After five months of frenzied preparation and organization in the Saudi desert and surrounding seas, the U.S. military has massed 415,000 troops in the gulf region. As the United Nations' deadline for Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait expires at midnight tonight, perhaps the most critical issue confronting military commanders is the readiness of their troops and equipment to meet 540,000 Iraqi troops and their complex network of battlefield fortifications.

Iraqi weapons strength is mainly in armor and artillery. There are about 4,000 Iraqi tanks in the theater of operations, about 500 of them top-of-the-line Soviet T-72s that are considered on a par with the best U.S. tank, the M1-A1 Abrams. Iraq also has deployed about 2,700 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles and 3,000 artillery pieces, including 300 long-range South African weapons that fire powerful 155mm shells. While many modern munitions are designed primarily to destroy other weapons, artillery's principal purpose is to inflict casualties, and Iraq used its firepower with devastating effect in its eight-year war with Iran.

Allied forces, in fact, are counting on control of the air to counter Iraqi armored strength. U.S. and allied combat aircraft number 1,300, and commanders intend to use fighters and ground-attack planes to destroy their Iraqi counterparts and Iraqi air defenses so that tank-killing A-10 attack planes can be unleashed against Iraqi armor.