PASSING DOWN ORDERS

What could be the largest land battle since World War II is likely to start with a pen stroke. A look at the way the decision, on starting the ground war in the Persian Gulf, might flow:

1. If and when President Bush orders a ground offensive, he will probably give written instructions--called a national security directive--to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

2. Cheney would transmit the President’s orders to the top U.S. military officer, Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

3. Powell would pass it to Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, the Pentagon’s operations director.

4. Kelly would likely relay an encoded battle order directly to the U.S. commander in the Gulf, Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

5. Under U.S. battle doctrine, commanders in the field have wide scope for individual initiative once they get their orders. This lets them fine-tune plans based on battlefield conditions, the weather and other fast-changing variables.

6. It could take field commanders several hours to translate any battle orders into action.

7. The orders would be swiftly passed down the chain of command to corps, division, battalion and company commanders and to involved Air Force, Marine and Navy commanders. Division and corps commanders may give their subordinate officers a specific mission and a “broad statement of purpose.” This flexibility contrasts with the highly centralized Soviet-style doctrine of Iraqi commanders, who are believed to have little authority to innovate in the field.

Background: Bush may have already issued the orders for a ground campaign--subject to revocation--as he did at the start of the war with Iraq.

The President signed his Jan. 15 national security directive committing U.S. forces to war with Iraq about 10:30 a.m. in the White House Oval Office; the air war began about 36 hours later.