U.S. Forces Rely On New Favorite Bomb

Just like the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the latest conflict with Iraq began with strikes from Tomahawk cruise missiles.

But Pentagon officials say the Tomahawks probably will be eclipsed by a new favorite bomb made to fit the wish list of the Gulf War's commanders: cheap, plentiful, accurate and impervious to clouds, dust and smoke.

The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), extensively used during the war in Afghanistan, probably will make up the bulk of the thousands of bombs expected to rain on Iraq.

The Thursday strike included four 2,000-pound JDAM bombs dropped in pairs from F-117A Nighthawk stealth attack jets.

The targets were a small compound where Saddam Hussein and other top Iraqi leaders were believed to be at the time of the strike. Saddam appeared on Iraqi television after the attack, reading a vituperative condemnation of the assault.

Though its technology is 25 years old, the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter is still one of the most advanced planes in the world and is expected to play a large role in the war against Iraq.

All sharp angles and radar-absorbing skin, its specialty is flying low into heavily protected areas to drop its 2,000-pound precision bombs on bunkers and command posts, clearing the way for less stealthy fighters, helicopters and troops.

Once it finishes its initial task, the Nighthawk will likely make way for heavier hitters, including B-52s and the batwing-shaped B-2 bomber, which has more advanced stealth technology and is capable of attacking eight times as many targets on each mission.

The Nighthawk flew the most dangerous missions of the 1991 Gulf War, penetrating into the heart of Baghdad in the opening days of the conflict. The Nighthawk flew more than 1,000 missions in 1991 Gulf War, and not a single one was shot down. It flew more than a third of bombing runs on the first day of war, though only accounted for 2.5 percent of the total 1,900 aircraft.

The Tomahawk is still a technological wonder, able to fly at just under the speed of sound, hugging the ground to deliver a 1,000-pound warhead onto a preprogrammed target. U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea launched more than 40 Tomahawks in the opening strike on Iraq, from pairs of destroyers, cruisers and submarines.

But the United States doesn't have as many Tomahawks as it does bombs, and the missiles have drawbacks that the JDAMs don't.

Before the war started, former Army officer Andrew Krepinevich (who currently is a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) said, "They may still use Tomahawks, but I don't think you'll see the enormous expenditure like with Desert Storm."

Part of the reason is that Tomahawks, at about $600,000 each, are about 28 times as expensive as one JDAM bomb — which can deliver the same amount or twice the explosives. The JDAM, a tail kit that converts a 1,000- or 2,000-pound "dumb" bomb to a satellite-guided "smart" weapon, costs about $21,000.

The United States probably has more than 10,000 JDAMs on hand, versus somewhere around 1,000 Tomahawks on Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf. Tomahawks are built by Raytheon Co. in Tucson, Ariz., while JDAMs are assembled by Boeing in St. Charles, Mo.

Since both are guided by global positioning satellites, the two have roughly the same accuracy, though the Tomahawk may have the edge.

During the Gulf War, fewer than 10 percent of the bombs and missiles used were guided by lasers, video cameras or satellites. During the war in Afghanistan, more than 70 percent of the munitions have been precision guided, the majority of those being JDAMs.

Pentagon officials say they expect 70 percent to 80 percent or more of the weapons dropped on Iraq to be precision-guided.

Among other things, that could reduce the number of civilian casualties below the estimated 3,000 killed during the Gulf War, a Central Command official told reporters this month.

Because JDAMs are guided by satellite signals, they can hit targets obscured by clouds, dust or smoke, unlike the laser-guided bombs which were the main precision weapons in 1991. They allow U.S. planes to hit more targets with fewer weapons than ever before.

The latest versions of Tomahawks also are guided by satellites. They are most useful against fixed targets like buildings or bunkers, since most Tomahawks — but not all — cannot be reprogrammed while they are in flight. Since JDAMs are dropped by airplanes only a few miles away from their targets, they can be used to hit moving or newly discovered targets.

Iraq has reportedly attempted to get devices to try to jam the satellite signals that guide JDAMs and Tomahawks to their targets. The United States can overcome such countermeasures, however, said Maj. Gen. Franklin Blaisdell, director of space operations for the Air Force.

"Any enemy that would depend on GPS jammers for their livelihood is in grave trouble," Blaisdell said.

Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf, ordnance crews in protective headgear and red life-vests wheeled 500-, 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs along the flight deck Thursday and fitted them under the wings of F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets. The bombs, equipped with laser guidance systems, were marked with yellow stripes on their noses to indicate they were live munitions.

As for the people who stand to be on the receiving end of a Western military operation, the Iraqis are being bombarded with radio broadcasts and leaflets urging them to support Saddam's ouster. U.S. operatives are even sending e-mails and making phone calls to Iraqi commanders.

The Americans and their allies dropped 28 million leaflets on Iraq during the 1991 war. For the sequel, 80 million already have been dropped.

The targets of that information undoubtedly are being blitzed with other news, from the global debate on the validity of a war to Saddam's own propaganda. Iraqi officers are conceivably finding their e-mail accounts clogged with war-related spam.

Military psychological operations come in two basic forms: Influencing behavior, or compliance, and changing attitudes, known as conversion.

"It's much easier to make people comply," said Scott Gerwehr, an analyst at the Rand Corp. "As you're dropping bombs, you're dropping leaflets telling people to surrender and avoid this stuff. You're literally saying 'Take one of these and survive.' That's compliance."