So the waiting is over. Comparisons with the long Gulf War build-up are irrelevant. Afghanistan is not "target-rich", so choices and priorities are limited; the Alliance is smaller; mass ground attacks are hardly intended: the defences, particularly the electronic air defence ones, are probably exiguous.
The first aim in modern war is to secure air superiority over the battle area. America has more than that, she has air supremacy. Nevertheless, the destruction of whatever air defences Afghanistan has, together with navigation and landing aids etc., is a natural priority. Power supplies, upon which all depend, are certain targets.
They have been hit by Tomahawk Cruise missiles with little danger to launching crews. These missiles can be launched from surface ships, submarines and aircraft. Mr. Blair has said that a Royal Navy submarine carrying Cruise missiles has already been in action. Most of the Cruise missiles landing in Afghanistan, as I write, must be coming from US warships.
America has had weeks to put the intelligence picture together and to designate targets and their priorities. The accuracies of Cruise missiles are said to have been steadily improved since they were first used on Baghdad ten years ago,
The Taliban training camps and the airfield installations around Kandahar and Kabul, in particular, are being hit. They are well within missile range from the Arabian Sea and the Gulf areas. Cruise missiles can find their targets in darkness. Tomorrow morning the damage assessment planes will be out, taking photographs.
Spectacular damage to runways is relatively easily inflicted - and repaired, although the tactic of sowing cluster bombs around the runways can make movement hazardous and slow the work How serious tonight's strikes are to the Taliban and its infra-structure will depend on just how good the intelligence is. But the allies have time, 600 or so aircraft and an inexhaustible supply of missiles.
The Taliban appear to have some very old ground-launched SAM 1 and SAM 3 anti-aircraft (or to use the modern term air defence) missiles. These Russian missiles were effective a long time ago, but can be of little use now, They also have an unknown number of shoulder-fired American Stingers.
These were supplied to the Afghans in the late 1980s in response to a plea from Abdul Haq, "the resistance commander of the Kabul region". He said that they were using captured Soviet SA-7 (Grail) missiles with limited success. Some were damaged and the Soviet helicopter pilots and engineers had developed effective counter-measures. The Americans gave them Stingers a very effective weapons at that time and Soviet losses rose to a helicopter a day.
After the Soviet withdrawal, Stingers began to appear in the bazaars in the Middle East. Mindful of their danger to civil aircraft the Americans bought many back. But it is said that those remaining in Taliban hands are in need of replacement power packs. Tomorrow the ground attack aircraft will start their daylight sweeps . They have many electronic counter-measures and can probably evade or destroy Stinger missiles. We shall have to wait and see. American and British armies have not developed many specialized mountain troops. Gebirgsjagers are a speciality in continental armies - Austria they are elite troops.
The Americans have one division (the 10th Mountain) normally stationed in New York. These have been moved to Uzbekistan. But one thinks the use of ground troops in any strength is not an immediate intention. American Special Operations Forces and British Special Forces (note the subtle difference in nomenclature) are much more likely to be used for snatch and perhaps sabotage operations on ground that has been cleared and dominated by air attacks.
The numbers will be fairly small - they have to be extracted after an operation. They will carry electronic target designators that can "paint" things requiring air attack. These designators should improve accuracy.
This first phase is hard to predict but it may go one for a week or two - if there are that many suitable targets left. The Taliban can only keep their heads down and wait for the chance to use their sniping and concealment abilities in ground fighting - but their may not be many of those. The Taliban have had it easy, lording it over their fellow citizens. This may not make for tough fighting.