The Killing Ground

The allied strategy for the war's next phase calls for a blitzkrieg in Kuwait--and Iraq

Ferocious as it is, the bombing campaign against Iraq is probably only the prelude to an even more monumental land battle. Unless air power forces Saddam Hussein to his knees, Operation Desert Storm will shift after a matter of weeks to a vast ground campaign to evict his forces from Kuwait. As key military sources sketch it for "Newsweek,' the plan drawn up by Desert Storm commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf is a modern blitzkrieg--the first test ever of the U.S. Army's post-Vietnam doctrine of "AirLand Battle." Says retired U.S. Marine Corps. Gen. George Crist: "It's going to be violent, Patton-like armored thrusts, perhaps an amphibious end run...We will (be) moving so fast that the Iraqis won't know what hit 'em."

The timing and exact points of attack are not known, but the strategic heart of the plan is a sweeping flanking maneuver around Saddam's forces in Kuwait. "Newsweek' has learned that weeks ago President Bush made the decision to permit U.S. forces to enter Iraq, giving Schwarzkopf freedom to maneuver well above the southern Iraqi city of Basra; below that line Iraq has some 545,000 troops, 4,200 tanks, 2,800 armored vehicles and about 3,100 pieces of artillery. But Schwarzkopf has his sights on the "center of gravity" of Saddam Hussein's military and of his regime: the 150,000-man elite Republican Guard tank divisions just north of Kuwait (chart).

Saddam, of course, has other ideas. Iraqi doctrine, developed over the last four years of its brutal war with Iran, is built around the notion of "defense in depth," which calls for Iraqi forces to fight from behind redundant fortifications and obstacles. In essence, Saddam has turned the entire territory of Kuwait into a gigantic version of such a layered defense. The first layer is made up of divisions entrenched along the length of the Kuwaiti coast, then west along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. For up to four miles in front of these lines, the Iraqi combat engineers have laid barbed wire, tank traps, sand berms and minefields. Many of Iraq's tanks are dug into sand, their turrets sticking out as artillery.

Behind these lines, Iraq has deployed small armored units to confront any enemy forces that might break through. Farther back still, stretched west of Kuwait City, Saddam has several divisions of additional "operational reserve" forces. Finally, just south of Basra, lie the Republican Guards. They are equipped with artillery, antiaircraft batteries and T-72 Soviet tanks. If the United States hit these lines frontally, Americans would find themselves reliving World War I's gory Battle of the Somme, in which Britain and France took more than 600,000 casualties in a futile four-month effort to pierce German entrenchments.

Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has already dismissed that idea as "mindless"; Schwarzkopf agrees. Instead, he plans to induce the Republican Guards to leave their defensive positions by sending a tank force to meet them, end-running the western end of the Iraqi lines. Schwarzkopf's strike force consists of the crack U.S. Tank forces from Germany--the First and Third U.S. Armored Divisions, and the Second Cavalry Regiment--plus the First Mechanized Infantry Division out of Fort Riley, Kans. Reports from Saudi Arabia say that the 168 Challenger tanks of Great Britain's First Armored Division are deploying west, possibly to join this force, Says Maj. John Chapman, of the U.S. First Armored Division: "I see us employing tactics that capitalize on the speed of our tanks. We will probably use our night-fighting capabilities. I see us massing our combat power, focusing on a narrow point to penetrate those initial defenses. After that, it will be like a kid in a candy store. Only our fuel supply will slow us down."