March 19, 2003 06:04
Technology will help avoid civilian casualties
By Jim Puzzanghera
WASHINGTON _ President Bush and his top military commanders have vowed to do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties in a war with Iraq. Major technological advances give U.S. forces an unparalleled ability to achieve that goal.
From cheaper and more sophisticated precision-guided weapons to new software that accurately predicts their effects, from computer simulators for pilots to practice flying through Baghdad to advanced bombs that can disable a power plant without even cracking a window, America is poised to fight far more accurately than it did the last time it faced Iraq, 12 years ago. An estimated 3,500 civilians were killed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"The United States now has the ability to minimize collateral damage to a degree greater than ever before seen in the history of warfare," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the non-partisan Lexington Institute in Virginia. Nine out of every 10 U.S. bombs and missiles sent into an area where civilians could be harmed will be high-tech "smart" weapons, compared with only about one of 10 in 1991.
Still, the 7 percent to 10 percent of smart weapons that miss their targets because of a malfunction could lead to significant civilian deaths. Faulty intelligence can also lead to tragedies, as it did in 1999, when NATO missiles destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, because it was erroneously identified as a military target.
The risk of civilian casualties would increase if fighting breaks out in densely populated Baghdad, which is a strong possibility. And compounding the problem is the potential use of "human shields" _ both volunteers from Europe and the United States, and Iraqi civilians who could be forced into the role of risking their lives by their presence at potential targets.
Pentagon officials are careful to say that even with major technological advances and tactical precautions, some innocent Iraqis will inevitably die if the United States invades.
"The truth is that war is unpredictable that people die and that it's dangerous," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a television interview last week.
Civilian casualties would be politically damaging for the United States in a war that has sharply divided public opinion at home and abroad. Military analysts also say limiting casualties is a high priority because Washington wants Iraqis to welcome the presence of U.S. forces during a postwar reconstruction.
Technological advances over the past decade offer a unique chance to limit the loss of innocent lives in Iraq.
Widespread availability of the global positioning system, for example, has helped make smart bombs less expensive than they were during the Persian Gulf War _ and more precise.
Instead of spending upward of $200,000 on each laser-guided bomb, as it did back then, the Air Force now can upgrade an old-fashioned "dumb" bomb simply by installing a Joint Direct Attack Munitions kit for $21,000.
The kit includes GPS, internal navigation system units and adjustable guidance fins that make the bomb 10 times more accurate than a bomb guided only by gravity. They shrink the circle where the bomb would hit from 200 feet wide to just 21 feet _ the diameter of a medium-sized backyard swimming pool _ according to the Pentagon.
In addition, GPS guidance is more versatile and more precise than laser guidance, said Stephen Zaloga, a military technology analyst at the Teal Group, a Virginia defense-consulting firm. While a laser-guided missile _ drawn to its target by the heat of a laser aimed by the pilot _ can be even more accurate than one using GPS, it does not work well in certain conditions. Clouds, rain or smoke can refract the laser's light, sending the weapon off target. Those conditions have no impact on GPS systems.
The Air Force and Navy bought 42,746 Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits in 2002 and plan to buy 35,153 more this year.
Despite reports that Iraq has obtained small GPS-jamming units, Pentagon officials and military analysts said they should not be a problem. Weapons using GPS also have backup systems, and jamming usually can be done only when a bomb is so close to the ground that it still is likely to hit its intended target.
Precision-guided weapons played a major role on the battlefield for the first time in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Television viewers were wowed by footage of smart bombs smashing into buildings and bridges with apparent pinpoint accuracy.
But those weapons _ new and expensive at the time _ accounted for only about 10 percent of the bombs and missiles used in the Persian Gulf War, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a radio interview last week. In the war in Afghanistan in 2001, that figure increased to between 60 and 70 percent, and would be at least as high in a second battle with Iraq, he said.
"We're going to be able to have more precision, which means we're going to be able to hit the targets better, and reduce the civilian casualties, or collateral damage," Myers said.
The percentage of smart bombs and missiles used in areas where there is risk to civilians would jump to about 90 percent, said a senior Defense Department official, who briefed reporters recently on condition of anonymity.
U.S. commanders would have a slew of other high-tech weapons to choose from to try to limit civilian casualties during an air campaign against Iraq. They could use laser-guided bombs when conditions are right. They could use cruise missiles like the Tomahawk, which fly to a target by matching a live image to a digital map stored on the missile. They could use weapons like the Standoff Land Attack Missile, which is guided by a pilot using a video image beamed from the missile itself.
And they could use weapons that don't explode at all.
So-called "non-lethal" weapons are designed to damage infrastructure, particularly electronics, without harming people or buildings.
The BLU-114/B "soft bomb," for example, rains down thousands of fine carbon filaments, which cling to high-voltage equipment like electrical transformers and short-circuit them. The U.S. first used the weapon on May 2, 1999, during NATO airstrikes against Serbia, knocking out power to more than 70 percent of the country.
Even more advanced is the so-called "e-bomb," a high-powered microwave weapon the U.S. military has been developing. It emits an electromagnetic pulse of billions of volts of electricity. Lasting only a fraction of a second, the pulse does not harm people but burns out semiconductors and other electronic circuitry.
Thompson and other military analysts said there's a good possibility the military will use the weapon for the first time if war breaks out with Iraq. Pentagon officials have declined to comment, but on Tuesday, Myers said anything in development could be used in Iraq.
To better make decisions about which weapon to use for a target located near civilians _ and where exactly to aim to minimize the chance of collateral damage _ the Pentagon's Joint Warfighting Analysis Center has developed a new software program.
Nicknamed Bugsplat for the blobs it produces on the computer screen simulating a bomb's blast effect, the classified software tries to predict how a specific weapon hitting a specific target will affect nearby structures. In addition to trying to minimize civilian casualties, U.S. forces don't want to destroy infrastructure such as power plants and bridges _ often located in populated areas _ because they would have to be rebuilt for a successful postwar Iraq.
Computers also help familiarize pilots with a complex city like Baghdad. Using detailed satellite images and high-powered workstations from Mountain View's SGI, simulators on every U.S. aircraft carrier group allow pilots to practice bombing runs in hopes of assuring they can find the right target in a maze of buildings.
Still, urban warfare presents a difficult set of obstacles for limiting civilian casualties, particularly when ground troops move in, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
"It's one thing to sit in the Pentagon and plan an airstrike with a lot of information about the target and numbers of civilians living around it. You know there's a missile site there, you've got the satellite imagery, you know a civilian apartment building is 852 feet away, and you know which way the wind is blowing," he said.
"It's quite another thing to lead a platoon into a city and take fire from an apartment building full of civilians and decide what to do."
But Malinowski said advances in technology combined with pronouncements from the Pentagon about avoiding civilian casualties give him hope about what might happen in Iraq.
"They've said the right things," Malinowski said. "We'll have to see how seriously they take these obligations once the war begins."
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