Desert Shield Desert Storm - The 20th Anniversary of the Gulf War

DESERT SHIELDDESERT STORM

T H E 2 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y O F T H E G U L F WA R

EDITOR’S FOREWORD

On Jan. 15, 1991, the United Nations ultimatum ordering Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait ran out. For

months, a coalition of nations had been staging a military buildup, preparing to launch an attack to take

back Kuwait. Now the coalition was ready.

By 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, airstrikes were hitting Baghdad. Operation Desert Storm had begun.

It was a watershed conflict.

To the surprise of many, the major conflict of the 20th century’s last decade was not between the Soviets

and the Americans, nor the Arabs and Israelis, but rather saw a worldwide coalition arrayed against an

Arab country that had invaded a smaller Arab neighbor.

The conflict was a showcase for technologies like precision munitions, stealth, night vision and other

sensors, C4ISR assets, and UAVs. Once considered the dominant military power in the region, Iraq was

totally outclassed and comprehensively defeated by these technologies and the tactics that leveraged

them. The result was that more American casualties were sustained in training than in the war itself.

According to some accounts, the overmatch of these Cold War-bred technologies against Iraq’s Soviet

tactics and equipment helped convince the Soviet leadership that the Cold War was essentially lost,

bringing on the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But overwhelming victories tend to provide more lessons to future opponents than the victors, and the

result was that during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a short, sharp conventional conflict developed into a

different kind of warfare, with the United States and its coalition partners facing an enemy with AK-47s,

RPGs, and IEDs in a long, difficult insurgency.

An even larger and more difficult insurgency continues today in Afghanistan, and the tactics of

unconventional warfare employed by that insurgency speak to the success of Operation Desert Storm 20

years ago: Knowing that a traditional confrontation against today’s coalition would be doomed, terrorist

organizations have resorted to a shadowy sort of battle, one in which – by design – they make themselves

hard to pin down and defeat. That the conflicts of today reflect the lessons learned from Operation Desert

Storm should in no way devalue the achievement of two decades ago, when a western and pan-Arab

coalition came together to confront and force the headlong retreat of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

DESERT SHIELD II DESERT STORM 3

FOREWORD

Foreword ................................................................................................................................................... 3

The Air WarThe Air War

Air Power in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm ..................................................................................... 4

By Robert F. Dorr

The Air War: Lessons Learned ..................................................................................................................... 12

By Robert F. Dorr

The Land WarThe Land War

In Desert Storm ............................................................................................................................................. 16

by Scott R. Gourley

Some Lessons Learned From the Land War ................................................................................................ 24

By Norman Friedman

The Naval WarNaval Forces in the Gulf War ........................................................................................................................ 30

By Norman Friedman

Naval Lessons of the Gulf War ..................................................................................................................... 38

By Norman Friedman

FeaturesRepublican Guard Nemesis

Feint and Deception Doomed Iraqi Units ..................................................................................................... 44

By Clarence A. Robinson, Jr.

Emerging From the Shadows

Getting Stealth into the Gulf War .................................................................................................................. 48

By John D. Gresham

The Battle of 73 Easting

And the Road to the Synthetic Battlefield.................................................................................................... 54

By John D. Gresham

ContentsDesert Shield/Desert Storm: The 20th Anniversary of The Gulf War

THE AIR WAR

4 DESERT SHIELD II DESERT STORM

THE AIR WAR AIR POWER DURING OPERATION DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORMBy Robert F. Dorr

On the night of January 17-18, 1991, a veritable tidal wave came plunging down on Iraq and on Iraqi forces in Kuwait as 300 strike aircraft from the Western coalition swarmed down on stra-

tegic targets. Maj. Gregory A. Feest, flying an F-117 Night-hawk, dropped the first bomb of the war on a interceptor operations center in Baghdad, wreaking havoc in Saddam Hussein’s air defense system. But even before the stealth fighters, Iraqi air sites near the border were challenged by helicopters.

Task Force Normandy was made up of MH-53J Pave Lows from the Air Force’s 20th Helicopter Squadron and AH-64 Apaches from the Army’s 101st Division, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The plan was to attack each of two radar sites at a pivotal location known in American parlance as Ob-jective Oklahoma with two Pave Lows and four Apaches. The Pave Lows used terrain-following radar and GPS (global positioning system) to guide the Apaches over the border and to a pre-planned firing point. Close to the tar-gets, the Pave Lows slowed and dropped fluorescent light sticks onto the desert. The Army helicopters used those points of light to set their own navigation systems, then draw to within visual range, the Pave Lows moved back and opened fire with 30mm cannons and Hellfire missiles. The result was a devastating blow to key Iraqi defense positions, 22 minutes before the 3:00 a.m. H-hour.

STEALTH ATTACK

By then, the 12-plane first wave of F-117s was al-ready 50 miles beyond Oklahoma. These F-117s reached Baghdad while Saddam’s radars were still up and run-ning and without being detected. Maj. Jerry Leather-man was in one of the F-117s. Leatherman’s job, like that of another F-117 pilot ahead of him, was to bomb the Baghdad International Telephone Exchange, known to the F-117 pilots as the AT&T building because its real Arabic name was unwieldy. Leatherman followed the night eastward at 480 knots. He skirted the capital to at-

tack from the north. He saw city lights, neon signs, the snake-like Tigris River winding through the city. Sixty SAM sites and 3000 antiaircraft guns encircled Baghdad on this night. Almost all of them were shooting now. Only later would Leatherman learn that, panicked, they were shooting “blind” and not at him. At exactly 3:00 a.m., the F-117 in front of Leatherman’s hit the AT&T Building with a GBU-27 bomb. On Leatherman’s scope, the target abruptly glowed, hotter than adjacent office towers and the nearby, tulip-shaped Iraqi Martyrs Monu-ment. Leatherman pickled one minute later, splitting the crosshairs on his display and blowing out the upper four floors of the building. Leatherman peeled away to the west, for the safety of the desert, and turned for home, switching on heavy metal music from Def Leppard on his Walkman. Behind him, Capt. Marcel Kerdavid swooped down through a sky alive with fire and pickled a GBU-27 through the Al Khark communications tower, to blow the 370-foot spire apart at its mid-point. “My biggest fear was that I would survive,” remembered Major Mike Mahar, pilot of an F-117 in the second wave assaulting Baghdad. ‘They’re all dead,’ I told myself. ‘All the guys who went in ahead of me have been shot down. If I live through tonight, I’ll be the only F-117 pilot who survived. Everybody will ask why’”

“Twenty minutes away from Saddam Hussein’s presi-dential retreat at Abu Ghurayb, I saw what looked like red-orange explosions from bombs filling the landscape ahead. But we didn’t have any aircraft up there. I know, now, I was looking at muzzle flashes from antiaircraft guns.” The sky around Mahar seemed to be full of fire. Flak detonated above and below him, buffeting the F-117. “No one had ever seen such a nocturnal display of pyrotechnics,” he re-members. “With no spatial reference, it was impossible to tell how far some of it was from my airplane. But it seemed very close.”

In fact, none of Mahar’s wingmen were dead, wounded, or even scratched. As it would turn out, the F-117’s first-generation, radar-evading stealth properties enabled it

STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS


to fly 1,271 combat sorties in the 42-day Persian Gulf war without a single loss. From the beginning of the war until its end, the F-117 ruled the skies over Baghdad.

Shortly before 3:00 a.m., an E-3 Sentry AWACS spotted MiG-29s flying low about 50 miles inside the Iraqi border. Four F-15C Eagles from the 33rd Tactical Fighter Wing, Eg-lin Air Force Base, Fla., slipped across the border to inter-cept. One of the Iraqi MiGs responded by gaining a radar lock-on on Capt. John B. “J. B.” Kelk’s Eagle. With alarms sounding and visual warnings jarring him, Kelk fired a mis-sile and scored the war’s first aerial victory at 3:10 a.m. near Mudaysis in southern Iraq.

AIR ACTION

It was the beginning of an air-to-air combat saga that would be unprecedented in the history books. A Navy FA-18 Hornet lost that first night may have been the only Ameri-can aircraft lost in air-to-air action (to an Iraqi MiG-25).

In contrast, the coalition shot down 44 Iraqi warplanes, some of them attempting to flee to asylum inside Iraq’s re-cent former enemy, Iran. A total of 37 were brought down by Air Force F-15Cs, all but one of them in Kelk’s fighter wing, and the Eagles sustained no losses. While an airlift of unprecedented size continued to bring supplies and arms to the bases built up by the coalition, Operation Des-ert Storm unleashed new strikes by sea-launched cruse

missiles, some of which came from the aging battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), carrier-based warplanes from no fewer than five carrier battle groups flanking the Arabian peninsula on both sides, and long-range bombers.

During Operation Desert Storm, B-52G Stratofortresses served in provisional bomb wings and mounted combat missions from Diego Garcia; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Mo-ron, Spain, and Fairford, England. B-52Gs flew 1,624 missions, dropped over 72,000 weapons, and delivered over 25,700 tons of munitions on area targets in the KTO (Ku-wait Theater of Operations) and on airfields, industrial tar-gets, troop concentrations and storage areas in Iraq. Per-sian Gulf war B-52Gs had a mission capable rate of over 81 percent, or 2 percent higher than the peacetime rate. B-52Gs dropped 29 percent of all U.S. bombs and 38 percent of all Air Force bombs during the war.

It was revealed a year after the Gulf War that seven B-52Gs fired 35 AGM-86C conventional air launched cruise missiles (CALCMs) against eight targets in northern Iraq, including hydroelectric and geothermal power plants near Mosul, and the telephone exchange in Basara. The classi-fied code name for the program was Senior Surprise, al-though the crews called them “Secret Squirrels.”

Seven aircraft from the 596th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Wing flew the longest combat mission in history that first night of the Persian Gulf conflict. The round-trip mission from Barksdale Air Force Base, La.,

Bitburg based F-15 Eagles flew straight to Saudi Arabia fully armed for war.

An IconicSymbol of Freedom

THE STATUE OF LIBERTYA LIVING SYMBOL OF FREEDOM FOR 125 YEARS

A Special Publication coming Fall 2011 will offer a unique look at this national treasure, an iconic symbol of freedom to millions worldwide. It will chronicle the history of Lady Liberty, from her arrival in America as a gift from France, through her hard fought and uncertain final completion, to her renovation and status today as a world famous symbol of democracy and freedom. The publication will tell the story of the historical and remarkable efforts of the Foundation to raise funds for the restoration and preservation of the statue and Ellis Island, and also include many more unique features on Lady Liberty. Included will be commentary from the leadership of the National Park Service, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, and other notable friends of the Statue.

If you are interested in advertising in The Statue of Liberty: A Living Symbol of Freedom for 125 Years call Ken Meyer today at 813-639-1900


lasted over 34 hours and launched 35 AGM-86C CALCMs against eight targets near Mosul, in northern Iraq. A fur-ther four missiles on four different aircraft had problems and were not launched. Launched during a ten-minute pe-riod from about 100 miles south of the Iraqi-Saudi border near the town of Ar Ar, they struck power stations near Mosel and communications facilities (including one near Basara), some of which were beyond the reach of manned aircraft prior to the start of missions from Turkey. The mis-siles’ use of the global positioning system aided their flight over the often featureless Iraqi terrain enabling 31 of them to hit their targets. The engine on one missile failed to start after launch, two probably missed their targets, and one was never accounted for (and was possibly shot down), yielding an 85-to 91-percent success rate. Speculation about why so many aircraft were used to launch so few missiles centers on the theory that the abort of a single air-craft would have less impact if it had fewer missiles. Fur-ther, the mission used up most of the available AGM-86Cs.

ONGOING CAMPAIGN

Once the fighting was underway, it became apparent that there would be no ground war immediately. But in the

Above: On their way into the theater, Navy Tomcats brushed up on dissimilar air combat train-ing with Royal Air Force Phantoms. Right: The old B-52s played a large part in the conflict, firing cruise missiles and unloading almost a third of all bombs in the war.





air, the attackers employed tricks they had learned playing the high-end game in the final years of the Cold War. A decade after the Goldwater-Nichols Law forced American service branches to cooperate, Desert Storm became the first joint war. There were glitches (because of incompat-ible information networks, each Navy carrier had to send an airplane to Riyadh to pick up the Air Tasking Order each day), but jointness was a “force multiplier” that made ev-ery bomb and missile deadlier.

The new technologies, including radar-evading stealth and miniaturized precision targeting, were icing on this cake. It would be impossible to understand the success of Desert Storm without grasping the Desert Shield buildup – and especially the Desert Shield airlift that came first. When Saddam swept over Kuwait, the United States had no forces in the region. Six months later, 525,000 Ameri-cans were in the Gulf. Their numbers included the equiv-alent of nine infantry and armor divisions and a Marine division plus a brigade. They had 1,300 main battle tanks, seven carrier battle groups, a dozen fighter wings, and a supply line for arms and ammunition that stretched half-way around the world.

The airlift mounted by U.S. Air Force’s Military Air-lift Command (now MAC) carried people, weapons, and equipment of all five U.S. service branches from 120 loca-tions to the deserts of the Middle East. Together with the sealift that followed, it made possible the most spectacu-lar buildup of military force in history.

MAC’s Gen. H. T. Johnson cobbled together an air bridge that hauled people and equipment on exhausting, 38-hour missions (the round-trip from a U.S. base, to a European location, followed by the round-trip “downrange” to the Saudi deserts). Johnson threw nearly all of his 265 C-141B Starlifters and 85 C-5 Galaxys into the effort and activated elements of the CRAF (Civil Reserve Air Fleet). The size of the effort was stupefying: C-141B or C-5 landed at Dhahran every seven minutes, around the clock. The tonnage of the 1948 Berlin airlift was exceeded in the first 22 days. 220,000 troops and their equipment were moved by October.

A typical airlift job was, for example, to haul equipment for the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif. A crew would fly the first leg – for example, from Pendleton to Torrejon. There, another crew in a revolving pool would pick up both the mission and the aircraft, and continue downrange. Routine problems which might delay a depar-ture – cleaning an aircraft, for instance – had to be set aside in the all-compelling effort to keep the aircraft mov-ing, constantly moving. The eastbound stage, they called it, evoking memories of stagecoaches which, moving in the opposite direction, had opened up the American West. Downrange, there was no place to rest, so the crew would have to bring their C-141B or C-5 back to Torrejon before they could sleep.

There were triumphs and there were horror stories. One C-5 Galaxy pilot struggled with ground personnel who tried to load too much cargo, command posts confused about his destination, and a 3-hour quest for an empty bed at the end of a 30-hour work day. Another spent a day of equal length hauling supplies from Torrejon downrange, then re-

Above: F-16C Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft are refueled by KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft. Left: The Marines brought their own organic air power with them, in the shape of Harriers flying from amphibious warfare ships and ashore, as well as F/A-18s and A-6E Intruders, flying 18,000 sorties during the air campaign.


THE AIR WAR

turning, while struggling with a nose wheel that wouldn’t come down (until lowered manually), and a pilot’s altim-eter on the blink. Shortcuts had to be taken in maintaining aircraft, and especially in cleaning them – one C-141 was needed so badly, it was pulled out of the paint shop and flown to Saudi Arabia in natural metal, colorless – to keep troops and materiel moving.

Strategic airlifters (C-141Bs and C-5s, plus C-130E/Hs and KC-10As when self-deploying) flew 20,500 missions, carried 534,000 passengers, and hauled

542,000 tons of cargo. Airlifters moved 4.65 billion ton-miles, as compared with 697.5 million during the 65-week Berlin airlift. To those who participated, there was anoth-er way to say what they had done – a bumper sticker, worth saving for the grandchildren, worn by some as a badge of honor: I FLEW THE EASTBOUND STAGE.

Saddam Hussein, with the world’s fourth largest land army, with Scud ballistic missiles, with nascent chemi-cal and biological weapons, ultimately was not up to the test of confronting a mature American volunteer force supported by Coalition forces. The lapse of six months be-tween Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and the start of the war in January had enabled Gen. H. Nor-man Schwarzkopf, the U.S. field commander, to assemble a massive air and ground armada which included half a million American troops.

Lt. Gen. (later Gen.) Charles “Chuck” Horner, who commanded the air campaign from a Riyadh headquar-ters called the Black Hole, had had six months to ex-ploit the well-established airfield infrastructure in the region and to build up a force which comprised nearly a thousand aircraft. All of this paid off as the fighting began but, even then, not everything went perfectly. As January faded into February, still with no ground war underway, Horner and his aerial armada were seri-ously distracted by a hunt for Iraqi Scud missile launch sites. “The great Scud hunt,” as it turned out, had little impact and Iraq continued to launch small numbers of the ballistic missiles, with conventional warheads, with impunity.

Britain’s Royal Air Force learned that using runway-de-nial weapons-developed in a NATO-Warsaw Pact contest – was a good way to get shot down.

RAF Tornado squadrons had to keep constantly revising their tactics as they attempted to do their part in keeping Saddam’s air defense quiet. Typical was the loss of a Tor-nado to a surface-to-air missile on February 14. Flight Lt. Rupert Clark was reacting to the hit when a second SAM went off nearby. It was catastrophic – instant loss of both engines, as well as trashing of the entire cockpit and flight instruments. Clark ejected and was captured. His naviga-tor, Flight Lt. Steven Hicks, was killed.

Air Force C-141 aircraft, plus C-130s, C-5s, and KC-10s, carried over a half million passengers and as many tons of cargo.

THE AIR WAR

Prisoners of war in the Baghdad Biltmore found that Saddam’s troops had little regard for international stan-dards of behavior. All were beaten. Some were treated as propaganda tools. While dozens of friendlies were be-ing held prisoner, the coalition rounded up thousands of Iraqis, including some who surrendered to a remotely- pi-loted vehicle and others who were herded into captivity by Apache helicopters.

GROUND WAR

The ground war began at 4:00 a.m., February 24, when the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions (in the east of Saudi Arabia, closer than other friendlies to Kuwait City) launched at-tacks through Iraqi border barriers of minefields, barbed wire, oil-filled trenches, and artillery fire. In a daring heli-copter assault, 2,000 men of the 101st Airborne Division seized As Salman airfield 50 miles inside Iraq. The next day, Army troops began maneuvering into the “left hook” that trapped large numbers of Iraqis between two major forces.

Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had pointed to an Iraqi concentration during a

press conference. “I’m going to cut it off,” he said, “and then I’m going to kill it.” With the help of air power, he did.

The war ended on the last day of February with war-planes roving the “highway of death” between Kuwait City and Basra, picking off Iraqis at will. Among the statistics from the war: 184 Americans lost in combat. By declining to march on Baghdad, Washington and its allies created a legacy. A decade later, friendly warplanes are still patrol-ling the skies of Iraq.

A Royal Saudi Air Force F-15C takes of on a mission. Saudi aircraft comprised the largest contingent after the U.S.

Defense Media Network.We have now aggregated our

content from across our portfolio of defense-related publications into

a single web portal site.So no matter your interest area - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines,

Coast Guard, Special Operations, Veterans Affairs, Military Medicine, etc. - simply go to www.defensemedianetwork.com now and get a

complimentary subscription to read, view and comment on all our content.

Publications, newsletters, articles, interviews – you can now access them all in a single

place – The defense media network brought to you

by Faircount, publishers of The Year in Defense™.

half page DMN new fnl.indd 1 2/22/11 2:35 PM

If you are interested in advertising in Defense Media Network call Darren Lewis today at 813-639-1900


THE AIR WAR

In a basement room in the Pentagon, near the famous purple water fountain that has been a building landmark for Air Staff members for generations, an Air Force ma-jor is working on a study of forced entry.

“To be honest,” the major says, “I don’t know how much attention this is getting outside this building, out there in the real Air Force.”

Forced entry is the service’s term for gaining access to airfields in a region that lacks a friendly host govern-ment. The term may refer to using political bargaining with the wavering leadership of a borderline nation. Or it may refer to launching a parachute assault to seize terrain. Either way, forced entry means securing the use of airfields where they aren’t readily available – and

the term has fallen out of vogue since Operation Desert Storm.

Like air base operability, which refers to getting an air-field back into use after it has been bombed or dusted with chemicals, the concept is one that wasn’t needed in the Persian Gulf war. There, a splendid infrastructure of air-fields was readily available for use by the western coalition throughout the Arabian peninsula and surrounding region. There, friendly airfields were never challenged or attacked.

The lessons learned during the Gulf conflict are at the core of American doctrine, tactics, and military plan-ning today, but the impact of that war is also a two-edged sword. The war taught Americans little or nothing about forced entry, airfield operability, fighting in a biological or

AIR POWER LESSONS FROM THE GULF WARBy Robert F. Dorr


chemical environment, and a dozen other disciplines that may be needed the next time Americans go to war. For-tunately, military thinkers are at work in these areas, but the mindset from the Gulf War may make their job more difficult. The United States may once again be preparing to fight the last war.

Fortunately, Operation Desert Storm taught many invalu-able lessons and these are being implemented today, often by the people who were there in the desert.

It is no accident that most of the lessons are positive. The high-tech, all-volunteer force that began deploying to the Middle East in 1990 – about one-third larger than the U. S. military of today – was probably the most formidable fight-ing force the world has ever known. In the decade since, times have changed, retention of skilled people has become a far more serious challenge, and the armed forces are in danger of becoming a hollow likeness of what they once were. But, to quote a U. S. Navy A-7E Corsair II pilot who fought in Desert Storm: “The force we had assembled at that time was simply something that no smart adversary would want to mess with.“

Much of it undoubtedly seems obvious now, but here are the key lessons:

1. Jointness is the way to fight. The term refers to cooperation among U. S. military service branches, and it has been evolving since the Goldwater-Nichols

Law of 1986, which tasked members of the service branches to work together, and imposed penalties for not doing so.2. Technology matters. Operation Desert Storm was a resounding vindication for the years of investment in radar-evading stealth technology, which enabled the F-117 “Black Jet“ to reign supreme in the night skies over Baghdad. The desert war also proved the importance of dominating the electromagnetic spectrum, with everything from intelligence- gathering platforms like the U-2 aircraft to the F-4G Advanced Wild Weasel designed to engage and attack enemy missile sites.3. Airpower can prevail. It may be a bitter pill for some who fight on the ground or at sea, but while the Persian Gulf war proved that everyone is needed, it also validated the dominant role of air power in winning wars. In the war against Iraq, airpower had five weeks to pulverize the foe before troops moved in on the ground. In a war over Kosovo nine years later, airpower did the job without ground forces.4. The public matters. In an age of cable television (and, since the war, the Internet), the United States cannot go to war without public support. This means that future wars must take advantage of jointness, technology, and airpower to reduce casualties.

Opposite page: Since the Gulf War, the EA-6B has provided vital jamming support, but is an aging platorm. Above: Though F-16s CJs can fulfill part of its role, the retired F-4G Wild Weasel has not yet found a replacement.

COMING 2012TWO DECADES OF WAR-WINNING TECHNOLOGY

Air Force Materiel Command delivers war-winning technology and capabilities to warfighters via a professional and skilled command work force of more than 80,000 military and civilian employees. It is responsible for billions of dollars worth of acquisition programs and procurement contracts annually making it one of the largest purchasing and supply commands within the entire Department of Defense.

A SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE PUBLICATION CELEBRATING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF AIR FORCE MATERIEL COMMAND

If you are interested in advertising in The 20th Anniversary of Air Force Materiel Command call Ken Meyer today at 813-639-1900


THE AIR WAR

Operation Desert Storm showed that the public will accept sending its young men and women into battle, but only when it knows that casualties will be low.Although Operation Desert Storm was a model of joint-

ness, it also revealed cracks in the system. Navy carriers at sea did not have a compatible, secure system of communica-tion that would enable them to receive the daily Air Tasking Order from Riyadh: The order had to be picked up by a carri-er-based plane and physically carried to the ship. The Army and Marine Corps had serious problems of communication and interoperability, and the Air Force was not always on the mark in responding to the needs of ground troops.

Before Saddam Hussein became a household name in America, it was commonplace for some in the Pentagon to pooh-pooh the importance of technology. Oh, high-tech was important, all right, but in a military long enamored of bean-counting, numbers were more important in the view of many. Operation Desert Storm struck away all doubt that technology can prevail over numbers.

In some cases, however, lessons were learned and then ignored. There has been no follow-up aircraft with an im-proved version of the F-117’s stealth capabilities. The Air Force has retired its EF-111A Raven and F-4G Advanced Wild Weasel electronic warfare aircraft – prematurely, in the view of many – and has not replaced them in kind. To-day’s EA-6B Prowler and missile-equipped F-16CJ Fighting Falcon, which have some of the capabilities of the retired aircraft, are in some ways less capable than the planes they replaced. The Prowler is too slow to keep up with strike air-craft proceeding to a target and, while the Prowler’s elec-tronic systems are being updated, it is essentially a package of outdated technology.

During the Persian Gulf war, some warplanes reached their targets navigating via the global positioning system, which relies on satellites in orbit. Since the war, GPS has become vital to every aspect of military operations. Yet to-day, the military is being criticized for being slow to inte-grate air and space technologies, and those who appreciate the importance of space-based systems are crying out for a more autonomous space force. A commission headed by now-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reported in Janu-ary 2001 that the United States was doing a poor job of han-dling its space assets, and urged greater independence for the military’s space command.

The difficulties in capitalizing on new technologies are il-lustrated by the Marine Corps’ problems with the MV-22B Osprey, the tilt-rotor aircraft it wants to use to haul troops from vessels at sea to landing zones deep inland, bypassing treacherous amphibious beach landings. After more than a decade of tests and 4,000 flight hours, the Osprey appears to have vindicated tilt-rotor technology, but the program has suffered two fatal crashes, and has been undermined by a record-keeping scandal within the Corps. Overlooked amid this fuss is the likelihood that tilt-rotor technology works, and the simple truth that any technological revolution ex-acts a price.

As for the plain truth about airpower, it remains difficult for some in the Pentagon to swallow, even if the truth has been evolving since Brig. Gen. William Mitchell demonstrat-ed the superiority of the bomber over the battleship in 1921. When properly used, together with the boon of technology (and that includes precision-guided weapons), airpower wins wars. The Gulf War required a contribution from ev-eryone, and the sailor aboard a destroyer or the infantry-man charging into battle was needed – but by the time the ground fight began, the issue had been decided.

The need for greater integration of air and space assets is well understood but is proceeding too slowly. The need for a 21st-century version of the F-117, as well as a modern “power projection platform” to replace the ancient B-52 Stratofortress bomber, is also well understood but not proceeding at all. If airpower is to retain its prevalent role, newer and better systems need to be fielded sooner than current plans call for.

As for the role of the public in armed conflict, like it or not the U. S. armed forces must contend today with a populace weaned on instant information. The public today is not prepared to accept high casualties. That reality has shaped American intervention since the Gulf War, includ-ing the fighting over Kosovo, which was done entirely by air and resulted in not a single friendly killed or wounded in action.

But the next war could be different. The next war may re-quire forced entry or air base operability. The next war may not give us a Saddam Hussein, who generously allowed the western coalition six months to build up, exploiting a vast network of airfields that were available from day one. “We may not have airfields next time,” says the major near the purple water fountain – and he is right.

The learning of lessons must always be a selective pro-cess. We cannot assume that our next conflict will resemble the Persian Gulf War in any way. We can, however, gain from the positive lessons of that war – so long as we stay focused, also, on other threats and other eventualities loom-ing out there in an uncertain world.

Ten years after Desert Storm, the old B-52 soldiers on as a power projection platform.


THE LAND WAR

The land forces components of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm were spun into initial ac-tion within hours of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Serving as the bed-

rock for a coalition force structure that would fight the first major military campaign of the post-Cold War era, the U.S. land force component transitioned from an urgent defen-sive response to an overwhelming offensive juggernaut in less than six months.

TAKING THE DEFENSIVE

Some of the U.S. success in rapidly responding to the cri-sis in what would become the Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO) stemmed from a revised U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) regional defense concept outline plan and a series of CENTCOM “Internal Look” exercises that had been conducted during the month prior to Iraq’s invasion. Based in part on this planning foundation, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and CENTCOM Commander-in-Chief (CINCCENT) General Norman Schwarzkopf were immedi-ately dispatched to Saudi Arabia where they met with King Fahd on August 6. By this time, Iraq had placed six divisions on the ground in Kuwait where they possessed the option of continuing their attack south into Saudi Arabia.

The August 6 meeting resulted in an invitation for U.S. forces to assist in the defense of Saudi Arabia with CENT-COM deployments beginning the next day. Among the first forces to arrive on August 8 were two squadrons of U.S. Air Force air superiority fighters and elements of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Division Ready Brigade. The arrivals took place on the same day that Saddam Hussein announced Kuwait’s annexation by Iraq.

Based on an August 10 vote by the Arab League, the first coalition forces, a contingent of troops from Egypt, arrived in Saudi Arabia on August 11. U.S. land forces also contin-ued to arrive over the next few days and weeks with the first

elements of a 16,800-man Marine Air Ground Task Force ar-riving on August 14.

The size and capabilities of these expanding forces fo-cused the initial strategy identified by CENTCOM planners on the deterrence of further Iraqi aggression and the defense of Saudi Arabia and other friendly regional states. However, with the failure of U.N. sanctions and the steady increase of coalition force strength, coalition strategists began to focus on the possibility of the offensive air, land, and sea operations that would be necessary to eject Iraq from Kuwait.

This would eventually evolve to focus on several “key the-ater military objectives.” As identified in Operations Order 91-001, these objectives included the attack of Iraqi politi-cal-military leadership and command and control; gaining and maintaining air superiority; severing Iraqi supply lines; destroying known chemical, biological, and nuclear pro-duction, storage, and delivery capabilities; destroying Iraqi Republican Guard Forces in the KTO; and the liberation of Kuwait City.

While some of these key objectives called for an aerial solution, others mandated the use of the expanding array of coalition land force units and equipment.

EQUIPMENT TECHNOLOGIES

As the most important test of American arms in a quarter of a century, Desert Storm coincided with the dawn of a new technological era on the battlefield.

At one end of the technology spectrum, Operations Des-ert Shield and Desert Storm saw the final combat participa-tion by the Iowa-cass battleships USS Wisconsin and USS Missouri. The ships were seen by many as floating Cold War icons, with World War II ending on the same wooden decks that were now being used to deliver lethal ordnance onto Iraqi positions in occupied Kuwait.

On the other hand, the new era was characterized by the broad introduction of combat technologies that included

THE LAND WARby Scott R. Gourley


Global Positioning Systems, precision guided munitions, enhanced survivability measures, and stealth technologies. Land force applications of the emerging battlefield technol-ogies ranged from the M1A1 Abrams main battle tank to the AH-64A Apache helicopter.

The Apaches, for example, made their first mark prior to the start of official land force offensive actions.

In the early hours of January 17, 1991, two groups of Apache helicopters flew north over hostile lines. Guided in part by a U.S. Air Force special operations MH-53J Pave Low helicopter, the Apaches took firing positions in front of two Iraqi air defense radar-warning complexes.

At 0238, the first shot of Operation Desert Storm was fired from the Hellfire missile launcher on the first Apache. Over the next few minutes, the two groups of Army attack helicopters opened a 40 kilometer-wide cor-ridor in air defense warning capabilities and signaled the

Above: An M1A1 Abrams lays a smoke screen. The Abrams ruled the battlefield. Right: U.S. Marines man an M-19 grenade launcher equipped with a night vision sight. The American ability to fight at night was a major advantage.



start of the wars air bombardment campaign – a 40 day aerial assault frequently described in near Biblical pro-portions.

The Abrams main battle tank also saw significant at-tention in the months, weeks, and days prior to the start of the ground campaign. With the original arrival of defensive forces from the 82nd Airborne Division supported by the questionable firepower provided by obsolete M551 Sheridan armored reconnaissance vehicles from the division’s 3-73 Armored Battalion (since disbanded), coalition planners were anxious to begin supplementing those armored assets with the modern Abrams tanks.

However, many of the deploying U.S. land forces were equipped with the “basic” M1 with 105mm main gun. To guarantee battlefield overmatch against Iraq’s top-of-the-line T-72M1 tanks, coalition planners focused on the need to field the M1A1 with 120mm main gun and on-board chemi-cal defense capabilities. Their concern led to the upgrade and fielding of more than 1,000 120mm Abrams tanks prior to the start of the land war.

Other new ground force weapons also participated early in the aerial attack phase of Desert Storm as on January 18, when a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) firing unit

Top: Dispersed trucks of the 364th Supply Company. Logisticians were among the unsung heroes of Desert Storm. Above: Helicopters, like the Marine CH-46 shown, proved themselves invaluable in many battlefield roles. Opposite page: Above: A Chapparal SAM vehicle. Coalition ground forces were prepared for an air threat that never materialized.


THE LAND WAR

from the U.S. Army’s 1-27 Field Artillery launched history’s first long range precision tactical missile strike against an Iraqi SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) site located 30 kilo-meters inside Kuwait.

The countdown to “G-day” (official start of “ground” op-erations) also saw other field artillery units join in the fray through the conduct of numerous “counterbattery raids” by both cannon and rocket ground weapon systems. As they would continue to do throughout the conflict, coalition plan-ners used the application of combat firepower to “shape the battlefield” to present the optimum combat environment for U.S. forces and their allies.

These firepower raids conducted by coalition land force were also supplemented by a range of additional opera-tions performed by special operations forces (SOF). Spe-cial operations ranged from feints and actions designed to deceive the enemy regarding the true nature of coalition war plans to combat raids to destroy and deny Iraqi use of a particular asset. Among SOF elements conducting these missions were members of the Army’s 1st Battalion/75th Ranger Regiment, who deployed to Saudi Arabia on Febru-

ary 12, 1991 and subsequently conducted raids and provided a quick reaction force in support of coalition forces.

STAGED FOR ACTION

While the raids and attacks conducted prior to G-day forced early activation of ground force prisoner of war op-erations (the U.S. Marine Corps, for example, reportedly began accepting enemy prisoners of war into their lines as early as January 17), the pre-G-day air campaign phase also provided planners with a last chance to organize and posi-tion land force elements for the long-awaited ground cam-paign. Moreover, some land forces used this period to begin the movement of the more than 65,000 combat and support vehicles required for the violent “eft hook” envelopment that would be key to the coalition land victory.

After months of gathering, training, and waiting, the co-alition ground force staging process had crafted a battle-field arrayed with five major formation groupings.

The western-most grouping on ODS battle maps was based around the XVIII Airborne Corps and included the



82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Divi-sion, 24th Mechanized Division, 6th French Armored Divi-sion, and both 12th and 18th Aviation Brigades.

To their right, the U.S. VIII Corps grouping included the 1st Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, 3rd Armored Divi-sion, 1st Cavalry Division, (Initially used as theater reserve, 1st Cavalry Division conducted a critical G-day feint into a huge dry ravine between Iraq and Kuwait where Iraqi de-fenders mistakenly expected the main attack to occur, 1st British Armored Division, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and the 11th Aviation Brigade.)

The center battlefield grouping was crafted around Joint Forces Command – North (JFC-N) and included the 3rd Egyptian Mechanized Division, the 4th Egyptian Armored Division, the 9th Syrian Armored Division, an Egyptian Ranger Regiment, a Syrian Commando Regiment, the Royal Saudi Land Forces (RSLF) 20th Mechanized Brigade, the 4th RSLF Armored Brigade, and the Kuwaiti Shaheed and Al-Tahrir Brigades.

To the right of JFC-N was a grouping created around the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (1 MEF), which included the 1st Marine Division, 2nd Marine Division, and the attached 1st Brigade, known as “Tiger Brigade,” from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored Division.

Joint Forces Command-East (JFC-E) made up the right flank of the coalition ground campaign. Units assigned to this grouping were broken into three separate task force for-mations: Task Force Omar included the RSLF 10th Infantry Brigade along with Motorized Infantry Battalions from both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman; Task Force Oth-man included the RSLF 8th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, the Kuwaiti Al-Fatah Brigade, and an Infantry Company from Bahrain; Task Force Abu Bakr included the Saudi Ara-bian National Guard 2nd Motorized Infantry Brigade along with a Mechanized Battalion provided by Qatar.

OFFENSIVE ACTIONS

With G-day officially beginning on February 24, 1991, the ground campaign represented the combined efforts of land, air, and sea elements to cut Iraqi lines of communications in southeastern Iraq, to liberate Kuwait, and to destroy units of the Iraqi leader’s “elite” Republican Guard located in the KTO. The operational concept involved a massive coordi-nated attack along parallel routes into Kuwait and Iraq with an enormous left flanking attack through the Iraqi desert that not only avoided prepared enemy strong points but also trapped large elements of the Iraqi Army, presenting them with the options of surrender or annihilation.

As noted above, coalition forces involved in the “left hook” envelopment operation had actually been moving 24 hours a day for more than three weeks prior to G-day. The movement process saw the westernmost grouping, led by the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, move approximately 250 miles. To their right, VIII Corps units moved more than 150 miles. All in all, the movement of personnel and equipment during

this period reportedly exceeded that moved by General Pat-ton’s Third Army during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge.

By necessity, the movement of combat and combat support systems had to be accompanied by the massive relocation of logistic support assets. Although successfully performed by the 22nd Support Command, the enormous relocation pro-cess helped to highlight a number of logistics hardware defi-ciencies for coalition planners (see following story).

G-DAY

G-day actions got their violent start at 0400 local time on February 24 when 1 MEF’s 1st Marine Division breached two belts of obstacles and continued their attack toward the airfield at Al-Jaber. Less than two hours later, the 2nd Ma-rine Division repeated the breaching and attack process on 1st Division’s left flank. The Army’s Tiger Brigade, equipped with the highly lethal M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, sup-ported the M60A1-equipped Marines through the destruc-tion of Iraq’s armored reserves located behind the obstacle barriers.

Furthest to the right, JFC-E began moving at 0800 on G-day, quickly securing initial objectives and continuing movement to the north supported in part by 16 inch naval gunfire delivered by a U.S. battleship operating in the Per-sian Gulf.

XVIII Corps’ G-day movement began with a massive he-licopter air assault by the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Di-vision. The assault was accompanied by ground movement of the 6th French Light Armored Division (supported by the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division), the 24th Infantry Division, and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Following its massive ground movement, VIII Corps elements crossed the line of departure, slashing multiple lanes through Iraqi obstacle belts and continuing their northward attack.

In the center, elements of JFC-N attacked and encoun-tered Iraqi “fire trenches,” securing initial objectives and establishing blocking positions to thwart any potential Iraqi armor counterattacks.

February 25 saw continuing coalition attacks on all fronts. To the west of the coalition front, XVIIIth Airborne Corps units continued their supporting attacks to isolate Iraqi forces.

To that corps’ right, VIIIth Corps’ 2nd ACR, along with the U.S. 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, continued to expand their attacks north. Meanwhile, the 1st British Armored Di-vision attacked and destroyed Iraq’s 12th Armored Division.

In the center, JFC-N’s Egyptian Corps expanded their bridgehead, capturing quantities of Iraqi troops and equip-ment in the process.

1 MEF elements continued the attacks they had started on the 24th. 1st Marine Division consolidated on the newly-seized Al-Jaber airfield and penetrated to within an esti-mated 10 miles of Kuwait City while 2nd Marine Division elements continued their attacks with resulting capture or destruction of nearly 200 enemy tanks.


THE LAND WAR

M551 Sheridans would have been badly outgunned had the Iraqis continued into Saudi Arabia.


THE LAND WAR

Above: Follow on forces of the Army, Marines, and coalition gradually built up to a massive force. Below: U.S. Marines roll into Kuwait City airport.

THE LAND WAR

Although continuing its successful attacks northward, JFC-E movement began to slow somewhat on the 25th due to huge numbers of surrendering Iraqis who swamped the prisoner of war processing system.

By the early hours of February 26, retreating Iraqi forces – composed of elements of the Kuwait occupation force as well as Iraq’s III Corps – were caught in a gridlock of looted greed stretching along the main highway back to Iraq. Pun-ishing aerial attacks turned the congestion into a massive kill zone.

XVIII Corps’ 24th Mechanized Infantry Division complet-ed a 200-mile desert crossing to reach the Euphrates River Valley. Together with the penetration of VII Corps units deep into Iraq, the combat actions anchored the coalition left flank and completed the encirclement of Iraqi forces in Ku-wait and southern Iraq.

JFC-N continued seizing its objectives before elements turned east to seize the Al-Salem airfield.

1 MEF’s 1st Marine Division seized Kuwait International Airport while 2nd Marine Division secured transportation nodes to the west and northwest of Kuwait City. To the east, JFC-E was positioned to lead the liberation drive into Ku-wait City itself.

By the end of the land war’s second day, coalition ground forces had captured an estimated 30,000 enemy prison-ers of war and destroyed or neutralized 26 out of Iraq’s 42 ground divisions.

Continuing the advances that began on the night of Feb-ruary 26 that included attacks against three Republican Guard Mechanized Divisions – the Hammurabi, the Medi-na, and the Tawakalna – VII Corps elements attacked Iraq’s northern flank on February 27 to hold those encircled forces in position.

Meanwhile, JFC-E took position in the southern part of Kuwait City while JFC-N prepared to enter the city from the west.

It was against this background of continuing coalition success that Desert Storm offensive operations were ceased on February 28, just 100 hours after the official start of the ground campaign.

Any discussion of the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf must include one final note. While the land war component of Des-ert Storm may have looked effortless to some, it did come at a price in American lives. Casualties may have been light, but they did occur and the sacrifices of those soldiers and their families must never be forgotten.

Aftermath. The muzzle of a destroyed Iraqi tank’s cannon frames oil well fires lit by the retreating Iraqi forces.



SOME LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE LAND WAR

In terms of lessons learned, the land war operations as-sociated with Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm represent one of the most thoroughly studied military actions in history.

At the strategic level, ODS marked the first major inter-national conflict of the post-Cold War era. As such, posi-tive lessons stemmed in no small part from the enormous changes that were taking place in Eastern Europe and the collapsing Soviet Union. The changes allowed the develop-ment of a new American strategy, one focused more on re-gional threats than bi-polar global conflicts.

The initial pursuit of that new strategy focused on devel-opment of a powerful coalition force that extended its ties far beyond regional borders. The unmistakable success of the coalition process has led to changes in strategic think-ing around the world. In fact, one of the latest examples of that new philosophy can be found in a growing 21st century interest in creating regional response forces in Europe and elsewhere.

More recent conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo have only served to reinforce that regional and coalition fo-cus. In fact, regional conflicts are now considered so likely by senior U.S. military planners that the U.S. Army has cre-ated entirely new Brigade Combat Team forces and is pre-paring to equip those elements with new “medium weight” classes of combat vehicle systems.

At the tactical level, many of these critical lessons were actually recorded and reported at the start of land combat operations.

A case in point can be found in a newsletter dated Au-gust 1990 (No. 90-7). The “Special Edition” newsletter was prepared and released by the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), U.S. Army Combined Arms Training Activ-ity (CATA), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Titled “Winning in

the Desert,” the document was being printed for distribu-tion within days of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

The first publication was based on the concept that “the principles and fundamentals of combat do not change in the desert.”

By necessity, the first “lessons learned” product tended to focus on broad generalities – from “You can’t drink too much water” to “Don’t play with snakes” – but served to pave the way for the extensive “harvesting” of lessons that would continue for months and years.

Within a month, for example, CALL had released Winning in the Desert II (Number 90-8, Special Edition, September 1990), which began to supplement many of the operation-al and regional generalities with specifics on “The Iraqi Threat” and including vehicle bumper markings for some Republican Guard elements.

The immediacy of lesson assessment continued through-out both Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Moreover, the rapid dissemination of these lessons took on added impor-tance for the Army and all armed service participants as the cessation of hostilities happened to coincide with final-ization of the FY92 defense budget by defense and Congres-sional representatives.

This budgetary consideration was highlighted by Army representatives in a March 13, 1991 document titled “Army Weapons Systems-Performance in Southwest Asia.” Citing as its purpose the relaying of “initial, emerging feedback on the performance of key Army systems in Southwest Asia,” the authors of the six-page paper go on to acknowledge that “As the Army and Congress work together to finalize the fiscal year 1992 budget, and future budgets, it is important to consider how well our systems actually performed in the most realistic, comprehensive operational test conducted to date – Operation Desert Storm.”

THE LAND WAR

by Scott R. Gourley


It is the immediacy of the report gathering that provides this initial post-war offering with such a wealth of valu-able lessons regarding critical land warfare and land war-fare support systems like the Abrams tank, Bradley fight-ing vehicle, multiple launch rocket system, Hellfire missile system, army tactical missile system, Copperhead artillery projectile, Patriot missile system, helicopter aircraft surviv-ability equipment (ASE), AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Blackhawk, CH-47 Chinook, OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, and the Joint Sur-veillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).

The Abrams tank, for example, was praised in the emerg-ing Congressional feedback for its reliability, survivability, and lethality.

In terms of reliability, the report points to operational readiness rates that “exceeded the Army’s 90 percent stan-dard” for both VII Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps after 100 hours of offensive operations. “Especially noteworthy was a night move by the 3rd Armored Division covering 200 kilo-meters (120 miles). None of the more than 3,000 tanks in the division broke down.”

Emerging survivability lessons from the heavily armored M1A1s focused on the findings that “Seven separate M1A1 crews reported being hit by T72 tank rounds. These M1A1s sustained no damage, attesting to the effectiveness of our heavy armor.”

Above: M1A1 Abrams battle tanks test their guns before taking part in an exercise. Right: The threat of chemical and biological warfare was taken very seriously throughout the campaign.


On the flip side, however, the T72s served as unwilling teachers for combat lessons focused on lethality and bat-tlefield performance.

“Other crews reported that the M1A1 thermal sight al-lowed them to acquire Iraqi T72s through the smoke from oil well fires and other obscurants,” the report reads. “The T72s did not have the same advantage. This situation gave the Abrams a significant edge in survivability, engagement range and night maneuver. Additionally, tank crews report that the M829A1 tank round was extremely effective against the T72.”

The value of thermal sights was reinforced by emerging comments regarding the performance of the Bradley Fight-ing Vehicle: “[Bradley] crews reported that the infrared sights were very effective, even during sand storms. Other crews reported that the 25mm Bushmaster cannon was more lethal than they expected...”

With the identification and quantification of additional combat lessons, the Army developed a post-war upgrade to a large portion of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle Fleet. Known

High mobility trucks were vital in supplying fast-moving forces.


THE LAND WAR

as the “ODS Upgrade Package,” the field retrofit program addressed six specific vehicle modifications identified dur-ing the lessons learned process. The upgrade, first fielded in FY96, includes an eyesafe laser rangefinder (which is also incorporated in the M2A3 [Improved Bradley Acquisi-tion System] (IBAS), a combat identification system, GPS/POSNAV, driver’s vision enhancer, missile countermeasure device, and restowage of onboard equipment.

In concluding the short congressional summary, the Army authors noted that “[O]ur systems performed well in combat. These reports are not only gratifying, but they also validate Army research, development and acquisition pro-grams over the past years. This is not to say that everything performed perfectly or that we are entirely satisfied with what we have. In fact, the operation showed that in some areas there is much room for improvement. For example, we noted needs for improvement in: Identification friend or foe (IFF) to reduce casualties inflicted from friendly fire; Heavy equipment transport; Night vision for aviators in feature-less terrain; Helicopter communications during nap-of-the-earth flight; Anti-jam capability for tactical satellite com-munications; [and] Improving the lethality of light forces.”

Many of these preliminary combat lessons were highlight-ed again four months later when then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney delivered his “Interim Report to Congress.” Delivered in mid-July 1991, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War notes that: “...During the war, we learned a lot of spe-cific lessons about systems that work and some that need work, about command relations, and about areas of warfare where we need improvement. We found we did not have

enough Heavy Equipment Transporters or off-road mobility for logistics support vehicles. Helicopters and other equip-ment were maintained only with extra care in the harsh desert environment... We were ill-prepared at the start for defense against biological weapons, even though Saddam possessed them. And tragically, despite our best efforts, there were here, as in any war, civilian casualties and losses to fire from friendly forces. These and many other specific accomplishments, shortcomings and lessons are discussed in greater depth in the body of this report...”

The issue of heavy equipment transporters (HET) repre-sents one of the greatest equipment shortfalls highlighted by Desert Storm / Desert Shield. Specifically, U.S. plan-ners had to tap an amazing array of coalition sources to assemble the requisite number of heavy equipment tractor and trailer systems needed to support combat operations.

As of February 4, 1991, the cornerstone of the Desert Storm heavy transport fleet consisted of 456 M911 tractors with a like number of M747 trailers. However, since this total fell far short of the required total, the Army was forced to resort to a variety of sources to satisfy the shortfall. For example, 48 additional transport tractors were purchased from Mack Truck. These tractors were used to pull 24 Kalyn trailers and 24 Landoll trailers. To this, Italy added 60 Iveco/Fiat heavy equipment transport and trailer systems with a large number of Tatra vehicles also added to the fleet from both Czechoslovakian and (East) German sources. Another 134 tractor and trailer combinations were leased from mul-tiple sources while the remaining tractor and trailer com-binations required to satisfy the 1,295 vehicle total were provided by host nation support and other coalition forces.

Yet in spite of the effort that went into assembling this international transport armada, few if any of the vehicles as-sembled in the HETS model mix met the 70 ton requirement mandated by the M1 series main battle tank. Fortunately, this particular lesson learned was translated to a mate-riel solution when the Army began fielding its new HETS, composed of the M1070 tractor and M1000 trailer, starting in 1993.

Along with a need to haul heavy armor forward over large desert expanses, Secretary Cheney’s report introduction al-ludes to the fact that Desert Shield/Desert Storm pointed out weaknesses in the U.S. land logistics support fleet. The good news is that the highlighting of these weaknesses was partly attributable to the performance of several new ve-hicle systems that showed what off-road mobility could and should be.

The U.S. took a mixed fleet of 5-tons to the Persian Gulf, with newer systems like the M939A2 spotlighting the mobil-ity and performance limitations of their aged cousins. Post-war years have seen even greater advances in this portion of the U.S. tactical wheeled vehicle fleet as both 2-1/2-ton and 5-ton members of the Family of Medium Tactical Vehi-cles (FMTV) have entered operational use.

Desert Shield/Desert Storm operations by the (then) new-ly-fielded Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT)

A civilian worker spraying the finishing touches of desert camouflage on the Abrams. The importance of civilian contractors’ efforts should not be underestimated.


also received rave reviews for mobility performances in off-road areas throughout the KTO. However, the off-road excellence also helped to exacerbate mobility restrictions in a U.S. fleet of “line haul” tractors and trailers that were originally designed and procured for an on-highway opera-tional profile.

Post-war years have seen further quantum improvements in the battlefield logistics arena with the fielding of the Ar-my’s Palletized Load System (PLS).

Likewise, the tragedy of friendly fire casualties continues to be addressed through evolving programs like the vehicle-based Battlefield Combat Identification System (BCIS) and Combat Identification for the Dismounted Soldier (CIDDS).

Another capabilities shortfall surfacing in the DoD report involved a lack of U.S. defense capabilities against biologi-cal weapons. A clear example of a rapid post-conflict ma-teriel solution to this deficiency can be seen in the devel-opment and fielding of the M31 series Biological Integrated Detection System (BIDS). Although U.S. forces reportedly received rushed fielding of limited biological detection ca-pabilities during the conflict, it was not until fielding of the multi-component BIDS that the U.S. military could truly claim to possess the world’s first capability for monitoring, sampling, detecting, and presumptively identifying battle-field biological warfare (BW) agents.

As a post-conflict development program, BIDS was de-veloped by the U.S. military with participation by several agencies including the U.S. Army’s Chemical and Biological Defense Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. For the most part the basic system features off-the-shelf

technology of a type found in many microbiology or re-search laboratories. The subsystems were integrated in an S-788/G lightweight multipurpose shelter and carried on the rear of an M1097 series High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV).

By the middle of 1994, the Army had identified and con-verted a “motorized smoke” unit to begin training as its first BIDS-equipped biological defense company.

Along with biological defense needs, ODS also present-ed the Army with a mandate to accelerate their fielding of a previously-planned Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Reconnaissance System (NBCRS). The M93 was the six-wheeled lightly armored vehicle serving as a rolling labora-tory that samples and analyzes air, water, and ground sam-ples for signs of weapons of mass destruction.

The original U.S. Army XM93 NBCRS design was based on the Thyssen Henschel TPz1 “Fox” NBC Armored Vehicle first fielded with the (West) German Army in the mid-1980s. In March 1990, a team from General Dynamics Land Sys-tems Division (GDLS) and Thyssen Henschel received the U.S. contract for the Fox System Improvement Program (SIP). Among other things, the contract called for the pro-duction and support of 48 interim configuration Fox vehicles to be completed by October 1993.

However, less than six months after that contract award and three years short of the scheduled vehicle deliveries, U.S. Army elements were tasked for Operation Desert Shield without a viable NBCRS capability. In response to the obvious shortfall, 60 “Americanized” NBCRS systems were “gifted” by Germany to the U.S. Armed Forces.

The “Americanized” vehicles were modified in Germany to include an integrated U.S. communications and weapon system, smoke grenade launchers, engineering and other changes. The completed vehicles were then delivered to Ri-yadh, Saudi Arabia, while U.S. Army troops trained to per-form NBCRS functions at the German Army NBC School in Sonthofen, Germany.

Although performing well in ODS, the 60 “American-ized” Fox vehicles did not satisfy the Army’s February 1991 NBCRS Required Operational Capability (ROC) require-ments. As a result, in addition to working in concert with Thyssen Henschel to produce the 48 basic vehicles desig-nated as “limited production urgent fielding,” GDLS also produced 10 vehicles modified to meet ROC requirements. Those vehicles, designated XM93E1, entered operation-al testing in the spring of 1994. An additional five “basic systems” which the Army had purchased under an earlier foreign materiel evaluation program brought the U.S. “Fox” fleet total to 123 vehicles.

Based on the results of the post-war operational testing in 1994, the U.S. Army type classified the XM93E1 as the M93A1 on June 26, 1995, and approved existing Fox systems for upgrade and fielding.

Secretary Cheney’s July 1991 DoD report to Congress also addressed several lessons learned as a result of ground operations by U.S. Marine Corps elements. Although ac-

THE LAND WAR

Early arrivals: A 101st Airborne company deploys to Saudi Arabia.

THE LAND WAR

knowledging in the introduction that “We were not nearly good enough at clearing land and sea mines, especially shallow water mines,” and that “This might have imposed significant additional costs had large scale amphibious op-erations been required,” the report praised the “versatility” of Marine Corps land systems including the Light Armored Vehicle.

At the same time that the DoD assessment was being de-livered to Congress, Marine Corps service representatives were releasing their own equipment assessments stem-ming from lessons learned during the ground war experi-ences of 1 Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF).

In one example, the Marine Corps Research Center (MCRC), Quantico, Virginia, released a July 1991 assessment of Armor/Antiarmor Operations in Southwest Asia (MCRC Research Paper #92-0002). Prepared by MCRC’s Battle As-sessment Team’s (BAT) armor/antiarmor team, the analysis focused on the armor/antiarmor and mechanized aspects of MEF operations during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

According to the report’s writers, “The effort focused on interviewing any member of the MEF, regardless of military occupational specialty or service component, who fired an antiarmor weapon (Dragon, TOW, rocket, 25mm gun, tank main gun or assault amphibious vehicle (AAV) weapon sta-tion) during either Desert Shield or Desert Storm. It was considered to be just as relevant to collect data from indi-viduals who may have missed the target, or experienced an erratic or malfunctioning weapon, as it was to collect expe-riences from gunners or crews who claimed to have hit the target.”

Like the Army, the Marine Corps assessment team quick-ly identified the M1A1 Abrams as the greatest tank on the battlefield. Moreover, the Marine Corps assessment was based on a unique comparison factor since armored units of the MEF’s Ground Combat Element (GCE) were primarily equipped with M60A1 tanks and only received a battalion of M1A1s during the final stages of Operation Desert Shield. Supported by additional M1A1 observations drawn from Ti-ger Brigade (a brigade of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored Divi-sion attached to I MEF), the assessment team concluded, “The M1A1 was undoubtedly the best tank on the battlefield. Marine and Army (Tiger Brigade) gunners successfully en-gaged targets at 3,000+ meters and recorded first round hits while shooting on the move. Although the Abrams clearly had a number of advantages in the KTO over every model of Iraqi tank, and for that matter the M60A1, it was the vehi-cle’s thermal sight and laser-range finder that provided the crew the capability to dominate the battlefield.”

USMC combat experience with the M60A1 also surfaced a number of “disadvantageous” lessons, ranging from its lack of thermal sight to a shortage of reactive armor.

In terms of tank lethality, the assessment team members noted that “In the case of main gun effectiveness both the M1A1 (120mm) and M60A1 (105mm) were effective against any model Iraqi MBT, from any aspect, with both sabot and high explosive ammunition. The only comment wor-

thy of note in this regard was that sabot rounds typically passed completely through the vehicle without causing an instantaneous catastrophic explosion. Crews reported a delay of from 1 – 4 minutes before the target exploded and burned. Crews were more impressed and confident with the immediate destruction associated with high explosive (HE) rounds and frequently switched accordingly. Engage-ments took place at an average range of 1,200 meters for the M60A1, and this without a thermal sight. The M1A1 had significantly longer average ranges, but the team collected insufficient data to provide a statistically valid average. In-terviews with M1A1 crews generally placed engagements somewhat beyond 2,000 meters and almost always through the thermal sight.”

The 25mm cannon, which had drawn positive comments in the preliminary Army report to Congress, also surfaced among U.S. Marine Corps lessons drawn from experience with their Light Armored Infantry battalions: “The 25mm chain gun proved effective in every engagement against Iraqi armored fighting vehicles, personnel carriers, etc. Short bursts of from 3-7 HE rounds were sufficient to cause immediate burning and catastrophic destruction of the vehicle. The 25mm ammunition in use by the GCC was not able to penetrate Iraqi tanks. [Army] Tiger Brigade crews reported that penetration and destruction of T-55/69 MBTs was commonplace with the identical 25mm gun mounted on the ‘Bradley’ fighting vehicle. The difference in effec-tiveness is in the depleted uranium (DU) ordnance fired by Army crews...”

Many similarities between Army and Marine Corps ground war lessons continued through reported experienc-es with Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs), “Friendly Fire” fratricide and NBC defense.

Then-Secretary Cheney identified five “general lessons” taken from the war in his July 1991 report to Congress. They included the importance of decisive presidential leadership, a revolutionary new generation of high technology weap-ons, a high quality military, the need for sound planning in an uncertain world, and the fact that “It takes a long time to build the high-quality forces and systems that gave us success.”

But, regardless of the any overarching strategic or tac-tical hardware issues and programs that might have been defined or refined as a result of ODS experiences, perhaps the single greatest lesson learned during the war involved the importance of the individual.

The U.S. Marine Corps assessment is clearly on the mark in the opening of its Summary / Recommendations section: “Americans, and the American military especially, tend to be enamored with technology and seek hardware solutions to every problem. It is where we put our money and most of our effort. What really worked in SWA [Southwest Asia] was the people, and if we continue to invest in this aspect of the force, and not fall victim to an over reliance on technol-ogy and a ‘knee jerk’ search for the technological solution, we will be better off in the long run.”



NAVAL FORCES IN THE GULF WAR

Most observers think of the Gulf War as a land and air campaign; surely the naval aspect was secondary. In fact it was primary: With-out the seapower, the war could not have been

fought at all. For the United States, seapower is, above all, about access to the world beyond our shores. In an age of air transportation, it is too easy to forget that most heavy goods still travel by sea, because that is by far the easiest way to move them. It still only pays to move very valuable lightweight cargo – such as people – by air. It would, for ex-ample, be unimaginable to try to move an air base, with its airplanes and its resources, along a highway or through the air. Yet an aircraft carrier is exactly that, a moving air base.

It is also extremely important to note that a U.S. warship is U.S. territory, generally not subject to any other coun-try’s authority in the way that a base on foreign soil is. Given such mobile territory, the U.S. government can de-cide what it wants to do in a crisis situation, without having to gain local support. In many cases a foreign government wants our support but risks domestic or local opposition if it requests it. By moving ships into place we can solve that government’s problem.

Finally, seaborne mobility still exceeds land mobility. A seaborne force can threaten an enemy with a wide variety of attacks, and those ashore may find it very difficult to build up defenses at each threatened place. Conversely, once de-fenses have been erected ashore, they are difficult to with-draw and reposition. In a larger sense, the sea is both po-tential barrier and potential highway. The force facing Iraq had long sea flanks in both the Gulf and the Red Sea, both of which it could use – and both of which the Iraqis could use as venues of attack.

THE NAVAL WAR

By Norman Friedman


Overall, U.S. seapower guarantees access to war zones overseas and tries to deny such access to an enemy. U.S. naval forces demonstrated all of these virtues during the Gulf War.

First came access, which meant much more than simply moving a mountain of materiel to the Gulf. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, he warned the other regional governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, that to accept U.S. aid would be to oppose Arab unity. At least in theory, Saudi Arabia was quite vulnerable to such arguments. The legitimacy of

the Saudi government is tied to its role as guardian of the most sacred sites in Islam. To allow hundreds of thousands of disbelievers into the country might well be construed as treasonable. Indeed, Saudi extremists such as Osama bin Laden have made exactly that argument since the Gulf War. There was, then, a very real question as to whether the Saudis would ask for U.S. assistance, even though they felt quite threatened by Saddam’s army just across the border in Kuwait.

The guided-missile cruiser USS Mississippi at sunset during Desert Storm.

COMING SPRING 2011From the publishers of The Year in Defense™ comes a special edition:

AIRPOWER AT SEA: A Century of U.S. Naval Aviation

AIRPOWER AT SEAA C E N T U R Y O F U . S . N A V A L A V I A T I O N

AIRPOWER AT SEA: A Century of U.S. Naval Aviation will cover the extensive history of United States naval aviation, examine its current status, fleet, programs, and priorities, as well as look at the future fleet and technologies that will shape the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard of the future. Many stories

will be told through interviews with those currently serving and those who have served before them.

If you are interested in advertising in AIRPOWER AT SEA: A Century of U.S. Naval Aviation call Ken Meyer today at 813-639-1900


THE NAVAL WAR

Naval forces solved this problem. When U.S. carriers moved into the Gulf, they offered a degree of protection to Saudi Arabia, whether or not the Saudis had asked for it. They removed any veto Saddam may have imagined that he could exercise. The Saudis quickly asked that U.S. forces be deployed into their territory. Even then, for some months the carriers and accompanying missile-armed surface ships provided both much of the air de-fense of Saudi Arabia as well as the main striking force against a renewed Iraqi thrust. The carriers’ aircraft were soon outnumbered by those flown directly into Saudi Arabia, but the latter arrived without their ground radars and command and control, or the spares and munitions

and maintenance equipment which were needed to make them truly effective. That heavy material came mainly by sea. Thus, without the carriers, it would have taken sev-eral months to erect an adequate integrated air defense. Without spare parts, the land-based aircraft could not have mounted more than a very few sorties per airplane. The carriers offered instant capability because they pro-vided not only the airplanes but also everything the air-planes needed; that is why it matters that heavy objects (like ships) can move easily when they are supported by the sea. Without the naval presence in the Gulf, it would have been easy for Iraqi aircraft to have blocked the build-up through the ports of the Gulf. Seapower covered the build-up in Saudi Arabia.

Much the same could be said for U.S. Marines onboard ships in the Gulf. Like the carriers, these amphibious units offered instant, albeit limited, combat capability. Unlike the carrier-based aircraft, they had little further significance, since Marines were soon flown into Saudi Arabia, to match up with materiel from prepositioning ships. For about a de-cade the U.S. Marines had maintained a Maritime Prepo-sitioning Squadron at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, against just such an emergency: a land attack somewhere in Southwest Asia. The prepositioning ships carried equip-ment sufficient to arm a Marine brigade for 30 days of com-bat. The troops themselves flew in by air. The only other U.S. quick-reaction force was the pair of Army airborne divisions, whose role was to seize and hold airfields to be used by troops flying in. This time they held the airfields into which the Marines, and later many more army troops, flew.

Left: Crewmembers in protective masks during a nuclear-biological-chemical drill. Right: A pack of VF-74 and VF-103 Tomcats aboard USS Saratoga. Tomcat pilots were often frustrated by Iraqi pilots who fled after detecting the F-14s’ radar emissions.


THE NAVAL WAR

Thus the Marines equipped from the sea provided much of the initial defense of Saudi Arabia against any renewed Iraqi thrust.

At the same time, U.S. and coalition seapower denied Saddam access to the resources he needed to maintain his own forces. The United Nations imposed an embargo, which was enforced by an international force of frigates in the Arabian Sea. They blocked arms shipments. Until that moment, Saddam had spent very little on spare parts; famously, he followed a policy of maintenance by Federal Express. Like all embargoes, this one could not be leak-proof, but it was effective. Blocking Saddam’s spares had important wartime consequences. For example, on the first night of the war, coalition aircraft and missiles destroyed the Iraqi air defense centers. After that, the coalition ner-vously awaited their reconstruction – which never came. It was precluded by the lack of spares – due to the embargo. One irony of the embargo was that the ship-tracking system which made it possible had been developed for the very dif-ferent Cold War purpose of tracking the Soviet fleet. It had only completed its tests in June 1990, on the eve of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The embargo had another important virtue. It allowed the growing coalition to do something about Saddam Hussein before it had sufficient forces in place to eject him from Ku-wait. Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990; the war did not begin for another six months. Had the coalition done nothing at all during that interval, it would have been un-der enormous pressure never to fight, to be content with negotiation which would have left Saddam in posession of some or all of his prize. By providing a means of pressuring Saddam, the embargo gave the developing coalition time to

Above: Underway replenishment of the USS Ranger and the French destroyer Latouche-Treville. Above right: Ships of Task Force 155 during Operation Desert Storm, including the carriers Saratoga, America, and John F. Kennedy. Below: The Australian guided-missile destroyer HMAS Brisbane. Note the radar absorbent material draped over the ship’s rails.


THE NAVAL WAR

build forces – and the consensus for military action. Too, the embargo was a kind of halfway house, a test of whether international pressure actually could eject Saddam from Kuwait. Its lesson was that force was needed. Without the embargo, the military assault would have been widely de-nounced as excessive.

Once the holding force was in position, a buildup began. About 90 percent of the mountain of materiel came by sea, because it is still much easier to move heavy weights that way rather than by air. Shipping was unopposed, but not because Saddam lacked friends along the routes the ships took. In particular, Libyan dictator Muammar Qa-daffi backed Saddam – and he had six old Soviet-built sub-marines. In the past, Qadaffi had sometimes been quite belligerant. U.S. naval forces had attacked his navy when he had proclaimed parts of the Mediterranean his territo-rial waters. He had ordered a Scud ballistic missile fired at a NATO navigational (Loran) station in Sicily. Most ominously, in 1984 a Libyan roro merchant ship had laid a string of mines in the Red Sea, specifically to embar-rass the Saudi government by attacking pilgrims en route to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. U.S. naval forces, particularly submarines, were assigned to watch the Libyans to ensure free passage of the Mediterranean for shipping en route to Saudi ports.

It helped enormously that Egypt, through whose Suez Canal the ships had to pass en route to the Gulf, was a coalition partner. Egypt borders on Libya, and Qadaffi had often denounced the Egyptians’ friendship with the United States. It is probably not too much to say that the Egyp-tians relied partly on deployable U.S. seapower, particularly carriers, to help them in the event that Qaddafi made any

Above: VA-72 Corsairs and VA-75 A-6E Intruders off the USS John F. Kennedy are refueled by an Air Force tanker en route to targets in Iraq and Kuwait. Right: USS Missouri. Desert Storm was the swan song of the old battleships. Below: U.S. and coalition warships in Manama, Bahrain just after Desert Storm. The command ship USS Blue Ridge is at right, with the frigates USS Hawes and what appears to be HMS Boxer astern of her at left.

move. The long history of U.S. seapower in the Mediterra-nean helped ensure that, when the route through that sea was crucial, it was available. The alternative, to route ships around Africa, would have required much longer voyages. Since ships would have taken much longer to get to the Gulf area, many more would have been needed to deliver mate-rial at the same rate. Shipping was quite tight in any case, and the added strain might have been unsupportable. Some NATO navies, such as the Germans, deployed mine counter-measures craft to the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal to deal with a possible (and plausible) Libyan mine threat to the canal.

Ships deliver their material to ports. Modern merchant ships carry their goods in containers, which are unloaded by massive special facilities at pierside. In all of the Gulf area, only three modern ports were available: Al-Jubayl and Ad-Dammam in Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Had the Iraqis managed to shut them down, the buildup would have stalled. The Navy did have means of unloading mod-ern merchant ships without port facilities, but that would have been extremely slow. The campaigning season in the Gulf was short. Without the ports, it would probably have been impossible to build up fast enough to mount the ground war during the few available months early in 1991. Nothing could have been done until the fall. Given such a delay, the coalition might well have collapsed. Although the Iraqis lacked the naval force to attack the shipping pouring materiel through these ports, they did, at least po-tentially, have the ability to knock out the ports. No other target would have offered anything with as much leverage. The potential threat to the ports came from Saddam’s air power and from any special forces he might possess. The carriers, the missile ships in the Gulf, and then the ground-based fighters in Saudi Arabia, countered Iraqi air power. Naval harbor defense units mounted patrols to ensure that the Iraqis did not mount midget submarine or special-forc-es attacks on the ports. U.S. Coast Guard harbor security units were also used. The Gulf powers’ naval forces also patrolled against hostile small craft or suspicious-looking commercial ships.

Saudi Arabia, the base from which the coalition army (and its ground-based aircraft) attacked, is flanked by the Red Sea and the Gulf. Across the Gulf lay Iran, whose in-tentions were by no means clear. Iran had recently fought a long bloody war against Iraq, and thus might applaud Iraqi defeat. On the other hand, the Iranian government was clearly anti-Western; indeed, the Western powers had tilted in Iraq’s favor during the Iran-Iraq War. Thus the Iranians might also applaud (or assist in) Western humiliation by Iraq. Both Iran and Iraq had (and have) ambitions to domi-nate the Gulf. It might be imagined that, from an Iranian point of view, the ideal outcome would have been to see the coalition smash Iraq, only to be humiliated and driven from the Gulf in its turn, prehaps after having been badly blood-ied in the fight against Iraq. Iran had a substantial air arm, and throughout the war it represented a potential threat.

For that matter, the Gulf was a potential avenue of ac-cess for Iraqi strike aircraft, which might try to avoid overflying the heavily defended frontier between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Because the Iraqi air force did not choose to contest initial coalition air attacks, it was not destroyed in the air. Through much of the war, its aircraft sat in their protected hangarettes, an “air force in being” against which the coalition had to maintain considerable defenses. It might be suspected that the Iraqi air force was sitting out the war because it was not competent to challenge the coalition; but that was not certain. Actu-ally destroying the hangarettes ate up air efforts badly needed against more urgent targets.

The U.S. carrier force in the Gulf guarded against both forms of flanking air attack. Late in the war its mission seemed particularly urgent. Once the hangarettes came under air attack, many Iraqi aircraft suddenly fled to Iran. Saddam advertised the mass flight as an effort to save his air arm. If that were accepted, then the air arm could well be ordered to return to attack the coalition force. It now seems that the mass flight was just that, an attempt by in-dividual Iraqis to save themselves from the relentless bom-bardment, but that was by no means obvious at the time. Carrier-based fighters had to be deployed to deal with this potential threat.

The carriers’ role was not merely defensive. They con-tributed heavily to the massive air attacks carried out through the war: Overall, naval aircraft contributed about 23 percent of combat sorties, which was roughly their proportion of coalition combat aircraft. Carriers operat-ed from both Saudi flanks, the Red Sea and the Gulf. By so doing, they considerably complicated the task of Iraqi air defense, which otherwise might have concentrated on aircraft flying directly over the border from Saudi Arabia. Carrier aircraft also contributed some unique capabili-ties. The Navy’s EA-6B Prowler was the best jamming air-plane in the Gulf, so it often supported Air Force strikes. Similarly, the TARPS (tactical reconnaissance) pods available only to naval aircraft provided the Gulf com-manders with their best reconnaissance asset; it had no Air Force equivalent.

In addition to carrier strike aircraft, the Navy contribut-ed large numbers of Tomahawk missiles, in the first com-bat use of this weapon. Tomahawk became famous for its precision; some commentators claimed that it could even stop at traffic lights to turn up the appropriate streets towards its targets. In fact only Tomahawks and stealthy aircraft were permitted to attack targets in Baghdad. The aircraft could only hit targets their pilots could see, so they were barred from strikes when the weather closed in. That left Tomahawks, and they and the airplanes in effect alter-nated.

In a wider sense, to the extent that the navy could run freely through the Gulf, it could threaten the seaward flank of Saddam’s position in Kuwait. During the war, the Marines rehearsed a major amphibious landing near Ku-


THE NAVAL WAR


THE NAVAL WAR

wait City (in fact this option had been rejected by Gen. Schwarzkopf, who feared severely damaging the Kuwaiti seafront). Saddam seems to have expected just such an attack, and he emplaced a substantial blocking force. His expectations were presumably strengthened by his belief that coalition troops could never successfully navi-gate the trackless desert. Any attempt to outflank him had, therefore, to come from the sea. Conversely, the very visible seaborne threat presumably deflected Saddam’s attention from the land flank which coalition forces ac-tually struck. The naval threat was made more credible by an extensive operation to clear the mines Iraqi forces had sown in the northern part of the Gulf, specifically to defend against a landing. In this process the cruiser Princeton and the amphibious carrier Tripoli, the latter acting as a mine countermeasures command ship, were damaged. Even though the Marines never made an as-sault, Saddam’s defending force could not be reoriented to reinforce the troops facing Coalition forces coming up from Saudi Arabia. Even though the Marines invaded Ku-wait over land, some of their air support came from Ma-rine Corps Harriers (AV-8Bs) flying from Marine amphibi-ous ships in the Gulf. These ships’ inherent mobility made it easy for them to keep step with the fast-moving Marine

force, whereas Harriers ashore would have needed a suc-cession of advanced air fields to keep up.

For his part, Saddam also saw the sea as a possible attack route. Before the ground war began, he mounted a pow-erful assault on a border position in the village of Khafji, which was guarded by U.S. Marines and Saudi troops. The attack was repulsed with heavy losses. We now know that the Iraqis planned a seaward flanking movement, using their small fleet of fast attack craft. U.S. and British naval helicopters spotted and then destroyed these craft, abort-ing the flanking movement. Because neither the land nor the sea elements of the plan was at all successful, the Iraqi operations were dismissed as quite minor. In fact Saddam apparently saw them as potentially decisive; if he could in-flict heavy enough losses at the outset, he could convince the Americans and their partners to bargain their way out of the war. Naval forces contributed heavily to his failure.

Clearly naval forces in themselves did not win the war; the bulk of combat was done by land-based aircraft and by ground troops based in Saudi Arabia. However, naval forc-es were a necessary precondition for the build-up in Saudi Arabia, and they contributed enormously to the fighting. Without U.S. seapower, there would have been no war and no victory.

A Marine Harrier from VMA-513 prepares to refuel. Harriers flew from sea and shore. Their amphibious ships gave them great mobility.


NAVAL LESSONS OF THE GULF WAR

For the Navy, the Gulf War was an introduction to the post-Cold War world. It was the first major joint air operation since Vietnam, and it involved extensive tactical ground attack for the first time since Viet-

nam. It was also the debut of the non-nuclear version of the Tomahawk land attack missile. The Gulf War also included littoral operations, such as mine countermeasures and an attack against small Iraqi missile attack boats, which are likely to feature in future Third World conflicts. Each of these experiences generated important lessons and chang-es in hardware and tactics.

Prior to the outbreak of war, but continuing during and after it, was an embargo directed against Iraqi sea traffic. Iraqi shipping could approach the Gulf anywhere over a very wide arc, and even with coalition partners few frigates and destroyers were available to enforce it. Saddam, moreover, was well aware that errors in enforcing the embargo might prove so embarrassing that it would have to be suspended. For example, he loaded baby food above contraband on-board a ship crewed in part by Iraqi women. Saddam’s hope was that they could film burly American Marines roughing them up onboard a wholly innocent ship. In, fact the Marines knew exactly what the ship was carrying, and the attempt failed. That was much more than happenstance.

What made the embargo possible was a sophisticated ship-tracking system devised originally to support missile attacks against the Cold War Soviet fleet. It employed shore-based data fusion centers, communicating by satellite with computers aboard deployed ships. The computers were nec-essary in order to display the massive information collected and collated ashore, and only satellites could carry enough information to maintain a timely picture of shipping identi-ties and movements. None of this was a great surprise.

What was surprising, at least in retrospect, was that a system which had passed its acceptance test only in June 1990 was operational in quantity, and not just aboard U.S. warships, that September. The key was that the system de-pended mainly on computer software, not specialized hard-ware. Software is very easy to copy. This particular software

ran on a standard commercial computer, many hundreds of which were in Navy warehouses. It did have to be connect-ed to a satellite modem, but that, too, was a standard item. None of the system had to be integrated with anything else onboard a ship, so it was very easy to install – which the U.S. Navy did, not only onboard its own ships, but also on board coalition ships helping to enforce the embargo. The difference from earlier military systems, which could never be made in great numbers, and which took years to field, was dramatic. In effect, the embargo experience validated a more general move from specialized military command systems to the current practice of hosting specialized soft-ware on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. The ship-tracking system was called JOTS (Joint Operational Tactical System), and its success may have been the most important lesson of the war.

At the outset of Gulf War planning, the Navy proposed that, as in Vietnam, it be allotted separate attack sectors in Iraq. Its logic was simple: Land and carrier operations are very different. For example, it is relatively easy to de-mand precise timing of aircraft launched from a land base.

THE NAVAL WAR

By Norman Friedman


THE NAVAL WAR

A carrier depends on factors such as the wind, which may preclude the same sort of precision. Gen. Horner, the Air Component commander, rejected the Navy’s proposal. He was far more interested in integrating all air operations over Iraq, whatever their origin. Given such integration, for example, aircraft could fly apparently random patterns, converging only at their targets. It would be nearly impos-sible for an Iraqi air defense commander to concentrate his resources to defend those targets. This type of attack required very detailed planning and coordination. Not only did flight paths have to be set in advance, in great detail, but also radio frequencies and call signs (so as to preclude radio interference).

The Air Force had planned this sort of operation for years, and it had the computers needed to set it up. Once the basic plan had been set, individual units were given their detailed orders. That was easy enough on land. However, the carriers lacked both the communications channel to receive their orders and the computers to break them down into require-ments for individual aircraft; the Navy had never planned to fight this way. During the Gulf War, the printed copies of the plans had to be delivered onboard carriers by aircraft flying from Riyadh, where the plans were developed.

The Navy’s postwar response was to fit all the carriers, and many other ships, with higher-capacity satellite links, using different satellites. The carriers were also fitted with computers suitable for receiving and processing Air Force-style integrated air plans.

Above: Low tech: USS Wisconsin providing fire support for U.S. Marine and coalition forces against targets in Kuwait, and (right) A sailor at the bow of the frigate USS Robert G. Bradley watches for mines as the ship patrols the Gulf.


THE NAVAL WAR

This result seems, in retrospect, somewhat ironic. The Iraqis never challenged coalition dominance of their air-space, so the elaborate coordination the Air Force planning system made possible was never really needed. Moreover, coordination imposed a lengthy planning cycle on the air assault, which precluded attacks on pop-up targets such as Iraqi aircraft, which were moved around Iraqi cities in a 24-hour cycle. So perhaps a truer lesson of the air war was that too many aircraft excessively complicate air planning. Perhaps all of those Air Force and coalition aircraft really weren’t needed. Many of them hit strategic targets, the de-struction of which seems to have had little or no impact on the Iraqis. In that case, the truest lesson of the air war would be that a much smaller number, such as that onboard the six Navy carriers in the area, would have sufficed.

The air war also carried some practical lessons. One was offensive. Before the war, the Navy had concentrated on providing its F/A-18 Hornet attack aircraft with bomb fire control systems so good that they could regularly place bombs within a 30-foot circle. On that basis it drastically limited purchases of smart bombs. The theory was that a bomber could not return to a carrier with a full bomb load aboard; it would have to jettison any unused bombs into the sea. That meant one thing for cheap “dumb” bombs, and quite another for a pricey laser-guided weapon. During the war, it became clear that even the accuracy afforded by the computer fire control system could not suffice. For example, when attacking bridges, it was vital to hit the precise point on the roadway over a supporting member of the bridge structure. Otherwise the roadway might well be holed, but the bridge would not fall. It took a laser designator to do this job. With the war over, the Navy began buying laser-guided bombs in much greater quantities, and it is now modifying GPS-guided bombs with terminal seekers for even better accuracy. In so doing, it is accepting that aircraft will carry many fewer bombs, few enough so that they can land back on their carriers with their loads.

On the defensive side, it was even clearer than in Vietnam that fighters had to identify their targets before shooting. In a coalition war, “blue-on-blue” (i.e., friendly on friendly) attacks might have devastating political consequences. During the Gulf War, the solution was to give controllers onboard AWACS aircraft a veto over nearly all air-to-air engagements. They required that a fighter have two inde-pendent means of verifying target identity. Naval fighters, which generally relied on orders from their carrier- or E-2-borne controllers, lacked both onboard IFF interrogators and alternative identifiers (they did have stabilized tele-scopes). In the aftermath of the war, there was much great-er interest in fitting naval fighters with IFF interrogators and with other identification electronics. There was also a much greater overall interest in IFF.

Tomahawk proved extremely successful. Before the war began, the strike planners had so little faith in it that they had not even included it in their plans. By the end of the war, Tomahawk was an essential element of the U.S. arsenal.

However, the war revealed some important limitations. Foremost among them was the missile’s reliance on terrain mapping. Tomahawk verified its course by radar altimeter. The altimeter was quite secure. However, reliance on it meant that Tomahawk could not be used until a target area had been comprehensively mapped from space. For example, the then-Defense Mapping Agency spent the six months between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the opening of hostilities in 24-hour days producing the necessary digital maps of Iraq. Without that work, Tomahawks could not have been used at all. The key to making Tomahawk usable in future Third World conflicts was not further mapping from space, but rather modifying the missile so that it could navigate on the basis of GPS data, which was available everywhere. That was done in the Block III version of the missile, which was first used in Bosnia a few years later. Given GPS guidance, Tomahawk could be used in snap attacks, such as those against targets in Afghanistan and in the Sudan in 1998.

The war revealed another shortcoming. Unlike a ballis-tic missile, Tomahawk requires a full flight plan in order to attack a target. Flight planning can be a lengthy process. In 1991, forward commanders lacked any ability to develop their own flight plans. Instead, they were furnished with a computer disk containing many plans. They could review what they had, and they could adjust the missile’s final tar-get, but they could not modify the basic flight paths. As a consequence, few routes into some key target areas, such as districts of Baghdad, were available. On one unfortunate day, a stream of Tomahawks flew exactly the same path. The Iraqis could not react quickly enough to hit the first few missiles, but they certainly shot down several of the others. The postwar solution, made possible by much more power-ful computers, was an Afloat Planning System, by means of which missile flight plans could be developed in a forward area. It helped that missile flights were no longer restricted by the need to fly over particular mapped areas, thanks to the adoption of GPS instead of the earlier terrain-matching guidance technique.

The Gulf War proved that submarines could deliver Tom-ahawk land-attack missiles effectively. At the time, that seemed little more than a stunt; surface ships could car-ry more missiles, and they could more easily be reloaded. However, submarines are now often the preferred Toma-hawk shooters. Surface ships must operate in mutually supportive groups, whereas submarines operate alone. At a time when personnel are scarce, solo operations greatly reduce the number of men per missile. Also, because a submarine is covert, she can be sent to an area in which a crisis is brewing without either exacerbating the crisis or revealing U.S. intent to attack shore targets. These are ex-tremely valuable advantages.

Then there was the littoral aspect of the war. Iraq had a substantial mine inventory, and from the beginning it was clear that the naval command in the Gulf would have to deal with it. The usual technique is mine hunting: Special-


THE NAVAL WAR

ized craft literally search the bottom, foot by foot, examin-ing any suspicious object. Objects classified as mines are destroyed one by one. The process is extremely tedious. Worse, the mine hunters are expensive, so they are not nu-merous. Thus mine clearance is slow, and only one area can be cleared at a time. That was a particular problem, since mine clearance was a prerequisite for any amphibious as-sault. Amphibious attack generally relies on surprise. Typi-cally several beaches can be struck. If the potential victim of the attack cannot be certain of which beach will be at-tacked, he has to spread defending forces over all of them. Indeed, by adopting air-cushion landing craft (LCACs) the Marines had considerably complicated the enemy’s task of identifying likely assault beaches. Any such confusion, however, would quickly be resolved if mine countermea-sures craft spent a few weeks clearing the approaches to the chosen beach.

The Navy tried an alternative: mine reconnaissance. After all, Saddam Hussein was laying his mines, prior to the outbreak of war, in clear view, and he was making no real attempt to preclude observation. It did not seem too difficult to determine which areas had been mined. Coalition warships would simply avoid those places. The lengthy mine hunting phase could be avoided until after an initial assault was made. In fact, the two U.S. war-ships that were mined, U.S.S. Princeton and U.S.S. Trip-oli, were in places thought to be clear. Something was very wrong. Was the entire reconnaissance concept to blame? Once the ships had been mined, it became much more urgent to clear the northern end of the Gulf by more conventional means.

The postwar conclusion was that the concept had not been disproven. The problem was more subtle. Iraq had two specialized minelayers, ex-Soviet T-43 class sweeper/

minelayers. It had been assumed that they alone would lay the minefields, so that by tracking them the fields could also be tracked. While the T-43s roamed the northern part of the Gulf, numerous Iraqi and ex-Kuwaiti small craft were also at sea. It was assumed that all of them were carrying loot back to Iraq. Many of them were, but many others were acting as improvised minelayers – laying the fields which, among oth-er things, accounted for the two U.S. warships. That should not have been a complete surprise. For example, during the Iran-Iraq War the Iranians used numerous dhows to lay mines. Neither was a case of deception; the conventional minelayers simply lacked the capacity to dispense enough mines quickly enough.

If minelayers could not be identified, was mine recon-naissance still possible? The U.S. conclusion was that un-derwater vehicles might be able to spot mines. That would not be mine-hunting, because a high rate of false positive identifications might be acceptable. The point would not be to deal with mines one by one, but rather to avoid a poten-tially mined area altogether. Reconnaissance of this type would have to be covert, because it would often be carried out before hostilities opened. Moreover, overt reconnais-sance might identify U.S. intentions quite as clearly as mine clearance. The solution currently being developed is an un-manned underwater vehicle, which a submarine can launch and retrieve. The vehicle carries mine detection sonars, and it has an endurance of several days.

Reconnaissance cannot entirely displace more tradition-al means of mine clearance. Once a force has landed, a wid-er area must be cleared for resupply. Clearance is needed to make resupply safe, and then to reopen an area to com-merce. The technology of mine hunting is well developed; the great current question is the extent to which helicopters can take over from surface craft.

Left: An Iraqi Silkworm missile. Only two were fired, one shot down by HMS Gloucester and the other falling harmlessly into the sea, but the threat remained a serious one throughout the conflict. Right: Battle damage to a VA-35 A-6E Intruder off the USS Saratoga. A-6s flew more than 4,700 sorties during the war, with four lost in combat.

2011 EDITION

COAST GUARDOUTLOOK The Year in

Special OperatiOnS 2010-2011 Edition

IntervIew:

>> Maj. Gen. Michael S. repass

Commander, Special Forces Command

FeatureS:

>> Haiti Initial entry Force

>> SOF Global Operations

>> Col. arthur “Bull” Simons remembered

>> Lt. Cmdr. roy H. Boehm: First SeaLTHE YEAR IN

HOMELANDSECURITY2010/2011 Edition

Katrina: Five Years After

The Times Square Bomber: Fluke or a Future Realized?PLUS

The DisasTer ThaT

WoulD NoT eND:

The BP oil sPill

iNTervieW: aDmiral ThaD alleN oN usCG, leaDershiP, BP oil sPill

The Year in

defenseWinTer 2011

2010 inREviEw

Straight up,

handS off

Vertical takeoff

unmanned aircraft

anti-acceSS

air defenSeS

uSed up, worn out

Cover Final.indd 1

1/24/11 3:49 PM

“Defense in Depth”www.defensemedianetwork.com

• Exclusive Web content• Complete full-text interviews• Breaking/up-to-date defense news• Expert commentary• Electronic archive of past issues• Photo essays

If you are interested in advertising in Defense Media Network call Darren Lewis today at 813-639-1900


Note that neither reconnaissance nor mine-hunting ap-plies to the land mines that an enemy has strewn at or above the low-water mark. They can be laid very quickly, and they are available in vast numbers. The current U.S. solutions are physical destruction, either by explosives or by a new type of laser-directed machine cannon carried onboard a helicopter.

The Gulf War was the last hurrah for the U.S. battleships and, by extension, for classical over-the-beach fire support. Both the decline of the battleships and the manifest prob-lems of mine countermeasures helped spur the Marines to a very different way of attacking shore targets. In the past, they planned a mass assault to seize a beachhead on which their supplies could be massed to prepare for a push inland. Since an enemy would probably try to defend that beach, they had to prepare for a classic assault, supported by heavy gunfire. Without such gunfire, assault might be impossible – if it had to be en masse. The Marines are there-fore shifting towards infiltration tactics. Small units will come ashore, and hopefully few if any will fall victim to any concentrated enemy mine defense. They will make their way inland, supplied from small dumps of material. The Gulf War showed clearly that GPS can help ground units find their way without landmarks, and GPS is clearly the key to the small units’ ability to find the dumps. No concentrat-ed beachhead is needed; the small units concentrate only when they reach their inland objective. The Marines call this concept STOM – Ship to Objective Maneuver.

There is a hitch. To keep the assault units small, they must be stripped of as much weight as possible. The Marines’ or-ganic artillery accounts for much of the weight a unit must carry with it. The proposed solution is to move the artillery offshore, onto a new destroyer, the DD 21 (Zumwalt class). It is not a replacement for the concentrated firepower of the past; it has nothing like the impact of a battleship, nor is it supposed to. Rather, it is intended to provide small Marine units advancing overland with the sort of fire support their own organic artillery now provides. Other hardware sup-porting the new tactical concept is the MV-22 Osprey, which is much faster than current Marine helicopters, hence which can reach more widely distributed units further inland.

In addition to mines, the Iraqis had coast-defense mis-siles (Chinese “Silkworms”) and mobile fast attack craft, some of them captured from Kuwait. They tried to use both. Towards the end of the war, two “Silkworms” were fired at the battleship Missouri, which was bombarding shore tar-gets. One fell into the water; the British destroyer Glouces-ter shot down the other. This type of danger had long been foreseen; many countries have bought coast-defense mis-siles. As in the Iraqi case, they are generally mobile, hence difficult to find and neutralize before ships come into range. In the Iraqi case, the missile had been tracked be-fore it was destroyed, and a UAV was sent back to find its launcher. Once that had been done, the battleship was able to demolish it with heavy fire. The larger lesson is that any amphibious ship needs its own self-defense system. The

“Silkworm” was among the clumsiest of modern anti-ship missiles, and even so it came fairly close to the battleship. The “Silkworm” incident helps explain why the new San An-tonio class LPDs are being fitted with a fairly sophisticated self-defense system and, for that matter, why other compa-rable amphibious ships are receiving air defense systems.

Then there were the fast attack boats. They proved quite vulnerable to helicopter attack. It turned out that the U.S. Navy lacked any organic capability to deal with them, how-ever. It had to place Army helicopters aboard destroyers and frigates. When the small Iraqi fleet sortied, U.S. Navy helicopters detected the attack boats, but they were de-stroyed by British naval helicopters and by U.S. Army heli-copters. Prior to the war, the Navy had modified a few he-licopters to fire the Norwegian Penguin missile, but it was quite massive – and quite expensive. It was too much to deal with a small attack boat. In the aftermath of the war, the standard Navy LAMPS shipboard helicopter was modi-fied to launch an inexpensive anti-fast attack craft missile, a version of the standard Army Hellfire which had appar-ently been quite effective in the Gulf.

Iraq represented only some of the threats which the Navy must overcome in a future littoral operation. For example, the Iraqis had no submarines, and they never mounted a credible threat against either the shipping bringing materiel to the Gulf or to the ports into which that materiel poured. Thus there are no anti-submarine lessons of the war. As for the ports, the Iraqi Scud missile offensive certainly shows that ports can be vulnerable to missile attack and thus that naval anti-missile defense ought to feature in future small littoral wars comparable to that in the Gulf. Without it there would not have been the sea-borne access which made the land campaign possible in the first place.

Dutch navy frigates deploying to the Gulf were fitted with Goalkeeper close in weapons systems (CIWS) when possible to defend against the anti-ship missile threat.


REPUBLICAN GUARD NEMESIS

The mission was straightforward – find, attack and destroy major Republican Guard elements, the heart of Saddam Hussein’s ground forces. In-tense realistic training and rehearsal, accurate in-

telligence, and technical advances enabled the application of overwhelming force by an allied coalition corps.

Traversing through dense minefields and over obstacles with massed armor and firepower, the coalition forces ex-ecuted complicated large-scale maneuvers against Iraq. The scope of this tank warfare had not been accomplished since World War II’s Africa campaign. These tricky maneu-vers by VII Corps armor were against an entrenched enemy equipped with Soviet-built tanks. Coalition deception op-erations, an integral part of overall Desert Storm strategy, helped to keep enemy units in place and off balance about the intended direction of attack.

Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, Army Chief of Military His-tory, then a lieutenant colonel and commanding officer of an M1A1 Abrams tank battalion, waited for the assault to begin. His 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, part of the 3rd Bri-gade of the 2nd Armored Division in Germany, deployed to Saudi Arabia a few months earlier. Now the tank battalion was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division as part of a third brigade. The division was assigned to breach and punch a hole through Iraqi defenses directly opposite. The breaching operation was essential to move logistics over the shortest route into Iraq, even though it was obvious that other co-alition armored divisions could outflank the worst of enemy defenses.

Massed firepower from the corps’ 669 artillery tubes ini-tiated offensive action. The VII Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Frederick M. Franks, Jr., USA, a tank officer, numbered 142,000 soldiers and included 1,587 tanks and 1,502 Bradleys and armored personnel carriers. The opposing Iraqi com-

mander later said that 90 percent of his artillery was ready to interfere with the attack across the deep minefield. How-ever, in a 24-hour U.S.bombardment, he lost most of his artil-lery capability.

Blades mounted on the front of M1A1 tanks began plow-ing lanes to cut holes through the huge minefield. In each lane, approximately one kilometer apart, a full battalion combat team moved forward. “There were a hundred armored vehicles or more, all on line in each lane,” Gen. Brown observed. “As far as the eye could see, tanks moved through the lanes, each about a dozen kilometers long.” He added that all of this movement had previously been re-hearsed in a rear area inside Saudi Arabia. A British Army unit moved through the minefield and immediately made enemy contact.

Gen. Franks wanted all of the divisions on line and Gen. Brown’s parent brigade pulled around the British 1st Ar-mored Division in a short arc. This passage-of-lines maneu-ver was extremely complicated, especially in the presence of enemy forces. Friendly units had to first be cleared while continuing to fight. As the attack progressed, the general’s tank battalion took the lead position in a brigade wedge formation, to begin smashing the Republican Guards with overwhelming firepower.

Three coalition divisions on line moved toward their ob-jective parallel with the western border of Kuwait. “The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment did a superb job of making contact and shaping the battlefield. The armored units were moving rapidly, much faster than Iraqi commanders an-ticipated,” Gen. Brown said. The use of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers enabled navigation while continu-ally maintaining speed. In Gen. Brown’s battalion there was a GPS unit in each of the company commander’s tanks. In each company, a receiver was in at least two of the platoon

REPUBLICAN GUARD NEMISIS

FEINT AND DECEPTION DOOMED IRAQI UNITS

By Clarence A. Robinson, Jr.


leader’s tanks. “This was a secret weapon that made all the difference,” he said.

“No sooner had we moved out the minefield lanes than we came under fire. But the Iraqis expected an attack to come from the direction of Wadi Al-Batin running along the Kuwait border. Because of this, Iraqi armored units were dug in facing south southwest and we came in to their flank from due west,” the general explained. “With firing posi-tions oriented the wrong way, they were not in a position to effectively fire at our armor. Gen. Brown’s battalion had 42 fully armed tanks in the attack, including a company in reserve.

“It was night and we were using thermal sights to reliably engage targets out to 2,000 meters, and some targets at 3,000 meters,” the general illustrated. “We were rolling up

their flanks and they could not present more than a dozen tanks at a time. In some cases, Iraqi tanks could not rotate their turrets, which were blocked by the spoil atop revet-ments. This kept them from firing in other than a generally forward position. Some Iraqi tanks tried to pull out of their holes to maneuver, but it was hopeless. Others remained in their revetments and were passed in the dark because their was no infrared signature for sensors to detect.

Some enemy tanks pulled out of revetments after Gen. Brown’s tanks passed them by, presenting a significant dan-ger from the rear. The Iraqi tanks got between the battal-ion’s main body and the reserve company, which was mov-ing up. Tough close-in fighting resulted. In another nearby VII Corps battalion, an Iraqi tank emerged from a revetment just as a Bradley fighting vehicle approached. The Iraqi tank

COMING SOON IN 2011

On Oct. 6, 1884, Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler issued General Order No. 325 establishing “a College for an advanced course of professional study for naval officers, to be known as the Naval War College.” Founded in Newport, R.I., the Naval War College is the oldest war college in the nation.

Over 125 years after its establishment a new publication entitled Naval War College: School for Strategists – Educating Leaders for 125 years is to be launched.

Feature stories will cover:

War GamesStrengthening maritime security

Cooperation for more resilient peace

Harvard of the Navy

If you are interested in advertising in Naval War College: School for Strategists call Peter Lewis today at 813-639-1900


was too close to engage, so the Bradley driver rammed it while its gun turret was traversing. A sergeant leaped from the Bradley and dropped a grenade down the tank hatch, according to Gen. Brown.

The general marveled at the consistency of Army train-ing that enabled armored units from Germany and a mecha-nized infantry division from Fort Riley, Kansas, to execute “incredibly difficult fighting maneuvers. Sergeant tank com-manders took it upon themselves to organize against Iraqi units moving in their rear. They maneuvered their Abrams to protect thin-skinned Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs). This was part of their training, to keep the APCs from ex-posure to direct fire weapons.” In this pitched battle, more than a hundred Iraqi tanks were destroyed without a single battalion loss.

The combat was “messy there for a little while, and Iraqi forces in this area proved to be very brave. The engagement was challenging; not at all like a Nintendo game, as some people seem to believe. Just before dawn, we ended up perched on top of an Iraqi dismounted infantry position,” Gen. Brown said. “At this location the Republican Guard had repositioned to face our flanking attack. However, in the dark they hadn’t got it quite right - infantry should have been forward of their tanks, but they were at the rear. We rolled through two layers of tanks and thought we had cleared Iraqi infantry.”

The general’s battalion discovered itself in the midst of a great many Iraqi soldiers. Some of the enemy tried to crawl behind the M1A1s to engage them from the more vulnerable rear with Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs). Gen. Brown’s tank and the adjacent tank of his operations officer were in position to bring their machine guns to bear. Thermal sights helped locate Iraqis crawling into firing positions. As this action unfolded, the reserve company arrived to add its firepower.

Unexpectedly, thermal sights on the Abrams, the gen-eral said, also proved capable of locating mines buried in the sand around Iraqi tank positions. The mines absorbed sufficient heat from the sun to produce a thermal image on Abrams tank displays. Infrared sensors helped M1A1 driv-ers maneuver while avoiding mines. During firefights, shells from Iraqi tank guns repeatedly struck Abrams tanks, but failed to penetrate the sloping armor on the front and sides.

The general noted that it was difficult to tell cause and effect. “However, as daylight broke, our tanks found them-selves in a difficult situation among some 2,000 Iraqi sol-diers all along the division line. The Iraqis quickly realized how much coalition armor they were facing. An Iraqi tank on the move some 3,000 meters away was fired on by one of the M1A1s, which blew it away - one round, one kill,” he said. The enemy quickly surrendered.

More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed on the battlefield in the brigade’s sector. An accurate count may never be known because some crews were trapped inside burned out tank hulks. The Abrams crews fired 600 rounds and destroyed 300 enemy tanks. Continuing the attack, Gen. Brown’s bat-

talion fought a number of smaller skirmishes while moving north and east. His unit cut through the Republican Guard to reach the southern edge of VII Corps’ offensive, halfway into Kuwait. En route to another objective near Al Busayyah, the battalion moved into a blocking position along Highway 8 to halt Iraq’s escape from Kuwait.

Desert Storm provided “a wisp of the future in the val-ue to sensors and intelligence systems,” said Gen Brown. Throughout the ground war the Iraqis, on their own familiar territory, were surprised by speed, maneuver and accurate fire during nighttime engagements from directions they did not expect, he concluded.

REPUBLICAN GUARD NEMISIS

Above, left: Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, USA, later chief of military history, commanded a battalion of M1A1 Abrams tanks during the Desert Storm ground war. Then a lieutenant colonel with VII Corps, his 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, 1st Infantry Division, conducted a large-scale flanking as-sault against Republican Guard forces equipped with Soviet-built tanks. Above, right: Atop a U.S. Abrams M1A1 tank, after battles in Iraq and Kuwait, then-Lt. Col. John S. Brown, USA, prepares to redeploy. His bat-talion breached a minefield before flanking a large number of Republican Guard tank forces, engaging them in fierce combat. Below: An Abrams training in the desert. Superior, realistic training meant American tank crews were able to use their technology to its fullest extent.


EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS

One of the unforgettable symbols of 1991 was the bizarre-looking F-117A Nighthawk, the world’s first stealth combat aircraft. Looking like some-thing out of a Batman movie, the -117 seemed

born from another world or time. There was some truth in that notion, since the Nighthawk had been built to support new ideas about how air campaigns should be prosecuted. Able to evade most enemy radars and then deliver a pair of laser-guided bombs (LGBs) with pinpoint precision, the F-117 was a “decapitation” weapon. Its mission was to de-stroy high-value enemy command, control, communica-tions, and intelligence (C3I) targets without requiring or risking large numbers of strike and support aircraft that might suffer losses in heavy anti-air warfare (AAW) envi-ronments.

The F-117A did this all and more during Desert Storm. Today, just the movement of F-117s into a troubled region of the world is a signal that America is serious about its commitment, and willing to put the best it has forward. This is an amazing development, especially when you consider that the technology to build the F-117 and other stealth weapons did not even exist at the end of the Viet-nam War. The story of the Nighthawk is a tale that tells how a military force moves from an attrition-based strategy to one built on precision as the means of driving an enemy to the negotiation table.

The story of stealth in Desert Storm began in World War II, with the debut of radar in combat. Almost as soon as the British used their chain of home-based ra-dar stations to help defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, the so-called “Wizard War” began. For the next six years, each side strove to counter the other’s radar developments. Out of these efforts came such well-known techniques as radar warning receivers, elec-tronic jamming, and chaff/“window” decoys. All proved useful in degrading the capabilities of enemy radar sys-tems, though they were heavy, expensive, and not suit-able for installation into every platform that might need such protection.

This led to various passive efforts to degrade the perfor-mance of radar. The most interesting came from German research on radar-absorbent coatings, along with struc-tures and shapes that might deflect the electronic beams. Key among these were the Tarnmatte (camouflage mat) and IG-Jaumann radar absorbent material (RAM) blankets used to hide U-boat snorkels while operating near the surface. There also were some developments in jet-powered flying wing designs by the Gotha Aircraft Company and Horten Brothers, which had very low radar cross section (RCS) pro-files. All of these fell into Allied hands at the end of World War II, were examined and analyzed, then quietly put into storage in favor of more obvious technologies of jet propul-sion and guided missiles.

The next three decades saw aircraft designers worldwide working to improve the speed, performance and weaponry of combat aircraft, with little thought about their vulnerabil-ity to radar detection or guided weapons. Only after heavy losses to radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) during Vietnam and the 1973 Yom Kippur War were self-protection jammers and decoys made standard equipment on tactical aircraft. Vast amounts of money also began to be spent on development and pro-curement of radar hunting weapons and aircraft.

The problem was that the Soviet Union and its client states had something new in their defensive bag of tricks: the Integrated Air Defense System (IADS). An IADS is a large centralized data and voice network, with radars, AAA guns, SAMs, and ground-controlled fighters all tied to a primary control center. By the 1970s, the Soviets and their Allies were deploying mobile versions of IADS that could advance with their field armies under a defensive AAW “bubble,” relatively safe from enemy air attack. Thus for good reasons in the mid-1970s U.S. defense officials began to look for technologies that might defeat the IADS and per-haps even radar itself.

Strangely, the beginning of the technology that we today call stealth was to be found in an obscure technical docu-ment published in 1962 by a Russian physicist named Pyotr

STEALTH

GETTING STEALTH INTO THE GULF WAR

By John D. Gresham


F-117s of the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing. The F-117A Nighthawk was one of the technological revelations of Desert Storm. Nearly invulnerable to Iraqi air defenses, F-117s struck 40 percent of the strategic targets.


Ufimtsev. His paper, benignly entitled “Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction,” was part of a body of work published to describe the behavior of radio waves in real-world situations. In particular, Ufimtsev’s doc-uments laid out the actual mathematical formulas and cal-culations needed to describe the RCS of a particular object when a radar wave reflected off of it. This clearly was a huge step in the construction of an airframe with a small RCS. Ironically, so obscure was his work that the Soviet govern-ment allowed it to be published worldwide!

In 1971, a translator at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency saw the document and thought that it might be useful. When the document showed up at the Defense Ad-vanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), it was real-ized that Ufimtsev’s calculations might prove useful in the construction of certain types of aircraft and missiles. A small study contract was issued to six aerospace compa-nies, which resulted in the Experimental Survivable Testbed (XST) contract to Lockheed and Northrop. XST was a “pa-per” airplane contract, with no prototypes being built and the winner having the design judged best. Key to this was a small-scale test model which would be mounted on a pole at a radar test range for testing of its radar return. While the Northrop design was very good, the Lockheed model was al-most undetectable. Quickly, Lockheed was given a contract to produce two flying demonstrator aircraft, and the whole program (known as Have Blue) was classified as a “Black” project. In effect, the entire stealth effort, its people, bud-get, and results, no longer existed to the public or even on the federal budget.

Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works” was the only manu-facturer in the world that had previously built low-observ-able aircraft from scratch. In the 1950s and ’60s, Lockheed built a whole series of specialized reconnaissance aircraft and drones for the CIA and Air Force, some of which were

specifically designed to reduce their vulnerabilities to radar. In particular, the A-12 (the SR-71 Blackbird was developed from this single-seat CIA version) was the first aircraft de-signed from scratch to minimize its radar signature. Have Blue would take advantage of this earlier effort, in addition to the shaping that could be developed by taking advantage of Ufimtsev’s calculations.

The key to the Lockheed design was based upon shap-ing, the form of which came from the results of studies de-veloped from Ufimtsev’s formulas. The Skunk Works design team led by Ben Rich (the successor to the legendary Kelly Johnson) decided that a faceted design would give them the best baseline level of stealth against the widest variety of enemy radars. Called the “Hopeless Diamond” by Lockheed engineers, the shape of Have Blue was designed to break up and scatter incoming radar waves, much the way reflective facets of a gemstone or dance hall “disco ball” do. This idea of using shaping to do the majority of the work in a stealth design was radical for its day, previous efforts having been based upon RAS and RAM. In fact, despite some reports to the contrary, the F-117A is built mainly from conventional aircraft aluminum, with very little in the way of exotic mate-rials or composites in the airframe. Now those earlier tech-nologies would be used to fine-tune the Have Blue design and suppress any reflective “hot spots.”

This faceted design points out the real genius of the Skunk Works and the challenges they faced turning Have Blue into a production combat aircraft. The shape of Have Blue was dictated as much by contemporary mid-1970s computer technology as any other factor. Ufimtsev’s equa-tions required a huge amount of processing power to run, and heavily taxed the mainframe and mini-computers of the day. A smooth contour design (like the later B-2A Spirit or F-22A Raptor) would have taken years of computer simulation to design, and Lockheed did theirs in just months. Another problem was that while the Have Blue prototypes had a very low RCS for their time, they could never have flown with a conventional flight control system. Only the development of digital flight control systems in the late 1960s made it pos-sible to make such a shape (essentially a flat-surfaced lift-ing body) actually fly through the air.

Nevertheless, both Have Blue prototypes were lost due to crashes during testing, though neither loss had anything to do with the basic design. The birds were stealthy and held a lot of promise in the eyes of senior Department of Defense and U.S. Air Force leaders, so the decision was made to move forward. Another “Black” contract was awarded to Lockheed, this time for full-scale development and eventual production of a stealth strike aircraft that would be techni-cally flagged a fighter. It would be armed with passive sen-sors (no active radar), have only a single pilot, carry all its fuel and weapons internally, and be armed only with pre-

STEALTH

Northrop Grumman’s B-2 could be considered second generation stealth.


STEALTH

cision guided munitions (PGMs) to hit those IADS control centers and other high-value targets at the center of Soviet-style military forces. It would carry no defensive armament, countermeasures, or other system for aerial combat, and would not even have supersonic speed. Its stealth and the planned concept of operations would be its armor against enemy defenses, along with a program of denial, deception, and black-as-a-coal mine security to keep everyone in the world guessing just what it was capable of. Even the plan’s official designation, F-117A Nighthawk, was classified Top Secret until a public unveiling in the late 1980s.

A total of 59 production F-117As would be ordered and delivered, along with the necessary organization and sup-porting infrastructure needed to make it into a combat war-plane. This included building a multi-billion-dollar airbase near the Tonopah Test Range (TTR) in Northern Nevada where they could practice their nocturnal combat routines, and stay as far away from prying eyes and camera lenses as possible. The Air Force also stood up a new combat wing, the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) to provide a unit for the new jets to operate within. The 37th was staffed with some of the finest personnel in the entire U.S. Air Force – hand se-lected volunteers who always grew weak in the knees when they first saw the new “Black Jets.”

New materials, structures, weapons, and other systems had to be developed to meet the objectives for not only a minute RCS (about that of a small bird), but also suppres-sion of infrared, ultraviolet, and other telltale emissions. These new technologies had a vast influence on the stealth designs begun after the F-117A, including the B-2A bomber, the AGM-129 cruise missile, and eventually the F-22A fight-er. The JSF designs also owe much of their shapes to stealth design. There even were spin-offs to existing aircraft and missile systems. For example, the F-16C Fighting Falcon and B-1B Lancer both had major reductions in their RCS thanks to minor redesigns of their shapes and applications of small amounts of RAS and RAM. Similar improvements were made to the RGM-84 Harpoon and BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles, greatly improving their survivability in high-ly defended AAW environments.

First combat use of the F-117 came in December 1989, when the 37th TFW was tasked to launch a precision attack with laser-guided bombs to support a planned special op-erations “snatch” of Gen. Noriega of Panama in the early stages of Operation Just Cause. While the kidnapping op-eration was cancelled at the last minute, two F-117s flying non-stop from TTR each delivered a diversionary strike next to a barracks that was to “stun and disorientate” elements of the Panamanian Defense Forces. Press reports later indi-cated that the Nighthawks had missed their targets, when in fact they had laid the LGBs exactly where planned. The other criticism, that the -117s had been used as a public-ity stunt, was equally inaccurate. The fact was that at the time, the 37th TFW was the only active-duty Air Force unit in the continental United States that was equipped to deliver LGBs. The rest of the Tactical Air Command (TAC) units that

might have done the job were in the middle of transition-ing to new aircraft and targeting systems, and were thus unavailable.

When Kuwait was invaded in 1990, the 37th was literally in the middle of a command change, with Col. Al Whitley taking over from Col. Tony Tolin. In spite of the command be-ing in transition, the 37th was quickly put on alert to send a squadron of Nighthawks to Saudi Arabia. This was the first large-scale overseas deployment for the F-117, and the world was treated to the incredible sight of 22 of the black jets lined up on a taxiway at Langley AFB, Virginia. The squadron was getting ready for their trans-Atlantic trip to King Kha-lid Airbase at Khamis Mushayt, one of the most impressive and isolated of the third-generation airfields constructed by the Royal Saudi Air Force. The fine facilities, combined with excellent support from the U.S. Air Force at home and the local RSAF authorities meant that Whitley and his troops could concentrate on getting ready for the coming air cam-

F-117s under construction at Lockheed during the 1980s.


STEALTH

paign. Their fleet of F-117s eventually grew to a total of 44 in two squadrons and became one of the lynchpins in the planned aerial assault on Iraq.

For over five months, Colonel Whitley and his flyers got ready for Desert Storm. Having spent a great deal of effort stateside in development of strike tactics for the F-117, they spent their time refining their tactics and concept of opera-tions (CONOPS) for the coming war. Much effort was spent coordinating with the various intelligence organizations within the U.S. Central Command Air Force (CENTAF) or-ganization, along with high-level national and international sources. Key among these were the “Ravens” (electronic warfare officers) from the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing that flew the RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic surveillance aircraft. Along with other intelligence assets, the RC-135s helped maintain an accurate and up-to-date electronic or-der of battle of the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq. This was especially vital to the 37th TFW, because while their F-117s had a very low RCS, they were not invisible to enemy radars. If a -117 got close enough to a radar of sufficient power and a low enough frequency, then the enemy system might well get a return off of the black jet. Therefore, standard F-117 tactics when flying into defended hostile territory consisted of flying between the known enemy radars and SAM/AAA sites to avoid detection or attack.

At the same time, the 37th pilots had to get fully certified in the use of their navigation, sensor, and weapons systems.

Because the F-117’s entire ordinance load is carried inter-nally, and thus limited to just a pair of 2,000 lb. PGMs, it is vital that every bomb count. This meant that the Nighthawk was designed from the start to make use of the new third-generation Paveway III LGBs that were developed by the U.S. Airforce in the 1980s, along with the older Vietnam-era Paveway IIs. To help keep the F-117 from being detected by active sensor emissions, the Nighthawk was equipped with a passive inertial navigation system (INS), as well as a pair of thermal imaging systems. These Forward Looking Infra-red systems (FLIRs, one scanning forward and the other downward looking) were used to provide updates to the INS and locate targets during the final bomb runs. These were usually made at medium altitude (12,000 to 18,000 feet), fly-ing straight and level to the target on autopilot. Once in po-sition, the pilot would line up the downward looking FLIR, lock up the desired target, and then the weapons system would automatically drop the weapon. Only then, with the LGB on the way, would a targeting laser fire and “paint” the target for a few seconds to provide the weapon with final guidance.

Assuming the stealth design of the Nighthawk was effec-tive, the first warning the Iraqis would have of an F-117 at-tack would be the bomb hitting its target. By flying missions only at night and careful route planning, there would be little chance of anything more than random AAA fire being thrown back at the - 117s. That was the theory at least! The Paveway-series LGBs were the finest PGMs in the world in 1991, usually able to hit within 3 meters/10 feet of a well-planned aim point. Even more deadly was the new BLU-109 2,000 lb. penetration warhead, that could be mated to a Paveway guidance kit to create a PGM that could punch through over 3 meters/10 feet of reinforced concrete. Along with the more traditional Mk. 84 2,000 lb. general-purpose bomb warhead, the BLU-109 gave strike planners a formi-dable array of tools to crack open the critical C3I targets of the Iraqi government and war machine.

All these capabilities made the 44 F-117As of the 37th TFW one of the crown jewels of the CENTAF arsenal. Along with the 66 F-111F Aardvarks of the 48th TFW up the coast at Taif, the 37th made up the whole precision strike force of CENTAF, and for that matter the U.S. Air Force world-wide. If those 110 aircraft could not hit the vital strategic, C3I, and infrastructure targets and destroy them, then Iraq might well win the coming Gulf War. However, the CENTAF staff had laid out an air campaign as smart and innovative as any in history. The entire Iraqi IADS, one of the toughest ever constructed, would be carved up by a team effort by CENTAF aircraft of every variety, along with a few Army at-tack helicopters. The IADS takedown would take place in a matter of several hours on the first night of the war, and the

Perhaps the most deadly late generation stealth aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-22 follows stealth practice and carries its weapons in enclosed bays.

STEALTH

– 117s would be the lynchpin of the operation. Two waves of 10 Nighthawks each would strike at heavily defended IADS targets and others in the heart of Baghdad itself, the only manned aircraft that would do so throughout the war. If the first few hours went as planned, then the rest of the air cam-paign would be a virtual cakewalk compared to earlier air wars.

Around Khamis Mushayt, the ground personnel of the 37th worked long and hard to make every one of the Night-hawks ready for combat. The key to the 37th’s operations would be to deliver roughly two dozen sorties a night for the duration of the campaign, something that would tax ev-eryone from the bomb builders in the ordinance shop to the “putty pushers” maintaining the RAM and RAS of the Night-hawk airframes. The intelligence shop had to maintain an up-to-the-minute enemy electronic order-of-battle so that one of the $50 million black jets would not inadvertently run over a newly emplaced SAM or AAA site. All of this was the final push to what had begun in 1971 when the translation of Ufimtsev’s was discovered. In the end, the final exam for the multi-billion dollar project would be up to the young men and women of the 37th TFW, average age about 23 years, trying to put 20 airplanes into the night sky of January 16/17, 1991. It was a typically American story of innovation, hard

work, ingenuity, and in the end a well trained team working together. And that first night would tell the tale.

Of course as we all know now, virtually everything asso-ciated with the F-117A Nighthawk, the 37th TFW, and the stealth effort went perfectly during Desert Storm. The -117s did everything asked of them and more. Al Whitley and his pilots ranged across Iraq for the duration of Desert Storm without so much as a single scratch being inflicted by Iraqi defenses on the black jets. Night after night, the -117 drivers went into the night skies, earning the nickname of Shaba (Arabic for “Ghost”) for their feats of precision bombing. Along with the F-111s of the 48th TFW, they destroyed al-most every important target American intelligence could identify. When the war was over, the performance of the Nighthawk was seen, as a validation of stealth for every im-portant aircraft program in the U.S. Air Force’s future. While the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War made such grand plans financially impossible, new stealth aircraft are still being produced based upon those basic equations of Pyotr Ufimtsev that the Soviets did not think were impor-tant enough to classify. Stealth is a powerful Cold War-era legacy which is still paying dividends in the 21st century, and represents one of the most important advances since the dawn of warfare.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 echoes the smooth lines and canted tails of the F-22.


THE BATTLE OF 73 EASTING AND THE ROAD TO THE SYNTHETIC BATTLEFIELD

There is an old training axiom that a military force usually learns a great deal more from their de-feats than from victories on the battlefield. This has been particularly true with the United States

Army (USA), which has lost many of its “first battles” dur-ing the roughly 225 years it has served the nation. Names like First Manassas, Kasserine Pass, and Task Force Smith are touchstones for American leaders, as they recall the U.S. Army’s failures and defeats. Usually, these battles remind us of the fact that the Army in the early battles of a conflict is made up of citizen soldiers led by a cadre of peacetime of-ficers, not used to the fast pace, physical rigors, and mental stress of war. The names also remind us that enemies usual-ly attack us when they perceive weakness and an inability to be hurt in the effort. Operation Desert Storm was different.

The 1991 Persian Gulf War was the first of America’s con-flicts where a large, standing military force was maintained, equipped, and trained to be ready for the early battles of a major regional conflict. Mostly as a result of Cold War-era preparations for general war with the Soviet Union, Ameri-can forces were the best trained in the world, superbly prepared to operate the state-of-the-art weaponry that had been supplied to them in the 1980s. The result was a string of victories, particularly on the ground, which were not even close. American casualties were less than minus-cule, suffering more from “friendly fire” than anything sent back from the Iraqis. Strangely, even trained military histo-rians know very little about these engagements, much less about the vast influence they have had on the post-Cold War Army. Of these, none was more important than the Battle of 73 Easting.

Like many famous battles, 73 Easting derives its name from where the engagement took place. What makes this unique is that it refers not to a town, road junction, or even an oasis, but just a north/south line on a coordinate grid. This region of Iraq was little more than a flat, trackless desert, so such a grid was necessary for navigation by the U.S. Army’s VII Corps in its advance to contact with units of the Iraqi Republican Guard (IRG). Headed due east on the afternoon of February 26, 1991, VII Corps was advancing with a front of four armored/mechanized divisions. In the center of this front, leading the way and conducting recon-naissance for the corps, was the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regi-ment (ACR). The 2nd ACR’s job was to locate the forward elements of the IRG divisions suspected to be in the area, fix them in place, then pass the heavy divisions of VIII Corps through their lines so that they could smash the elite Iraqi units with a single killing blow. It was a difficult assignment, made more so by the weather conditions.

The winter of 1990/91 was one of the wettest on record in the Persian Gulf, and had been a major problem during the preceding six weeks of the Desert Storm air campaign. Now the wind was howling, causing a sandstorm that was grounding the Army’s aviation assets and limiting visibility to as little as a thousand meters. Air reconnaissance was limited mostly to signals intelligence data, which meant that finding where the IRG divisions were located would be up to the 2nd ACR. Like the prairie horse soldiers of 150 years earlier, the troopers of the regiments would grope forward until they physically ran into the enemy, in this case the IRG Tawakalna Division. Generally known to be the best and most aggressive of the various IRG formations, Tawakalna

TRAINING AND SIMULATION

By John D. Gresham


was the unit that would bear the brunt of the coming battle with VII Corps.

As 2nd ACR moved forward, the regiment’s three squad-rons were line abreast from north to south. Each squadron had two of its three cavalry troops forward, with the other and a tank platoon in reserve behind. In 1991, armored cav-alry troops were company-sized units, each with 9 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 13 M3A2 Bradley cavalry fighting vehicles, and a handful of M113-based mortar carriers and other ve-hicles. On the right (south) side of 2nd Squadron/2nd ACR’s (2/2nd ACR) sector was Eagle Troop, commanded by Cap-tain H.R. McMaster. A graduate of West Point, McMaster was one of the premier young cavalry officers in the U.S. Army. Aggressive and intelligent, McMaster would eventu-ally turn his graduate thesis into the bestselling book Der-iliction of Duty. On this day though, McMaster and the other 2nd ACR troop commanders were feeling their way forward

through the sandstorm on the thermal imaging sights of their tanks and cavalry vehicles, and a handful of commer-cial GPS receivers. Already, there had been a handful of clashes between 2nd ACR and Iraqi MT-LB reconnaissance carriers, all of which had been vaporized by the 120mm guns of the M1A1s and TOW-2 missiles of the Bradleys. As the af-ternoon drew on, they were groping forward a kilometer or “Easting” line at a time, expecting to hit the Tawakalna Divi-sion at any time. Around 1530 hours (3:30 PM), Eagle Troop ran head on into the IRG division.

Eagle Troop began to take fire from a complex of build-ings, which they demolished with a salvo of cannon fire and TOW missiles. At that moment, while just passing over the 73 Easting line, Captain McMaster crossed a small rise and saw a line of Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles dug in ahead of his M1A1 Abrams, nicknamed “Mad Max.” Ordering his gunner to engage, McMaster’s crew destroyed three Iraqi


Abrams tanks race across the desert on their way to engage the Iraqis.



tanks in just under eight seconds. What immediately struck McMaster as he peered through the M1’s thermal sight was that there was no return fire and that all the Iraq armored vehicles were dug in facing to the south. Eagle Troop had just led 2nd ACR and the whole of VII Corps onto the right flank of the Tawakalna Division’s 18th Mechanized Brigade, and they were not ready. There was however, a dilemma for the young officer.

The problem was that if he followed his mission orders to the letter, McMaster might well cause problems for the rest of VII Corps. In theory, his job was to locate the IRG divisions, report up the chain to General Fred Franks (the VII Corps commander), then get out of the way while the heavy divi-sions of the corps passed through them to engage in battle. Practically, he had stumbled into the heart of a dug-in bat-talion of the Tawakalna, and had no ability to get his unit into a set defensive position. This meant that the divisions behind 2nd ACR would not have room to change from their march formations to the battle wedges necessary to attack the IRG formations. There also was the problem that he was badly outnumbered, at least five or six to one where Eagle Troop was bumping up against the Tawakalna. His own unit might be wiped out by a sudden counterattack, along with much of the 2nd ACR. Clearly the carefully crafted VII Corps battle plan had never foreseen the need for a cavalry cap-tain to make the decision of when and where to engage the IRG. Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened.

McMaster quickly ordered Eagle Troop into the attack, es-sentially the 1990s equivalent of a cavalry charge. He also radioed the contact with the Tawakalna up the chain to Col. Don Holder, the 2nd ACR commander. His basic duty done, he led Eagle Troop several more kilometers east until they had gone clear through the Iraqi battalion’s laager. At the same time, two other 2nd ACR cavalry units, Ghost and

Iron Troops (to the north and south respectively), had also plowed into the flank units of the 18th Mechanized Brigade, and were carving them up. All three troops went on a killing spree of 120mm and 25mm shells, as well as volleys of TOW-2 missiles. By the time it was over, Eagle Troop alone had de-stroyed over 30 tanks, several dozen armored personnel car-riers and trucks, and several hundred Iraqi soldiers. Ghost and Iron Troops racked up similar totals, virtually vaporizing the 18th Mechanized Brigade in a matter of about an hour. American casualties were light, with just a single M3 Brad-

Above: The 2nd ACR had to fight in low visibility conditions, such as shown here. Right: The nature of modern armored warfare made it difficult to reconstruct the Battle of 73 Easting.



ley being put out of action. Despite several counterattacks over the next few hours, the 2nd ACR held the line while the rest of VII Corps got into formation to begin the assault on the Tawakalna and other IEG divisions. But the performance of 2nd ACR was the highlight of the day.

McMaster and the men of Eagle Troop, along with those of Iron and Ghost Troops, had crafted a combat master-piece, not unlike Jackson’s flanking march at Chancel-lorsville or the stand of Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine on Little Round Top. American combat doctrine had hit a zenith at 73 Easting and the word of the victory shot up the chain of command like a rocket. Along the way, the story of the 73 Easting engagement came to the attention of the field representatives of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) based in Arlington, Virginia. IDA, a feder-ally funded research and development corporation, had for some time been working on the idea of creating a virtual battlefield. The work, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was being supported by the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Gordon Sullivan, as part of his plans to digitize the vehicles and soldiers of the 21st century. Sullivan was himself an armored cavalry officer, and when word of the 73 Easting victory reached his of-fice, he decided to see if the work already accomplished by DARPA and IDA might be used to record the battle for future study and analysis. Almost within hours of the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf, IDA personnel went to work on the project.

Following the movement of the VII Corps heavy divisions in pursuit of the IRG, 2nd ACR had been left essentially in place on the 73 Easting battlefield. The IDA research team quickly began to interview McMaster and every available trooper who fought in the battle, and collected ordnance reports and audio recordings, even taking reconnaissance photos. Every Iraqi wreck was mapped, and the movement of each Ameri-can vehicle was retraced. By the time the research effort was complete, the IDA team knew more about the Battle of 73 Easting than the rest of the participants combined. The key now was to do something useful with the information.

Back in Alexandria, IDA had set up a project team, based upon their earlier virtual battlespace work for DARPA. This had included the development of a low-cost simulation network, called SIMNET, which hooked low-cost vehicle/aircraft crew simulators (based upon arcade game technol-ogy) into a common terrain database to replicate the rudi-ments of small unit combat. SIMNET had provided the tools to take the 73 Easting data and turn it into a compelling analysis tool. Usually presented on large projection screens, the 73 Easting briefings were given to everyone from visiting diplomats to members of Congress. Almost like magic, the viewer would be given the view from just above “Mad Max” during battle, and ride with H.R. McMaster and his crew to fame and glory. That this was a fourth-generation computer presentation made the history lesson just that much more compelling. Along the way, every visitor to the IDA center would be given a look at the bank of SIMNET simulators,

Taken by surprise, badly positioned, and with inferior equipment, Iraqi armored forces became a learning tool for the next generation of soldiers.



and given a briefing as well. Suddenly, 73 Easting had taken on a real long-term value for the Army and DARPA: as a high-tech marketing tool.

The drive to build a virtual battlefield to test and train on became a major Army objective, embraced by the other ser-vices and the Department of Defense (DoD). With a declin-ing defense budget, reduced training ranges and fewer field exercise opportunities, SIMNET-type training was looking like a winner to senior defense executives. This became even more attractive as the many previously incompatible train-ing and simulations systems being used by various services began to be connected to SIMNET through a common set of protocols and standards created though DARPA funding efforts. This eventually led to the creation of a synthetic ver-sion of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was extensively used in training and concept testing during the mid-1990s.

The late 1990s were a time of great growth in the develop-ment of what was now being called the Synthetic Theater of War (STOW). Software was being developed to cover every-thing from the flyout characteristics of missiles to the shad-ing and texturing of surfaces in various lighting and weather conditions. Along with the armed services of the United States, the United Kingdom joined what was chartered as the Joint Semi-Automated Forces (JSAF) Federation. By late 1997, the STOW program had reached the point where the first 48 hours of a complete U.S. Atlantic Command exercise, United Endeavor 98-1, was able to be simulated without a sin-gle ship leaving port or a plane lifting off the ground. Larger

exercises were run in 1998, 1999, and 2000, within synthetic replications of actual battlespaces (such as the Persian Gulf) of ever growing proportions. Clearly, this was a watershed for training and simulation technology, with rapidly improv-ing microprocessor and software technology driving new features and capabilities of the STOW program. The vari-ous SAF modules even underwent Y2K upgrades to maintain their viability into the 21st century.

As the Army enters a new millennium and administra-tion, they can take pride in the fact that whatever problems they have in personnel and material, the lessons of Desert Storm are being learned and remembered. Nowhere is this truer than with the influence of the Battle of 73 Easting. Far from the textbook actions and decisions of H.R. Mc-Master and his fellow 2nd ACR troopers, 73 Easting has had as much influence on the military as any battle since Jutland in 1916. More than just providing a model for future officers to study, the 2nd ACR’s battle with the Tawakalna that day has opened up new vistas for training, simulation, and planning in the lean post-Cold War world. SIMNET and the entire STOW effort in its present-day derivatives are making the basic training of small and medium-sized units both affordable and safer. Along with this, the ability to simulate operations in a real-world crisis area without even being there is a capability that sets the U.S. military head and shoulders above that of every other nation on Earth. That perhaps is the ultimate edge and lesson pro-vided by 73 Easting.

Iraqi tanks burning against the night sky.

Documents

Desert Shield Desert Storm - The 20th Anniversary of the Gulf War