Military Statistics

Two Iraqi Silkworm missiles were fired at allied warships Monday, believed to be the first use of the large anti-ship missiles in the Gulf War. One was knocked out by British missiles and the other fell into the sea. The Silkworm is the Chinese version of the 30-year-old Soviet Styx, a relatively crude radar-guided missile. However, it is considered a potent naval threat. Launch: By ship or mobile launcher.

Body count. That's one of the more grisly aspects of the Vietnam War that the U.S. military can't seem to shed, no matter how hard it tries. Time after time, Gen. H.

Ask many Americans to describe the Gulf War, and they will likely tell you how Air Force bombs flattened Iraqi defenses as U.S. Marines and Army troops fought a fierce 100-hour ground war. The Navy is fearful that its role in the conflict may become lost in the shuffle. "That is my nightmare," groaned Capt. Jim Mitchell, a Navy public affairs officer in Washington--that the lasting civilian image of America's fighting forces in the Middle East will omit the Navy.

Operation Desert Shield cost $11.1 billion between August and December, the Bush Administration said Tuesday in its most detailed estimate to date. It offered no new details on the cost of the crisis in the Persian Gulf since the war began in January. In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Richard G. Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, calculated that America's allies have pledged $9.74 billion in cash and in-kind payments to defray costs incurred by the U.S.

* SCUD ATTACKS: Iraq launched Scud missiles armed with conventional warheads into central Israel Monday and early today, and the second attack injured several people, officials said. Israel said the Scud in Monday's attack fell in an uninhabited area. Late Monday, Patriot missiles intercepted an Iraq-fired Scud near Riyadh, the Saudi capital. * MINE GAMES: A U.S. military official said mines sown in southern Kuwait may contain nerve and mustard gases.

The United States has air superiority in the Persian Gulf but is numerically outgunned on the ground. Iraq's thousands of guns, howitzers, and multiple rocket launchers--one estimate puts the number at 3,700--double the allied artillery. The U.S. compensates for its lack of long-range artillery through battlefield air interdiction and close air support. Iraqi artillery is one of the major targets of the ongoing allied air campaign.

One of the most violent battles in the history of modern warfare began on the wind-swept deserts beside the Persian Gulf today as the United States and its allies launched their long-threatened ground assault against Iraqi forces to drive them out of Kuwait. "The liberation of Kuwait has now entered a final phase," President Bush announced at 10 p.m. EST Saturday at the White House.

American tank crews, on the attack in one of the biggest armored battles since World War II, were ordered today to halt offensive fire against badly mauled Republican Guard tank divisions in southeastern Iraq. The order to American troops came eight hours after as many as 800 tanks from the 1st and 3rd Armored divisions of the U.S. Army's VII Corps were reported battling two armored divisions of the Republican Guard about 50 miles west of the city of Basra.

A port call by a U.S. missile cruiser to the Chinese naval base in Qingdao last year provided a stunning contrast between the two military powers' equipment and attitudes. As soon as the Aegis-class cruiser Bunker Hill docked, Chinese photographers and television camera operators, some with dubious journalistic credentials, were ushered aboard and allowed to photograph one of America's most state-of-the-art warships from stem to stern. But U.S.

From the world's farthest corners, Argentina and Australia are in. But Arab powers and former partners Egypt and Syria are out. And front-line states Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have a foot in each camp. Seven years after the Persian Gulf War, the United States this week put finishing touches on a new coalition supporting the use of military force against Iraq if Baghdad continues to block United Nations inspectors from seeking out weapons of mass destruction.