A war with Iraq would begin with a series of cruise missile and precision-guided bomb strikes across the country that would strive to, as one Pentagon official put it, leave Iraqi troops with "bleeding eardrums and mouthfuls of sand", allowing US troops to surround Saddam Hussein's strongholds of Baghdad and Tikrit within days.
The first salvo of up to 3000 bombs and missiles would aim at neutralising the heavy air defences in central Iraq.
Once air supremacy was established, US ground forces would move to seize the country. The quick strike, which military officials call "shock and awe", is unprecedented in US history, especially compared with the first Gulf War, which began in 1991 with five weeks of continuous bombing.
"This is going to be quantum times more accurate and quantum times more lethal in the first 24 hours of this war than it was in Desert Storm," said retired admiral William Owens, former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "This will be something like the world has not seen before, and for the Iraqis, this likely will be something more than they expected."
The first strikes probably would come at night and include B-2 stealth bombers and F-117 stealth fighters. They would bomb heavily defended targets, including the "missile engagement zones" of the anti-aircraft weapons surrounding Baghdad and Tikrit.
Those weapons, and the new generation cruise missiles, would receive in-flight adjustments from satellites. Others would be guided by Special Operations Forces who have been in Iraq for months, identifying military targets.
These first strikes would be intended to cripple the Iraqi regime by severing communications or killing Mr Saddam and his top commanders.
The purpose behind "shock and awe" is to convince the Iraqi military that opposition would be futile. Recent intelligence reports that suggest the elite Iraqi Republican Guard units may have been supplied with chemical weapons reinforce the military's aim for a quick victory that would leave Iraqi commanders unable to use the weapons.
Close behind, tens of thousands of US troops would roll across the Iraq-Kuwaiti border, towards Baghdad.
Yesterday, US planes dropped 240,000 leaflets telling Iraqi troops that if they do not resist they will not be targeted. Any troops that lay down their weapons would be sent to temporary holding camps.
As the main ground thrust heads to Baghdad, US Marines would lead a second push with British forces into the southern city of Basra, backed by US Navy destroyers off-shore. As light infantry opens a northern front, C-17 cargo planes would land in Kurdish-controlled territory on airstrips that only months ago were in disrepair.
If Turkey continued to refuse to allow US aircraft to fly across its airspace, Navy fighters and bombers taking off from Mediterranean-based carriers would be likely to fly over Egypt and Jordan to reach their targets, according to officials.
Iraq's million-strong fighting force, once the fourth-biggest in the world, has withered to a mainly rag-tag outfit half that size. With Iraq having no real air force or navy left to speak of, the US attention is on the army, estimated at around 400,000 strong, with 2000 tanks and 3700 other armoured vehicles. While up to three-quarters of the Iraqi army is believed to be in no state to fight, the remaining 100,000 members of the Republican Guards and the elite Special Republic Guards pose a credible defence.
- Boston Globe, AFP