Kenneth R. Timmerman,
NewsMax.com
Friday, April 14, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney calls it the "Big George" scenario.
According to the man who helped plan the first air war against Saddam in 1991, U.S. aircraft, armed with conventional bunker-buster bombs, would be more than enough to wipe out Iran's nuclear and missile facilities, and cripple its ability to command and control its military forces.
McInerney believes that U.S. air power is so massive, precise, and stealthy, it can effectively disarm Iran with just limited assistance from covert operators on the ground whose task would be to light up enemy targets.
In his "Big George" scenario, the United States would attack 1,000 targets in Iran. Fifteen B2 stealth bombers based in the United States and another 45 F117s and F-22s based in the region would carry out the initial waves of the attack, crippling Iran's long-range radar and strategic air defenses.
Massive, additional waves of carrier-based F-18s, as well as F-15s and F-16s launching from ground bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Bahrain, would take out Iran's known nuclear and missile sites.
McInerney believes that U.S. air power is so massive, precise, and stealthy, it can effectively disarm Iran with just limited assistance from covert operators on the ground whose task would be to light up enemy targets.
In his "Big George" scenario, the United States would attack 1,000 targets in Iran. Fifteen B2 stealth bombers based in the United States and another 45 F117s and F-22s based in the region would carry out the initial waves of the attack, crippling Iran's long-range radar and strategic air defenses.
Massive, additional waves of carrier-based F-18s, as well as F-15s and F-16s launching from ground bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Bahrain, would take out Iran's known nuclear and missile sites.
"Big George" would also target command and control facilities – Revolutionary Guards command centers, key clerics, and other regime-sensitive sites – in the hope of triggering a revolt against the clerical regime by opposition groups inside Iran.
The massive strike scenario could be carried out in just two days, McInerney told an audience of intelligence specialists recently in Washington. "We must destroy and damage Iran's nuclear capability for at least five years," McInerney said.
If the president decided to focus solely on Iran's nuclear and missile sites, McInerney proposed a Plan B version he called "Big Rummy."
"Big Rummy" would be executed in a single night, and would concentrate on 500 "aim points."
It would require greater assistance from covert operators if the administration's goal was to provoke regime collapse, McInerney added. But in a report appearing in the New Yorker, left-wing columnist Seymour Hersh claims that President Bush is so filled with doubt over the Pentagon's conventional capabilities that he asked military planners to consider using nuclear weapons against Iran.
Hersh claimed that his sources in the defense and intelligence establishment suggested the military could use the B61-11 warhead. But Hersh's scenario, based on old technology, packs more political shock value than actual military punch.
Hersh claimed that his sources in the defense and intelligence establishment suggested the military could use the B61-11 warhead. But Hersh's scenario, based on old technology, packs more political shock value than actual military punch.
The first B61 warhead, now designated B61-1, entered the U.S. strategic stockpile in 1968, according to the Department of Energy.
A reconfigured B61, designated B61-7, was the first U.S. strategic nuclear weapon to be equipped with a "hardened ground-penetrator nose." It was introduced into the stockpile in 1985 and had a selectable yield of 10 to about 340 kilotons, according to a report by the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group.
The report can be viewed at:
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