U.S. SHIFTS WARPLANES : IRAQI MISSILE LAUNCH SPURS THREAT OF LARGER ATTACK.

Byline: Philip Shenon The New York Times

The United States dispatched F-117 stealth fighters to Kuwait on Wednesday and moved four B-52 bombers closer to the Middle East as the U.S. military prepared for an attack on Iraq that Pentagon officials said very likely would be larger and more destructive than a pair of U.S. strikes last week.

Pentagon officials announced the movement of warplanes hours after reports of new defiance by the Iraqis, including the launch of an SA-6 missile at U.S. jets patrolling the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. The Pentagon said the missile never came close to the jets.

``Iraq air defense crews are playing some kind of a game, and they will very soon learn that we are not playing games,'' said Defense Secretary William Perry, vowing that the U.S. response to Iraq would be ``disproportionate with the provocations which are made against us.''

At a campaign rally in Sun City, Ariz., President Clinton said, ``The determination of the United States in dealing with Iraq should not be underestimated.'' He added, ``We are going to do everything we can to make sure our own pilots are safe - that they can fly their missions in safety.''

Perry said that the missile fired at the U.S. jets was not ``even close to the target,'' since the Iraqi air defense battery that fired the weapon did not dare keep its radar on for more than a few seconds.

``That was a very wise decision on their part, because if they'd had it on any longer than that, they would have had an anti-radiation missile down their throats,'' he said.

Pentagon officials said a new U.S. attack was at least a day away given the necessity of moving the warplanes to the Middle East and the complexity of the planning involved. The new targets are expected to include mobile missile launchers, which can be destroyed only by piloted bombers rather than by the unmanned cruise missiles used in the raids last week.

The United States launched the original attacks in response to an Iraqi incursion into areas of northern Iraq that had been considered a safe haven from Iraqi aggression against its Kurdish minority.

The movement of tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and hundreds of Iraqi tanks within an area supposedly under the protection of the United States and its allies has proved a major foreign policy embarrassment to the Clinton administration, which is clearly seeking some way of recapturing the military and public relations offensive from the Iraqis.

The Pentagon's decision to dispatch the bat-wing F-117 fighters, which through so-called stealth technologies are able to evade some Iraqi radar systems, has symbolic significance due to the fact they were the warplanes used to strike defense installations in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Pentagon officials had no comment Wednesday when asked whether the addition of F-117s to U.S. forces in the Middle East suggested that a new U.S. attack might include targets in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The officials said the fighter-bombers had left Wednesday from an air base in New Mexico for Kuwait, which is expected to be used as a base for bombing runs against Iraqi targets.

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Map: Iraqi missiles threaten U.S. patrol

Associated Press