Israelis Show Frustration at Scud Attacks : Reaction: As Iraqi missiles continue to fall, talk grows of the need to take some sort of daring measure.

TEL AVIV —  In a slight but ominous change of tactics, Iraq launched two separate missile salvos against Israel on Saturday night, and although the attack caused little damage and no injuries, it highlighted the continuing inability of American firepower to knock out Iraq’s missile threat to Israel.

Frustrated officials and observers here have begun to speak of the need to take some sort of daring measure, perhaps an attack by land, to destroy the hidden rocket launchers.

Two consecutive nights of Scud missile attacks compounded Israel’s unaccustomed feeling of helplessness. Although Patriot anti-missile rockets knocked out four Scud missiles bearing down on the Israeli coast Saturday--three aimed at Tel Aviv and one at Haifa, according to the Pentagon in Washington--and six out of seven Friday, explosions and debris from the six Iraqi attacks so far have damaged 1,000 individual apartments and homes to varying degrees.

For the first time, the number of homeless has forced Israel to open army shelters and to house some people in hotels. About 4,000 residents of Tel Aviv and Haifa have fled their damaged homes.

U.S. military officials in Washington said the Patriot anti-missile defenses intercepted all the incoming Scuds, but Israeli army spokesman Nachman Shai said not all the warheads were destroyed in the air.

“Some of the incoming missiles hit, and some were intercepted,” Shai reported, declining to give more details. “The Iraqis do maintain surface-to-surface missile capability even after a number of allied sorties against them.”

He said the warheads carried conventional explosives, not chemical weapons, and that no serious damage or casualties resulted.

The double salvos, which came about five minutes apart, “do worry us,” Shai said. But he said there was no change at this point in Israel’s decision to refrain from hitting back at Iraq.

The separate launchings were especially surprising because U.S. planes had tried to hit Iraq’s Scud missile launchers Saturday, Shai said. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is “still full of surprises,” he concluded.

Israeli military experts are talking about an intrepid plan to pinpoint the launchers with scouts who would communicate the location to jet fighters that would then blast the launchers out of the ground.

Defense observers think that at the least, by concentrating its air force solely on the missile launchers, Israel could obliterate them.

“The allies are not rushed. The United States can live with one mission per plane per day,” opined Dore Gold, an analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. “It’s not that Israeli pilots are better. It’s that we have had a long time to think about this threat.”

A senior government spokesman suggested that U.S. aircraft are flying too high to target the missile launchers accurately while Israeli pilots would fly lower. And Aharon Levran, a former general and editor of a respected defense review, added: “I don’t want to blame the Americans; they’re doing a wonderful job. But some things are raising eyebrows.”

Levran said Saturday that Israel should “prepare itself conceptually” for sending its air force to bomb the Iraqi missile launchers, adding that he believes that such a mission would be a fitting form of retaliation for the Iraqi attacks.

Behind the Israeli critique of the American performance in the air is clear disappointment that the Scud launchers have not been taken out of commission. Excluding Saturday’s missiles, nine of the 23 Scuds that had streaked into Israel had been knocked out of the sky by the Patriots. Four deaths have been attributed to the attacks and more than 200 injuries.

Israeli officials are worried that Iraq’s missiles can deliver chemical as well as conventional explosives and that Israel is taking an undue risk by not retaliating. They are skeptical of a statement made the other day by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the U.S. commander in Saudi Arabia, that Iraq is not able to arm its rockets with chemical or gas warheads.

“With all due respect to Gen. Schwarzkopf, he also assured us there were just four launching sites in western Iraq, and the next morning the Iraqis fired at us from five launchers,” said Zeev Schiff, a newspaper columnist whose commentaries often reflect official military thinking.

An army spokesman said Iraq not only still possesses elusive mobile launchers within range of Israel but also fixed launchers despite U.S. claims that they have been destroyed.

“I tell you the truth. I don’t understand why the fixed ones were not knocked out. If this is the case . . . it is a failure,” declared Levran, the defense analyst.

In a television interview, Schiff gave relatively low marks to the U.S. air war.

“It’s clear the Iraqi military command has full control over its forces and the chain of command has not been harmed,” he contended. “Surface-to-surface missiles still threaten. The (allied) air forces still have not begun attacking the underground hangars.”

Just 40 Iraqi planes have been destroyed--the Pentagon claims 45--and runways are being repaired almost as quickly as the allies bomb them, he said. Israel is especially concerned about a fleet of Soviet-built Sukhoi 24 bombers that could carry chemical weapons to Israel and drop them with pinpoint accuracy.

Despite the recent successes of the Patriot anti-missile batteries, Israelis have concluded that they are not a foolproof protection. The alarm that blared warning of the first of Saturday night’s two closely spaced missile attacks interrupted an Israel Radio account of comments by Defense Minister Moshe Arens on the Patriot’s problems. The announcer was quoting Arens as saying that the Patriot system will never provide 100% protection when he fell silent. His voice was replaced by the rising and falling wail of the air raid sirens.

The fact is that even when the Patriots destroy the Scuds, they do so close to the urban targets. This is in itself a problem, because debris scatters and may cause damage and injury.

“The problem is that when they hit incoming missiles, they do it a little bit too close to the defended area. It’s inherent in the system,” explained analyst Levran. “The Patriot was not designed to intercept missiles but to hit aircraft. They were modified against missiles.”

The Patriots, slim missiles about 15 feet long, were designed to defend specific military sites of limited size, rather than large, densely populated urban areas.

Although it is considered a very “smart” missile, with advanced tracking devices in its nose and a talent for maneuvering as it seeks to meet its target head-on, it can only intercept an incoming missile on its downward path--just minutes away from the target.

Despite the Patriots’ limitations, however, Levran said that he was “surprised for the better with their performance.” Military policy is that it is always better to intercept an incoming missile, even if the collision may unleash a shower of shrapnel on the ground below.

The persistent fear of chemical attack has prompted the government here to advise its citizens, in case of an air raid, to put on their gas masks and retreat to rooms with windows sealed with plastic. Despite the danger from the explosive warheads that Iraq has used so far, officials are reluctant to change the policy and instead advise everyone to head for underground air raid shelters.

For one thing, civil defense officials argue, it would take too long for citizens to reach the shelters and in the time it takes, a gas weapon may detonate. Military officials say that they have as little as two minutes’ warning before a Scud hits.

“In our view, the main threat is chemical warfare,” said Yehuda Danon, the army’s chief medical officer. “We cannot allow our population to go to shelters with the mask on the face and to put all the population into the possibility that gas will be in the air while it may take 5 to 10 minutes to arrive at their shelters.”

The relatively low force of the explosive warheads has kept casualties low, Danon added. About 400 pounds of explosives are used in each bomb.