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WASHINGTON, (Reuters)-Once an order is given to wage war, the U.S. military plans to unleash a two-day aerial bombardment so fierce as to persuade the Iraqi military that any resistance would be futile, Pentagon officials said.

"It's going to be the most massive precision air campaign in the history of warfare," said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney. "It will be targeted against Saddam and his leadership, the weapons of mass destruction, the integrated air defense zone, the palaces, the Republican Guards units that resist or any army units that resist." In what U.S. defense officials describe as a "shock and awe" opening stanza, upward of 3,000 satellite-guided bombs will be dropped by aircraft and cruise missiles launched from sea and air against Iraqi military and political targets deemed vital to President Saddam Hussein's government.

"I think there will be such overwhelming firepower that to resist militarily will be futile," said a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It is going to be so swift and furious that they are not going to know what hit them."

U.S. defense officials said the idea was to convince the enemy he was beaten even before large numbers of invading U.S. and British troops are inserted on the ground. The opening of the war is expected to come in a salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the armada of U.S. ships arrayed against Iraq, air-launched cruise missiles fired from B-52 bombers, and satellite-guided bombs dropped from B-2 stealth bombers taking off from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and other warplanes, analysts said. War planners have picked thousands of targets in Iraq, many clustered in and around the capital Baghdad, which boasts the heaviest concentration of air defenses in the country. Military analyst Benjamin Works of the Strategic Issues Research Institute said advancing ground troops would be more impressive to the Iraqis than bombs falling from the sky.

U.S. military leaders from Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on down have let it be known that this war will not be a repeat of the 1991 Gulf War in which a five-week air war preceded a 100-hour ground war. This time, ground troops will be involved from the very beginning.

Defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute said massive numbers of ground troops could start piercing Iraq's borders perhaps three days after the start of the aerial bombardment. At that time, the air campaign's character would switch to providing air support for advancing ground forces.

But Thompson said some ground forces likely will be active inside Iraq during these first three days. He said special forces, some already on the ground in various locations, will be in far greater numbers on the official first day of a war.

Thompson said the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division may parachute into northern Iraq to open a northern front or to secure the rich Iraqi oil fields that the Pentagon accuses Saddam of planning to set ablaze once war ensues.

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