Thanks largely to the big Reagan defense budgets, the Army has rebuilt itself over the past dozen years, assimilating a new generation of weapons. The Abrams tank, the M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, and the Apache AH-64 helicopter will be the mainstays of any American-led assault on Kuwait–but they have experienced technical glitches in the past, and their delicate laser targeting systems are all but untested in combat.
The main American battle tank is the M-1A1 Abrams tank. The 55-ton, $4.4 million machine, which has a 120-mm gun and full nuclear-, chemical- and biological-warfare protection for the crew, embodies a trade-off between performance and reliability. “It’s fine to say that the M-1A1 is the high-tech tank of all time,” Col. Andrew Duncan of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London argues. “But it will prove less mobile than its inferior colleagues because it will prove less mobile than its inferior colleagues because it will run out of fuel sooner.” The Pentagon claims earlier problems with the tank–including its fragile transmission and its need for “essential maintenance” every 45 miles–have been ironed out. But its powerful turbine sucks in vast volumes of air; it is unclear how its three giant air filters will handle desert dust.
Nevertheless, Western experts give both the M-1A1 and the British Challenger an edge over the Iraqis’ Soviet-made T-72s. The T-72’s 125-mm gun is bigger than the M-1A1’s, but the American tanks have twice the range of the Soviet tanks, two miles. The ammunition the Iraqis will be carrying is unlikely to penetrate the frontal armor of the M-1A1, whereas the depleted uranium bolt fired by the M-1A1 will penetrate the Iraqi armor–though some Iraqi T-72s have been fitted with a nigh-fighting capability, and some of their ancient T-55 Soviet tanks have been given tougher armor and larger guns.
The U.S. Army’s $11.7 million Apache can range 300 miles from base at a cruise speed of just over 150 mph. It can fly and fight at night, in all but the worst weather. Its two-man crew is literally encased in high-tech sensors. In the Apache’s nose is the pilot’s night-vision system, with a FLIR (forware looking infrared) screen and a TADS (target acquisition and designation sight). This sensitive gear–never tried in the heat and dust of a desert–feeds data to the crew’s helmets, where the information is displayed on a screen inside their visors. But the Apache is plagued by maintenance hang-ups, including a chronic problem with desert sand chewing at its rotor blades. That problem has been patched up–literally–by sticking tape over the blades.
The Apache fires the laser-guided Hellfire missile. The laser beam that illuminates the target does not have to be the Apache’s own; it can be a beam from another helicopter, a tank, an infantryman, even a passing aircraft. The Hellfire locks onto the laser beam whatever its origin. This means an Apache crew can fire Hellfires from over the horizon, without having to see the targets. The Apache can fire a salvo of up to 16 of the missiles– accurately, as long as dust or smoke from burning oil or “killed” tanks on the battlefield don’t confound the lasers. For their part, the Iraqis have some 40 Soviet Mi-24 attack choppers and about 60 French Gazelles–both outfitted with tank-killing missiles which proved effective in the Iran-Iraq War.
The Iraqis have the edge. They have an estimated 100 South African G-5 155-mm howitzers, which can fire conventional or chemical shells more than 31 miles. These big guns outrange the United States’ biggest artillery pieces. The United States will try to compensate with counterbattery radars that spot enemy artillery the minute it is fired, then guide return fire. That fire will largely come from the Army’s new multiple-rocket launcher (MLRS), which can fire a salvo of 12 targeted rockets, and the Copperhead, a laser-guided tankbusting shell. But Marine units that will have to use the Copperhead say they’ve had little chance to practice live-firing it, because it costs $50,000 a shell. This is a common problem with high-tech ground weapons; many U.S. troops can only train on them suing computer simulators.
The allies are banking on a great advantage in electronic battlefield reconnaissance. U.S. commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf may have more ways to pierce the “fog of war” than any commander in history. The Guardrail plane can intercept and precisely locate Iraqi radio signals. The Quick Fix helicopter, a modified Cobra, can jam enemy communications. Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) works like a giant cellular-phone system linking more than 10,000 radios, with close to 2,000 of them on the move at any time. Schwarzkopf will also have a brand-new Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aboard a converted Boeing 707. JSTARS tracks tanks behind enemy lines and can direct air or land strikes against the targets.
Iraq’s great equalizers are low tech: trenches, minefields and tank ditches. Allied combat engineers will counter these tactics with pipe bombs that can blow apart a barbed-wire coil, and the rocket-propelled Giant Viper, a long hose filled with explosives that detonates mines as it flies across a minefield. But for all the technology being deployed on both sides, the battle may hinge on the ability of allied commanders–more professional than the Iraqis, but less tested in combat–to think their way around obstacles. Says Henry Dodds, the editor of Jane’s Intelligence Review, “In the end, its going to come down to the quality of men.”
