fanfare, was disappointing. Over 300 were fired throughout the war, at a cost of over $1 million per missile. The US Defense Intelligence Agency calculated afterward that there were as many ''no-shows'' - wide misses - as there were hits.
It is not yet clear how successful the Tomahawks have been this time, but even their critics concede they must be doing better.
The main reason is that nearly all Tomahawks are now guided to their targets by a network of Global Positioning Satellites.
The old Tomahawks were guided by a sensor that compared key features of the terrain with a pre-programmed radar flight-path map. The problem was, the Iraqi desert is fairly barren of features and the missiles often got lost.
GPS guidance, on the other hand, does not depend on set flight paths. The technology is common these days. Many cars have GPS receivers that, connected to a mapping system, let drivers know their precise positions within a few feet.
Cruise missiles contain similar GPS receivers. The coordinates of the target are punched in and the missile simply goes there. Weather, visibility or terrain features are irrelevant.
Still, success is not as simple as it might seem. According to one Pentagon official, the new system's test-program is not yet complete.
Last summer, Clinton launched a large number of GPS-guided Tomahawks at alleged terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan. It was never revealed how many missiles were used to achieve what damage was done.
Even with GPS, Tomahawks can still go wildly astray. The Iranian Foreign Ministry last night filed a protest with the US and British governments, complaining that a wayward missile crashed into a small Iranian town on the southwest border with Iraq, causing some damage but no casualties.
Globe Staff reporter Ross Kerber contributed to this report from Boston.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 12/18/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
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