Global Policy Forum

By Steven Lee Myers

Incirlik, Turkey -- American fighter jets patrolling northern Iraq have an innovative new weapon to use against President Saddam Hussein: concrete.

Wary of killing civilians when F-15's and F-16's strike inside Iraq, the Air Force has begun filling 2,000-pound, laser-guided bombs with concrete instead of explosives and dropping them on sensitive military targets near populated areas, American military officials here said. A concrete bomb, the use of which has not previously been disclosed, can still destroy a target, but it does not have what military officials call "the explosive arc" of regular munitions. And so its use minimizes the risk that explosive bomb fragments will kill or wound innocent Iraqis who might be nearby.

"It can stub your toe," Lieut. Col. Michael S. Waters, a spokesman for the American operation here in this base near the Mediterranean, said of the concrete. "But there's no chance of collateral damage," he added, using the military's euphemism for civilian deaths. That makes it useful against military targets Iraq has positioned in residential neighborhoods in what American officials believe is Hussein's main objective in stepping up skirmishing over the "no flight" zones over northern and southern Iraq: to foment international sympathy by publicizing civilian casualties.

The concrete bombs are also an apt symbol of a low-level war against Iraq that is dictated as much by political and diplomatic sensitivities as by any strategic or military concerns. In what has become the longest sustained military operation since Vietnam, for more than nine months now Iraqi forces have routinely fired on the American and British jets that patrol the no-flight zones, and the American and British crews have routinely struck back in what they say is self-defense. But it is a deliberately low-key war.

"The way we're conducting this is kept within the parameters of political acceptability," said a senior Clinton Administration official in Washington. "We don't want things to go wrong." And so pilots here at Incirlik (pronounced in-JER-lick) fly into combat with strict rules about what, when, where and how they may attack.

The Turkish Government, wary of public sentiment about repeated air strikes against a neighboring country, limits the number of days the jets can fly and prohibits operations at night. The United States European Command, which oversees operations here, has put northern Iraq's most significant military targets off limits, fearing international outrage over what could be seen as an escalation of the fighting.

Above all, the pilots must avoid mistakes that could play into Hussein's hand. "It's between none and minimal collateral damage that we'll accept," said Maj. Hugh Hanlon, an F-16CJ pilot with the 55th Fighter Squadron at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, who is stationed here.

The result is something of a standoff. The American and British forces have struck more than five times the number of targets attacked during four days of intensive air and missile strikes against Iraq last December and flown more than three-quarters as many combat missions as NATO pilots did during 78 days of bombing Yugoslavia.

The Iraqis say nearly 200 people, including many civilians, have been killed in the air strikes this year. American officials say that claim is exaggerated but they acknowledge that the strikes have killed some. American military commanders say the air strikes have inflicted severe damage to Iraq's air defenses in the north. But they have not yet hit Iraqi forces hard enough to persuade the Government to stop challenging the patrols in the no-flight zones.

Commanders here and at the Pentagon say the strikes will end as soon as Iraq stops firing on the patrols, even though they acknowledge that Iraq has the ability to continue resisting at the current level for the foreseeable future. "It's reached a stalemate," said Group Capt. Graham P. Dixon, commander of the 200 British troops and six aircraft involved in the operations at Incirlik. "I'm not sure there can be a way around this as long as Saddam Hussein is in power. I personally see this as a long-term proposition, not a short-term one."

The United States and its allies created the no-flight zones after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to protect Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from repression by Iraqi forces. Officials in Washington say the zones remain an important part of the Clinton Administration's broad effort to isolate Hussein. Iraq never accepted the validity of the zones, but American and allied jets patrolled them largely unmolested for more than seven years. Then last December, the United States and Britain carried out four days of attacks to punish Hussein for refusing to allow the United Nations to continue inspections of his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.

Iraq then declared the zones a violation of its sovereignty, and its forces began challenging virtually every patrol, firing antiaircraft weapons, launching surface-to-air missiles and sending MIG jets darting into the zones. While American officials decline to discuss their tactics in depth, including how or how long they have been using the concrete bombs, they do offer a stunning list of statistics.

Since December, they say, American and British patrols have flown nearly 16,000 sorties and dropped 550 bombs against 135 targets in southern Iraq. Here at Incirlik, they have flown more than 11,000 combat or combat-support sorties and dropped more than 1,100 bombs against more than 250 targets, including new strikes today. Those targets have included more than 150 antiaircraft artillery batteries, 30 radar or communication centers and 22 buildings used as command centers, said Brig. Gen. David A. Deptula, the Air Force commander here until last week.

As in Yugoslavia, the air war has been decidedly one-sided. Iraqi forces have yet to hit an American or British aircraft, American officials said. According to American intelligence reports, Iraq has withdrawn its most sophisticated weapons, like Soviet-era surface-to-air-missiles, from the no-flight zones in recent months to protect them. But that has not stopped Iraq from firing back with antiaircraft artillery. That still poses a threat, though much less of one since, the pilots and commanders say, the jets flying into northern Iraq stay above 20,000 feet -- high enough that they are less likely to be hit.

Iraq has also positioned its remaining antiaircraft batteries in residential neighborhoods in or near the northern Iraqi cities like Mosul and Tall'Afar. General Deptula said that after American jets destroyed Iraq's main air-defense command center south of Mosul, the Iraqis recently moved their headquarters to the nearby historic ruins of Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria built in the seventh century B.C. While the general declined to discuss future targets, presumably that one would be off limits.

An American Government official with access to the intelligence reports said Iraq's tactics had significantly diminished its chances of hitting an aircraft, but were still accomplishing Hussein's goal of drawing attention to the patrols. "He's trying to provoke us to do something, but he's trying to do in such a way he doesn't lose assets," the official said. "The ultimate intention of what Saddam Hussein is trying to do in the 'no fly' zones is not military."

The tactics on both sides -- including the concrete bombs -- have turned the conflict into an odd game of cat-and-mouse. The United States has about 50 aircraft involved in the operation, from fighter jets to combat support. When they fly, they take off in one long, loud procession, accompanied by an Awacs communication plane, an RC-135 reconnaissance jet and KC-135 aerial refueling tankers, as well as British tankers and Jaguars that photograph potential targets.

Once they reach the border, about an hour away, only the fighter jets enter Iraq. The others fly over the khaki-colored mountains of eastern Turkey out of harm's way. On today's mission pilots reported seeing 57-millimeter antiaircraft fire, bursting in distinctive gray puffs 15,000 to 18,000 feet up, well beneath the jets. An hour later they spotted the bursts again.

Pilots and commanders here say they try to respond. But from more than 20,000 feet, it is often impossible to see an artillery battery -- no larger than a truck and often hiding in orchards or towns -- and in those cases they attack other targets. "We couldn't exactly identify where the threat was," an F-15 pilot said of today's skirmish, speaking on the condition that he only be identified by his rank and nickname, Lieutenant Colonel V.Q.

Under their rules of engagement agreed on by the United States, Britain and Turkey, the pilots most often strike at parts of Iraq's air defenses, including radio towers, radar stations and command centers that, according to the Pentagon, coordinate the Iraqi attacks. Instead, today the F-16C's and the F-15's attacked separate targets at a communications center that they had decided to attack in advance if threatened. France and Russia have criticized the strikes, and there are signs the strategy hampers United Nations Security Council negotiations over creating a new weapons inspection program in Iraq. A senior defense official said the Russians had tried to condition their support of new inspections on an end to the strikes.

"Our mission has not changed," General Deptula said. "The only thing that has changed is the threat, and we are employing ordinance to respond to that threat. But the larger question of the efficacy of the no-flight zones is a political one."