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Air strikes on key Iraqi targets continue

Released: 18 Dec 1998

by Senior Master Sgt. Jim Katzaman
Air Force Print News

WASHINGTON -- Allied aircraft and missiles "continue to attack a wide range of military targets," according to the secretary of defense.

William S. Cohen said Dec. 18 that he and other military leaders are satisfied with the results of the first three days' strikes.

Although the air strikes have come in waves of only a few hours each over three nights, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the number of air- and ship-launched cruise missiles has already "exceeded the total number launched during all of Desert Storm" in 1991.

Emphasizing that Desert Fox is not an all-missile operation, the secretary of defense said that Air Force, Navy and Marine aviators are indeed flying over heavily defended targets and dropping munitions.

"There have been no American or British casualties," Cohen said with the third night's missions well under way.

"Every military operation obviously poses risks, and this one is no exception," he said. "But we're taking every precaution to protect our personnel. And this is why we're sending additional personnel to the Gulf. I'm very, very proud of our combined forces and what they're doing."

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton said, "We have had good success with our air strikes." He offered what he called "a very incomplete picture, because analysts are still in the initial stages of battle damage assessments.

"We have some areas where we've had great success," he said, "and some areas where we've been less successful." Sites "not successfully targeted," in the words of the joint staff's director of operations, could be hit again in later sorties.

Desert Fox continues unhindered, said joint staff operations and intelligence officials at the Dec. 18 briefing at the Pentagon.

"The strikes have unfolded in the sequence we have planned them. If there was a surprise," said one official, "it's been the complete lack of response (by Iraqi forces)."

Southern Iraq air defense systems, the officials said, "certainly have been degraded" to clear a path for pilots flying in for strikes. Despite Iraqi claims, he noted, "We have no indication any cruise missiles have been shot down."

Among the targets struck the second night were radio and television stations and an oil refinery at Basra.

Cohen said the broadcast stations were targeted because they are part of Saddam Hussein's command-and-control system for communicating with his forces. The oil refinery, he said, is the site of "illegal oil shipments" from Iraq.

Also struck, the briefers said, were 19 facilities involved with research and development and production of weapons of mass destruction, primarily missiles. The hit list also included five airfields that housed helicopters and unmanned aircraft that could deliver chemical or biological weapons.

For the second night, targets included barracks for special Republican Guards who were responsible for guarding weapons of mass destruction and keeping such arms away from United Nations weapons inspectors, the briefers said. They added that they had no casualty figures or estimates for people in headquarters buildings attacked.

The briefers also said allied air forces have been "especially wary of mobile surface-to-air missiles, but so far there have been no reports of SAM firings."

"We've conducted a very large number of air strikes," Shelton said. "They have the appropriate number of support aircraft with them. All these pilots are flying in harm's way."

Air Force B-52 Stratofortress pilots delivered air-launched cruise missiles carrying 2,000-pound warheads, some of which struck targets in Baghdad. These were just some of more than 75 sites hit in the third night of sorties flown by U.S. and British forces.

More than a decade after their heralded introduction into the Air Force inventory, B-1B Lancers made an impressive combat debut Dec. 18, dropping 500-pound bombs onto targets in Iraq.

Among the aviators were B-1 aircrews assigned to Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., and Dyess AFB, Texas. With damage assessments still coming in, joint staff officials offered no opinion of the bombers' effectiveness. However, they praised the aircraft's entry into the fray.

"The B-1 brings a large capability to the fight," said one official, "a lot of iron bombs."