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CNN SHOWDOWN: IRAQ
What Will U.S. Military Strategy Be?
Aired March 6, 2003 - 12:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: When the go-ahead decision is finally made, many military analysts say this gulf war will be strategically very different than the first, with intense simultaneous attacks, both from the air and on the ground.
Joining me once again, CNN's military analyst, retired U.S. Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. General Shepperd served in the U.S. Air Force for almost 40 years, and was directly involved in planning Air National Guard forces during the Persian Gulf War.
General Shepperd, what is going to be so different about this U.S. military offensive, as opposed to the offensive a dozen years ago designed to liberate Kuwait?
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Three things, mainly, Wolf, are going to be significantly different.
First of all, the number of air strikes launched in the first few hours of the war, first 48 hours, probably 10 times as heavy as during the Gulf War. The other thing is, there were about 20 percent of the weapons used during the Gulf War on the high side were precision guided. This time, it may be upwards of 70 percent precision weapons. It's going to be a very massive attack.
The other big difference, of course, is that there will be almost simultaneous ground movement because we can this time. They are going to move out from Kuwait. The army is going to move from Kuwait, and they are going to be moving from Kuwait up into the western part of Iraq. They are going to move around and encircle Baghdad. The big unknown is what's going to happen up to the north up here, whether we're going to get this northern front or not.
The Marines and the Brits are going to be moving on the Eastern side here up the Tigris-Euphrates River. So you are going to see, this time, much more simultaneous warfare, with the airstrikes going in, and the Army moving at the same time because there are no forces arrayed right across the border from Kuwait like there were during the Gulf War.
So this time, they can, and you are going to see it.
BLITZER: We've heard a lot of talk, General Shepperd, that the smart bombs this time around are a lot smarter than they were a dozen years ago. All of the smart bombs then were the so-called laser- guided bombs. This time around, the really smart bombs are the satellite guided bombs. What makes these so much smarter? SHEPPERD: Well, basically, there's a constellation of satellites called global position system satellites. Numerous satellites up there for redundancy, and what have you. And they give us much more accurate information than laser-guided bombs. The problem with laser- guided bombs is you have to have good weather. The accuracy is good, but it's nowhere near as good as GPS-guided bombs, such as the JDAMs, the Joint Direct Attack Munitions that we saw in Afghanistan. Let me give you an example. A GPS bomb, you might get 10-foot accuracy, whereas a laser-guided bomb, maybe 50-foot accuracy. So, almost five times as accurate. This is going to be much more precise. We have many more, and the difference in the GPS guided bombs is you can attack in all kinds of weather. Weather is not a factor as long as you have the coordinates -- Wolf.
BLITZER: We have heard a lot in recent weeks that 3,000 of those so-called JDAMs or precision guided munitions might be dropped in the initial hours of a war. But what are the likely targets in the first day or two or three?
SHEPPERD: Yes. We have got an animation here, if we could zoom in from the studios here in Atlanta, basically showing one of the -- one of the Republican Guard complexes in downtown Baghdad.
This Republican Guard complex is in the middle of the city, but it's many, many acres, and it's composed of all types of storage bunkers, underground meeting and leadership facilities, caves underneath there, command posts where they can meet, communication facilities, and what we will be doing in this type of site is we will be going in and taking out specific locations, not going in here, for instance, and bombing the whole area and creating civilian casualties, and what have you in the surrounding area, but hitting specific targets within these particular sites themselves. We have the ability to do that. With good intelligence, you can go down and pick out pinpoint precision within a several-acre area and not affect the downtown, the civilians in the particular area, Wolf.
It should be much more accurate, trying to minimize civilian casualties.
BLITZER: And how powerful are those precision guided bombs? Those JDAMs, 5,000-pound bombs? How much of an impact could they have, because we've heard a lot about the Iraqi military going deep underground into those bunkers which are well protected.
SHEPPERD: Yes. We have 5,000-pound, 2,000-pound, 1,000-pound, 500-pound bombs, and we may even have some inert bombs that we drop on certain targets for collateral damage -- to keep the collateral damage down.
We have penetrator bombs that go deep underground, and we think that we have got the solution to get as deep as we need to. The problem you have to have is very good intelligence, not just the entrance to the bunker, but where it goes once you go through the entrance underground. When you get that intelligence, we now have the weapons that we can go get it, Wolf, and it appears we will. BLITZER: General Shepperd with some insight into the initial hours, perhaps, of a war if it, in fact, comes down to a war. General Shepperd as usual, thanks very much.
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