Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 1, 1991 TAG: 9102010696
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
He has many more guns than the United States, longer ranges and battle-tested gunners, although the Americans have other advantages - "smart" munitions, more sophisticated guidance and control systems, battlefield flexibility and air support.
Artillery battles were the mainstay of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, and the Iraqis invested millions of their petrodollars in trying to buy the best guns available. The result is a varied, cosmopolitan inventory: Soviet, Chinese, Austrian, Italian, Brazilian, South African, and even American.
Iraq was always on the lookout for better and longer. With the help of a Canadian-born engineer named Gerald Bull, it started building a "supergun" that would fire rocket-boosted artillery to great distances. The project was derailed when Bull was assassinated last March in Brussels by an unknown gunman, and British customs authorities seized and confiscated components for the weapon.
Iraq's artillery prowess in the current war got its first test this week when Iraqi troops captured the Saudi border town of Khafji and forced the allied defenders to retreat under heavy artillery barrages.
The campaign to retake Khafji eventually succeeded, but it met fierce resistance from Iraqi mortars and small artillery fire. U.S. Marines fired back with 155mm cannons.
The Iraqis also fired anti-aircraft artillery at allied planes trying to dislodge them with bombing runs.
Until the Iraqis ventured across the border, U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia had tried to stay out of range of Iraq's guns, the longest of which has a range of up to 39 kilometers (24.4 miles). The longest-range U.S. cannon can fire at targets 29 kilometers (18.1 miles) away.
Numbers-wise, the United States is also outclassed - about 4-1 - by Iraq's estimated 4,000 artillery pieces. These figures don't include hundreds of mortars on both sides. Mortars are less accurate but their trajectory is high and they can reach targets behind hills, for example.
Iraq has another advantage - considered more psychological than tactical - in its willingness to use chemical artillery shells. U.N. investigating teams found that Iraq used artillery shells filled with mustard and nerve gas against the Iranians several times between 1983 and 1988.
U.S. analysts say that Iraqi tactics that proved successful against Iran will not work against the allies.
The Iraqis followed classic Soviet doctrine.
They would pound away at Iranian targets for 10 or 12 hours at a time, disorienting and killing the enemy, said Jon Clemens, managing editor of Armor Magazine.
The Iraqis would also map a "kill zone" clearly and set their guns toward locations in that area. They would then pretend to retreat, lure the enemy into the "kill zone" and pound them with artillery, Clemens said.
"But their ability to attack in a mobile or fluid situation was very weak," said Jeff Shaffer, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
U.S. troops, who will be on the move constantly if a ground war erupts, will prove a difficult target, he predicted.
The United States also has the advantage of "fire-finder" radars to pinpoint sources of incoming fire. Iraq's Soviet-made fire-finders aren't as good, which limits Iraq's ability to take out opposing artillery, Shaffer said.
In addition, Iraq doesn't have the air superiority - which the United States commands over Kuwait - required for reconnaissance flights that can tell gunners where to direct their fire.
U.S. fire is also more accurate because of a tiny hand-held radar, known as a Global Positioning System. It communicates with a satellite system and can tell units where they are on the battlefield, Shaffer said. This is vitally important in the desert, where maps are of little use in determining one's position because of the constantly shifting sands that change the face of the terrain.
Iraq's artillery is less mobile than the Americans' - most of their units have to be towed by trucks - and thus a better target for allied helicopter gunships. The gunships, however, are vulnerable to anti-aircraft artillery, said Ralph Cossa, a senior fellow at the Pentagon's National Defense University.
The United States also has laser- and computer-guided artillery munitions, he said. Iraq doesn't.
by CNB