Lieutenant General T. Michael Moseley acknowledged that avoiding civilian casualties and collateral damage in the course of providing close air support to troops in the city was "a tough problem" that US forces hope to overcome with precision strikes.

"The trick is -- if you have to do this -- is to use the smallest munition possible to get the maximum effect so that you don't create those unnecessary losses of civilian life or property," he said in a telephone conference call with reporters from his headquarters in Saudi Arabia.

Moseley said once ground troops entered the city, a plan went into effect to position forward air controllers continuously in aircraft over the city and on the ground to spot potential targets.

An array of fighter aircraft are circling 24 hours a day with an assortment of munitions so that pilots will have a variety of options in responding to calls from ground forces for close air support, he said.

A Predator unmanned reconnaissance aircraft has also been up over Baghdad for 12 hours straight, watching Iraqi activity in the city, he said. A high-flying Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance aircraft also was orbiting Baghdad and northern Iraq to gather intelligence.

"General (David) McKiernan, the land component commander, and I don't intend for anybody to be a sitting duck," he said.

Iraqi forces are expected to try to use civilian structures, such as mosques or hospitals, for cover against air strikes and that will present "a bit of an issue," Moseley said.

"But we can work our way through that," he said. "We will be very, very precise and we will be very, very lethal."

Fighter aircraft will carry a combination of weapons, including non-explosive 500-pound bombs with laser-guided seekers, he said. They also can use their 30mm guns for strafing fire.

The satellite-guided Joint Direct Action Munition, JDAM, the most heavily used weapon in the US arsenal, is precise enough for air strikes in urban areas but its 2,000 pound size make it less suitable than smaller laser-guided weapons, he said.

"We will not default to the biggest bomb, we will default to the right bomb," he said.

US air forces experienced providing close air support in urban areas in Afghanistan and have studied the problem closely, he said.

"It's a complicated problem, and it's even more complicated when you're trying to mitigate civilian loss and collateral damage," he said. "But we will get through this, we will continue to apply decisive pressure, we will continue to kill these guys until they decide to give up."

Moseley said coalition air forces now have "air supremacy" over the whole of Iraq, which has allowed them to operate over Baghdad, once considered one of the cities with the highest concentrations of air defenses in the world.

US air forces have gone from suppressing Iraqi air defenses in Baghdad to actively hunting down and destroying guns and launchers piece by piece, he said.

"The Iraqi military, as an organized defense in large combat formations, doesn't really exist anymore," he said.

"The equipment is there and some of the people are there, but as far as corps and division strength, bringing to bear that combat power on the coalition, it's not the same as it was a couple of weeks ago," he said.

As the ground campaign unfolds inside Baghdad, the strategic bombings that rocked Baghdad night have waned, Moseley said.

"There is less of it but some of the higher echelons of leadership move from location to location and so we continue to strike those," he said.

"We've been very successful in breaking up the command-and-control backbone and we'll continue to strike that to keep the forces isolated from the leadership in Baghdad," he said.

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