The jets are faster and the bombs more precise, but media coverage of America’s newest war is taking on a form that dates back three decades.

After catching flak from the media for limiting access and censoring reports during the previous Persian Gulf War, the Department of Defense has begun “embedding” more than 500 journalists with front-line troops, a strategy experts said hadn’t been used since the Vietnam War.

The results are noticeable: live footage of troops crossing the Iraqi border, a glimpse of night operations on the USS Abraham Lincoln, intimate interviews with those putting their lives on the line.

But whether such coverage will give Americans a better sense of what is actually happening is still unclear, said Doug Sudhoff, an assistant professor of mass communications at Northwest Missouri State University.

“I think one of the great failings of the coverage from the first Gulf War was that it looked like a game,” he said. “We didn’t see the carnage, and that’s what war is. If we see that, then I think the American people will have a better idea of what’s going on.”

During that war, journalists were pooled into groups. Their reports were shared with other journalists and censored, said Sudhoff, who taught for seven years at Kansas University, where he earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees and wrote a thesis titled “A war unseen: Department of Defense restrictions on media coverage during the Gulf War.”

But following the Gulf War, much of what had been hidden came to light, said Tom Volek, an associate professor of journalism and Russian and East European studies at Kansas University.

“I suspect that the military learned its lesson during the Gulf War,” Volek said. “When the whole thing was over, they got stung, and they got stung on several fronts.”

But he said there was no way to know what was currently going on behind the scenes.

“We’ll have to wait and see what the reporters say when they come out of these situations,” he said.

To avoid the pitfalls of 1991, some media outlets are taking a dual approach while others said they felt comfortable relying on the new system.

KMBC, Kansas City’s ABC affiliate, has embedded reporter Maria Antonia. Debbie Bush, news director at KMCI in Kansas City, said NBC had several embedded reporters in the gulf and had never considered having its reporters work independently.

“We wanted to go with the full cooperation of the government,” she said. “No. 1 is for safety.”

Meanwhile, The Associated Press, which provides much of the Journal-World’s war coverage, is using a mix of independent and embedded correspondents, said media relations manager Jack Stokes.

He said under the embedded system journalists agreed not to transmit information of tactical importance, but there was no formal censorship system.

National Public Radio, which has about 12 journalists overseas, is following suit. Two reporters are embedded and another two are operating independently in Iraq.

“We’re doing a variety of things so that we can get the most well-rounded coverage as possible,” spokeswoman Laura Gross said.

While media sources seemed satisfied with the setup, experts emphasized that access is only half the battle.

In 1991 there were a lot of rookie reporters from small towns, which weakened coverage, Volek said.

And Sudhoff said even if the government kept its hands-off promise, this war’s reporters might have a hard time not censoring themselves.

Whether it’s because they get attached to the troops they eat and sleep with or because they don’t want to frighten their audience during suppertime news, “the journalists may question themselves more than they really need to,” he said. “We may not be as well-informed as we think.”