Main Objective of War – New Weapon Tests - 25 March, 2003

Reserve Major-General, Professor Vladimir Slipchenko, military analyst, doctor of military science is Russia’s first-rate specialist on wars of tomorrow. His forecasts concerning US’s military operations in Iraq (1991, 1996 and 1998), in Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001) proved to be  almost 100% true, and that was proved by the actual course of the operations. Now the analyst gives forecasts concerning further development and result of the US-led war in Iraq.

Main objective of the Iraqi war is still offscreen, nobody ever mentions it. My opinion is that main objective of the war is a large-scale testing of new high precision weapons held by the USA in Iraq. This is the top-priority objective for America, all the rest are minor objectives or undisguised misinformation in fact.

For over ten years already the USA has been waging no-contact wars. In May 2001, George W. Bush delivered his first presidential speech to students of the US Navy Academy in Annapolis and declared that drastic measures must be taken to start preparation of the US armed forces for wars of tomorrow. He emphasized at that, these should be high-tech armed forces to perform no-contact operations all over the world. Now the objective is persistently carried out.

It makes sense to mention that the Pentagon purchases from the defense establishment only weapons tested in real wars and holding quality certificates taken on battle fields. After several real experiments, the wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, many of the US defense corporations have been given the right to sell their high-precision weapons to the Pentagon. These are Martin Lockheed, General Electric and Loral. Other large companies haven’t yet got orders from the military department. The price of the issue is 50-60 billion dollars per year, everybody wants to get such sums. But today’s weapons suppliers of the Pentagon constantly develop more new weapons that must be tested. The US defense establishment demands the political leadership to provide testing grounds, wars where the new weapons can be tested. And they do get such grounds. This is the main reason why the war has been started in Iraq, not because of US’s desire to get control over Iraqi oil.

This war will differ from the US’s previously held no-contact wars for its political purposes first of all. It is for the first time since 1991 that the USA makes sets itself an objective to change the political regime in an inimical country, to remove or liquidate leadership of the country. Objectives of this kind haven’t been yet attained.

Remember, the USA never attempted to remove Saddam out of politics; those were not war methods used for overthrowing Slobodan Milosevic. The US armed forces held tests of new weapons, then took the weapons and went home. Now they are facing a very hard objective.

So, if the objective is different, the war strategy changes as well. It is for the first time declared that a war must result in US’s absolute victory. Three problems must be settled for this purpose: to smash inimical armed forces, to destroy economy of the country and change its political regime.

I have no doubt that Iraq’s army will suffer the strongest blows. The USA will have to completely occupy the Iraqi territories to bring a new puppet government into the country (and it is highly likely that this government has been already formed) and to give this new government an opportunity to work. Occupation on the territory where resistance may still be very strong will entail lots of casualties among the US army. Certainly Americans don’t need partisans, that is why the whole of the Iraqi army will be liquidated; it is going to be a terrible slaughter.
 
Now it’s being actively discussed whether Iraq has at least a chance to put up resistance to the USA. I say there are none. In Iraq we’ll once again see the situation when two generations of wars meet.

Iraq is strong to fight a war of the previous generation, the war held on ground and for every object on ground. But 600.000 Iraqi soldiers and all the weapons and ammunition they have won’t be enough for meeting the aggressor.

In fact, there will be no meeting as such on the battle field. Fighting their no-contact wars, Americans will send high-precision missiles to destroy all central objects of the Iraqi governmental and military infrastructure; then they will start bombing raids to liquidate the Iraqi army.

My opinion is that Americans will start the operation with high-precision strikes against bunkers and command posts where Saddam and other Iraqi leaders may be taking shelter, against army headquarters and dispositions of troops. High-precision ammunition of a vacuum type will be used to hit subsurface objects. Even if such ammunition blows up not exactly inside a bunker, it will all the same block all ways for escape from it.

Within the first days of the war Americans will use cluster aircraft bombs with self-guided elements. At a high altitude this “mother” bomb releases tens and even hundreds of smaller bombs, each of them picks out a target on the surface.

I am sure that the USA will use new impulse bombs as soon as the war begins. Such bombs operate the following way: they eject electromagnetic radiation of about 2 megawatt in an instant. At a distance of 2 – 2.5 kilometers from the epicenter of the place where such a bomb blows up, it disables all electronic systems, communication systems, radars, computers, radio sets, hearing aids and even cardiostimulators. They are destroyed by melting. Thus, this weapon will destroy Iraq’s systems of management over the country and the troops practically in a moment.

As this war will be experimental for the USA, Iraq will become a testing ground for tests of  new high-precision cruise missiles with a view to further obtain certificates of quality for the weapons. I think that first of all special attention will be focused on launching missiles from submarines.

The Pentagon will keep on developing mechanism of pointing of high-precision weapons. In 2000, the USA used an Endeavor space shuttle to scan up to 80% of the Earth surface and created an electronic 3-D map. This map allows to direct cruise missiles from a military satellite at a window in Saddam’s palace.

Vladimir Slipchenko forecasts that the war will last for not more than 1.5 months. The first period of the war will last for about 30 days. 400-500 high-precision cruise missiles will be launched from marine and air bases against Iraqi objects every day. Within this month Iraq’s troops and economic potential will be liquidated. And if anything remains intact after these attacks, these objects will be all the same destroyed within the next two weeks.

Americans will organize a large-scale cleansing of the territory from B-52 and B-2 Stealth bombers. One Stealth bomber can detect and liquidate up to 200 surface immovable and moving targets within four hours of flights. The USA is going to use not less than 16 B-2 bombers. Iraq’s air defense won’t be able to somehow oppose attacks of US planes and cruise missiles. Already now Iraq has no air defense facilities in the south and in the north, US aviation is bombing the areas perpetually.

Iraq’s anti-aircarft defense system is based on the classical radar location scheme: radiate-detect-illuminate from beneath-liquidate. Americans will use this fact to pursue their own interests. As soon as an Iraqi radar ejects electromagnetic energy, a high-precision cruise missile will be immediately launched against this object.

According to my estimates, the USA will spend not less than 80 billion dollars on the Iraqi campaign. But total spending may also rise up to 100 billions. The exact sum of spending on the war won’t be published simply because partially the war is financed by private companies that provide the Pentagon with experimental samples of their weapons for free for further tests in the war. The program meant for modernization of the US armed forces costs about 600 billion dollars. That is why the US defense establishment can afford now to give weapons to the army for free.

Iraq will suffer tremendous losses. As Americans are going in fact to liquidate the Iraqi army, I think that losses may be not less than 500.000 people. This is going to be a bloody war.

Alexander Grigoryev
FreeLance Bureau