WASHINGTON, April 5: U.S. attack jets, air controllers and unmanned spy planes went on 24-hour alert over Baghdad on Saturday to support American troops in what could become bloody urban combat, the commander of the air war against Iraq said.
Air Force Lt Gen Michael “Buzz” Moseley told Pentagon reporters from his headquarters in Saudi Arabia that dozens of fighters and bombers were stacked up over Baghdad as U.S.-led ground forces virtually ringed the capital.
“Today, we began to work a concept of operations for urban CAS (combat air support),” he told reporters. “We will get through this. We will continue to kill those guys until they give up.”
“The trick, if you have to do this, is to use the smallest weapon possible to get the maximum effect, so that you don’t create unnecessary loss of civilian life or property,” Moseley said as some U.S. troops were reported moving into the city in probing actions.
GEN Moseley said the air weapons available even included 227-kg laser-guided bombs without explosive warheads that could destroy rooms within houses by sheer impact without causing damage to nearby buildings or killing innocent civilians.
The air support plan, he said, included “forward airborne controllers over the city 24 hours a day and multiple sets of fighters with multiple munitions options.”
“We are very, very sensitive to not creating a mess inside the city,” Moseley told reporters, adding that the air power available included virtually every type of aircraft, from big bombers to F-15, F-16 and F-18 fighters jets along with armed drones.
He cautioned that Baghdad’s vaunted air defenses had been badly degraded but not obliterated.
Illustrating the dominance of Western air power, Moseley told reporters that one unmanned “Predator” spy drone had flown over Baghdad for 12 straight hours on Friday night without being shot down.
He said high-flying unmanned “Global Hawk” and manned U-2 spy planes were also operating over the capital.
Discussing previously undisclosed details of the air operation, in which more than 13,000 bombs and 750 cruise missiles have been used against Iraq, Moseley said U.S. B-2 stealth bombers had at one point flown nonstop from their base in Missouri, and each dropped 80 500-pound bombs on Iraqi troops before returning home.
“The preponderance of the Republican Guard divisions outside of Baghdad are now dead,” he said. “I find it interesting when folks say we’re softening them up. We’re not softening them up, we’re killing them.”
“It’s either we kill them or they give up. There’s no way out for these guys,” Moseley added.—Reuters