Word: commands
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...switch in targets. In the first days of the war, bombers concentrated on blasting Iraqi nuclear facilities, chemical- and biological-weapons plants (including one factory in Baghdad that the Iraqis said manufactured baby formula but that the White House insisted was devoted to preparations for germ warfare), command-and-control centers and, in particular, the Iraqi air force. At a midweek briefing, Powell and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney counted a bit more than 40 Iraqi planes shot down or destroyed on the ground. That compares with 22 allied planes, half of them American, lost in combat, nearly...
...long ago as 1983, Schwarzkopf foresaw the possibility that the U.S. might one day find itself at war in the Middle East if an unfriendly nation succeeded in taking over a neighbor. Two years ago, as boss of the U.S. Central Command (which covers some North African countries and areas farther east), Schwarzkopf set out on his own to design a contingency plan. "He always believed that the big eruption would come in the Middle East," says his sister Sally. "He took the job at Central Command with the idea that he might well have to fight." Five days before...
Another surprise for the allied command is how well its pilots -- and equipment -- are performing at night. One concern had been the efficacy of night-vision goggles, which had been blamed for dozens of crashes over the past decade. These goggles, which are standard issue for ground forces, rely on the same light-gathering technology used in video camcorders to amplify ambient light up to 60,000 times. But pilots flying over Kuwait and Iraq had another window into the darkness. Affixed to F-16s, F-15Es and other attack aircraft is an imaging system called LANTIRN (low-altitude navigation...
...scour Iraqi territory every 12 seconds for the hot flare of a missile launch. Upon detection, an astonishing split-second relay of signals is set into motion. First, the satellite sends its data simultaneously to an Air Force ground station in Woomera, Australia, and to the U.S. Space Command's Missile Warning Center near Colorado Springs. Computers in Colorado instantly sort through the information, identify individual missiles, project target areas and flash the results by satellite back to the gulf. All this happens in time for air-raid sirens to sound four to five minutes before the missiles complete their...
None of this would work were it not for the intricate communication network that now crisscrosses the gulf. This elaborate command-and-control system enables allied generals to coordinate not only the American land, sea and air forces but also those of its coalition partners. The brains of the operation are housed in a government building in Riyadh, where an encrypted book of flight schedules and bombing targets is generated every 24 hours and is broadcast to individual commanders by satellite, microwave and secure telephone lines...