Bush Vow: Wipe Out Missiles : U.S. Ground Forces Move Up to Striking Positions : Gulf war: Pentagon reveals that only about 10 Iraqi warplanes were destroyed or damaged. Remainder may be hidden in bunkers.

By KIM MURPHY and DAVID LAUTER

Jan. 19, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia — American and allied warplanes shrieked across the desert today, pounding Iraqis at more than a sortie a minute, and President Bush vowed to find and destroy mobile Scud missiles terrorizing Israel from hiding places in the sand.

Sounding somber, the commander of U.S. forces warned that driving Iraq out of Kuwait will be “a long, hard task.”

On the ground, U.S. forces moved into potential striking positions in northern Saudi Arabia. The deployment put them in place for an immediate assault as soon as allied commanders decide that Iraqi resistance has been softened sufficiently by the air strikes. But it appeared this would take awhile.

In Washington, Pentagon officials revealed that Iraqi air power has not, in fact, been crippled by the first two days of allied bombing. They said only about 10 Iraqi planes had been destroyed or damaged--and that the remainder of the 700-plane Iraqi air force had dispersed or might be lurking in concrete bunkers.

Moreover, about 30 mobile Scud missile launchers survived the initial air attacks. It was those launchers, secreted in the desert, that Iraq used early Friday to strike Tel Aviv, Haifa and other parts of Israel. Two air raid scares frightened Israelis late Friday and during the early morning hours today, but no more missiles fell.

Israel, for its part, did not mount any immediate retaliation--but kept the option open. The United States fears that Israeli involvement in the war could prompt defection by Arab members of the allied coalition against Iraq.

At a news conference at the White House, Bush praised the Israeli restraint and pledged “the darndest search and destroy mission that’s ever been undertaken” to wipe out all of the Iraqi Scuds. He noted allied casualties in the air war--eight planes, four of them American.

“We must be realistic,” Bush cautioned. “There will be losses . . . . War is never cheap or easy.”

In Baghdad, Iraq’s Defense Ministry newspaper said President Saddam Hussein has decided on “a long-term war that will bleed the Americans and their allies.” Information Minister Latif Jasim told the Reuters news agency that a number of American and British pilots had been captured.

He did not say how many. But the Cable News Network said that Jasim told its correspondent that the American pilots would be put on display for reporters.

Lt. Gen. Tom Kelly told reporters at the Pentagon, however, that “we know of no American prisoners of war.” Among crew members of the four U.S. jets lost in action, Kelly said, seven are missing.

“They all went down behind enemy lines,” Kelly said.

In addition to the four U.S. aircraft shot down, the Kuwaitis lost one jet, the British two and the Italians one. Most of crew members were listed as missing, though U.S. and Saudi officials say they believe the pilot of the Kuwaiti jet, a highly popular former member of the Kuwaiti resistance, is safe in Kuwait with the resistance.

In Dhahran, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, head of the U.S. Central Command in Saudi Arabia, told reporters that attack planes had found and destroyed six of the 30 mobile Scud launchers the President had vowed to put out of commission. Additional Scud launchers have been discovered, Schwarzkopf said.

“We are continuing to attack the others--and I assure you we will attack them relentlessly, until either we are prevented from attacking them any further by weather or we have destroyed them all,” the general said.

He said ferreting out the mobile Scuds was “like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

At least three of the launchers destroyed by American forces were loaded with missiles and were “obviously aimed at Saudi Arabia,” Schwarzkopf said.

U.S. commanders also conceded that some of Iraqi air defenses encountered by allied pilots are “as tough or tougher than anything they’ve ever seen.”

“We are only 36 hours into what is a campaign,” Schwarzkopf cautioned.

“The President of the United States said this is not Panama--it will not be over in a day. It certainly won’t. We are just continuing our campaign, and the campaign will continue until we have accomplished our objectives.”

Taking off from aircraft carriers and bases all over the Persian Gulf, attack planes from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Kuwait were flying about 2,000 missions a day--more than 1.39 flights each minute.

Film from Baghdad has depicted a formidable array of firepower over the Iraqi capital in what Gen. Charles Horner, head of the Central Command air forces in the gulf and architect of the present air assault, said was becoming “a technology war.”

High-tech, radar-evading F-117 Stealth fighters and F-111s have led the bombing assault on Baghdad, their laser-guided missiles enabling allied forces to pinpoint critical military facilities, including Baghdad’s air defense headquarters and a Scud missile storage facility, without heavy damage to civilian areas nearby.

Schwarzkopf said allied forces have limited strikes to military targets all over Iraq and Kuwait and have attempted to limit civilian casualties.

In dramatic film footage taken from the bellies of American planes during their bombing runs, U.S. laser-guided “smart bombs” can be seen dropping into the door of a missile storage bunker and neatly into the center of the roof of the Iraqi air force headquarters in Baghdad.

“We’re doing absolutely everything we possibly can in this campaign to avoid injuring or hurting or destroying innocent people,” Schwarzkopf declared. “We have said all along this is not a war against the Iraqi people.”

In his interview with Reuters, however, Iraqi Information Minister Jasim said that the allied bombs have killed numerous civilians, mostly elderly people and children. He did not say how many. “It is a shame on the new world order which Bush has called for,” he said.

The Iraqi News Agency said Thursday that 23 people had been killed and 66 were injured.

The report that allies have destroyed or damaged only about 10 of Iraq’s estimated 700 warplanes came from Gen. Kelly at the Pentagon. He said that allied military officials had confirmed the destruction of eight Iraqi aircraft in aerial combat--”with a couple of other airplanes suspected damaged, probably on the ground.”

He said the rest of Iraq’s air force is spread through 25 heavily protected bases.

Gen. Horner, the U.S. Air Force commander in Saudi Arabia, told reporters in Dhahran that “a lot of their aircraft are in hardened shelters. We attack the shelters, but we really don’t know the results.”

Schwarzkopf said U.S. pilots returning from missions into Iraq have reported that most Iraqi pilots appear reluctant to engage U.S. aircraft in air-to-air combat. Most flee to the north once the attacking American warplanes lock onto them with their target-acquisition radar, Schwarzkopf said.

A Navy A-7 pilot returning to the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy in the Red Sea said pilots were amazed that they had encountered so little resistance from Iraqi pilots.

“They acted as if they were overwhelmed by the numbers of aircraft coming toward them and they couldn’t quite make up their minds which strike group to go after,” the American flier, Cmdr. John Leenhouts, told combat pool reporters aboard the carrier.

Kelly said the Republican Guard--Iraq’s elite ground troops--had been struck again and again. “And they will continue to be struck,” he said. He gave no estimate of Iraqi casualties.

But U.S. commanders said American naval forces had sunk or disabled three Iraqi patrol boats--and Schwarzkopf reported that increasing numbers of allied amphibious ships were moving into the Persian Gulf, presumably to allow for a beachfront assault in Kuwait when ground forces move in following the air bombardment.

Military officials said two U.S. Marines were slightly injured near the largely abandoned Saudi border city of Khafji when Iraqi troops lobbed short-range multiple-rocket-launcher fire across the border, setting an oil storage tank afire.

Four other Marines were injured, one seriously, by flying shrapnel after they came under fire Thursday by Iraqi artillery near Khafji, Marine Corps Col. Ron Richard told reporters.

Richard said that the Khafji area had been hit by several Iraqi Scud missiles--but damage was not severe.

Iraq launched another Scud toward Saudi Arabia on Friday morning, but it was not known yet whether it had hit, Richard said. The missile was launched from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, he said.

In Israel, there was a strong desire to avenge Friday’s Scud attack on its citizens.

No one was killed during the attack, but a dozen people were slightly injured. A 3-year-old girl and three elderly women suffocated in their gas masks, Israeli authorities reported.

“We have said publicly and to the Americans that if we were attacked, we would react,” Defense Minister Moshe Arens told Israeli television. “We were attacked. . . . We will react, certainly. . . . You will, of course, not expect me to state the date.”

Air raid sirens sounded again in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem late Friday night and early today. The sirens sent Israelis back into sealed rooms they had prepared in their upstairs quarters--poison gas settles to the ground. They put gas masks back on--but then they took them off when an all-clear sounded.

The Israeli military said it had gotten indications that an Iraqi missile would be fired, but none was.

At his news conference, Bush commended Israel for desisting from a counterattack.

“Prime Minister (Yitzhak) Shamir and his government have shown great understanding for the interests of the United States, and the interest of others involved in this--in this coalition,” the President said.

After speaking to reporters, Bush called Shamir to discuss the situation.

Earlier in the day, the President also had what he called a “long and good conversation” with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi troops is Bush’s stated military objective.

He told reporters: “No one should doubt or question the ultimate success, because we will prevail.”

Murphy reported from Dhahran and Lauter from Washington.