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

DESERT SHIELD
DESERT STORM

EDITORS 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 centurys 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 Iraqs 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 todays 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.

FOREWORD

Contents

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


Foreword.................................................................................................................................................... 3
The Air War
The 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 War


The Land War
In Desert Storm.............................................................................................................................................. 16
by Scott R. Gourley

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


By Norman Friedman

The Naval War


Naval Forces in the Gulf War......................................................................................................................... 30
By Norman Friedman

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


By Norman Friedman

Features
Republican 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

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THE AIR WAR

THE AIR WAR

AIR POWER DURING OPERATION DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM


By Robert F. Dorr

n 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 strategic targets. Maj. Gregory A. Feest, flying an F-117 Nighthawk, dropped the first bomb of the war on a interceptor
operations center in Baghdad, wreaking havoc in Saddam
Husseins 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 Forces 20th Helicopter Squadron and AH-64
Apaches from the Armys 101st Division, Fort Campbell,
Kentucky. The plan was to attack each of two radar sites
at a pivotal location known in American parlance as Objective 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 targets, 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 already 50 miles beyond Oklahoma. These F-117s reached
Baghdad while Saddams radars were still up and running and without being detected. Maj. Jerry Leatherman was in one of the F-117s. Leathermans 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-

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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 Leathermans hit the AT&T
Building with a GBU-27 bomb. On Leathermans scope,
the target abruptly glowed, hotter than adjacent office
towers and the nearby, tulip-shaped Iraqi Martyrs Monument. 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 GBU27 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. Theyre all dead, I told myself. All the guys
who went in ahead of me have been shot down. If I live
through tonight, Ill be the only F-117 pilot who survived.
Everybody will ask why
Twenty minutes away from Saddam Husseins presidential retreat at Abu Ghurayb, I saw what looked like redorange explosions from bombs filling the landscape ahead.
But we didnt 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 remembers. 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 Mahars wingmen were dead, wounded,
or even scratched. As it would turn out, the F-117s firstgeneration, radar-evading stealth properties enabled it

STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS

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

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, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., slipped across the border to intercept. One of the Iraqi MiGs responded by gaining a radar
lock-on on Capt. John B. J. B. Kelks Eagle. With alarms
sounding and visual warnings jarring him, Kelk fired a missile and scored the wars 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 American 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 Iraqs recent former enemy, Iran. A total of 37 were brought down
by Air Force F-15Cs, all but one of them in Kelks 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 Desert 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; Moron, 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 (Kuwait Theater of Operations) and on airfields, industrial targets, troop concentrations and storage areas in Iraq. Persian Gulf war B-52Gs had a mission capable rate of over 81
percent, or 2 percent higher than the peacetime rate. B52Gs 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 B52Gs 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 classified code name for the program was Senior Surprise, although 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.,

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Above: On their way into the theater, Navy Tomcats brushed up on dissimilar air combat training 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.

lasted over 34 hours and launched 35 AGM-86C CALCMs


against eight targets near Mosul, in northern Iraq. A further four missiles on four different aircraft had problems
and were not launched. Launched during a ten-minute period 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 missiles 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 aircraft would have less impact if it had fewer missiles. Further, 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

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STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS

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STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS

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.

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 incompatible 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 every 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 Americans were in the Gulf. Their numbers included the equivalent 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 halfway around the world.
The airlift mounted by U.S. Air Forces Military Airlift Command (now MAC) carried people, weapons, and
equipment of all five U.S. service branches from 120 locations to the deserts of the Middle East. Together with the
sealift that followed, it made possible the most spectacular buildup of military force in history.

MACs 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 departure cleaning an aircraft, for instance had to be set
aside in the all-compelling effort to keep the aircraft moving, 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-

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THE AIR WAR

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.

turning, while struggling with a nose wheel that wouldnt


come down (until lowered manually), and a pilots altimeter 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 tonmiles, as compared with 697.5 million during the 65-week
Berlin airlift. To those who participated, there was another 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 worlds fourth largest land
army, with Scud ballistic missiles, with nascent chemical 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 between Saddams invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and
the start of the war in January had enabled Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the U.S. field commander, to assemble
a massive air and ground armada which included half a
million American troops.

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Lt. Gen. (later Gen.) Charles Chuck Horner, who


commanded the air campaign from a Riyadh headquarters called the Black Hole, had had six months to exploit 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 seriously 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.
Britains Royal Air Force learned that using runway-denial 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
Saddams air defense quiet. Typical was the loss of a Tornado 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 navigator, Flight Lt. Steven Hicks, was killed.

THE AIR WAR


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

Prisoners of war in the Baghdad Biltmore found that


Saddams troops had little regard for international standards of behavior. All were beaten. Some were treated
as propaganda tools. While dozens of friendlies were being held prisoner, the coalition rounded up thousands of
Iraqis, including some who surrendered to a remotely- piloted 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 attacks through Iraqi border barriers of minefields, barbed
wire, oil-filled trenches, and artillery fire. In a daring helicopter 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. Im going to cut it off, he said, and


then Im going to kill it. With the help of air power, he
did.
The war ended on the last day of February with warplanes 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 patrolling the skies of Iraq.

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THE AIR WAR

AIR POWER LESSONS


FROM THE GULF WAR
By Robert F. Dorr

n 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 major is working on a study of forced entry.
To be honest, the major says, I dont know how much
attention this is getting outside this building, out there in
the real Air Force.
Forced entry is the services term for gaining access
to airfields in a region that lacks a friendly host government. 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 arent readily available and

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the term has fallen out of vogue since Operation Desert


Storm.
Like air base operability, which refers to getting an airfield back into use after it has been bombed or dusted with
chemicals, the concept is one that wasnt needed in the
Persian Gulf war. There, a splendid infrastructure of airfields 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 planning 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

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.

chemical environment, and a dozen other disciplines that


may be needed the next time Americans go to war. Fortunately, 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 invaluable 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 fighting 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.

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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 jointness, it also revealed cracks in the system. Navy carriers at
sea did not have a compatible, secure system of communication that would enable them to receive the daily Air Tasking
Order from Riyadh: The order had to be picked up by a carrier-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 improved version of the F-117s 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. Todays 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 aircraft proceeding to a target and, while the Prowlers electronic 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 today, the military is being criticized for being slow to integrate 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 January 2001 that the United States was doing a poor job of handling its space assets, and urged greater independence for
the militarys space command.
The difficulties in capitalizing on new technologies are illustrated 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 exacts a price.

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

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 demonstrated 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 everyone, and the sailor aboard a destroyer or the infantryman 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, including 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 require 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 process. 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 looming out there in an uncertain world.

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THE LAND WAR

THE LAND WAR


by Scott R. Gourley

he land forces components of Operations Desert


Shield and Desert Storm were spun into initial action within hours of Saddam Husseins invasion
of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Serving as the bedrock 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 defensive 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 crisis 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 Iraqs 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 immediately 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 CENTCOM 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.
Armys 82nd Airborne Division, Division Ready Brigade. The
arrivals took place on the same day that Saddam Hussein
announced Kuwaits 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 continued to arrive over the next few days and weeks with the first

16 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

elements of a 16,800-man Marine Air Ground Task Force arriving on August 14.
The size and capabilities of these expanding forces focused 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 theater military objectives. As identified in Operations Order
91-001, these objectives included the attack of Iraqi political-military leadership and command and control; gaining
and maintaining air superiority; severing Iraqi supply lines;
destroying known chemical, biological, and nuclear production, 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 Desert Shield and Desert Storm saw the final combat participation 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

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.

Global Positioning Systems, precision guided munitions,


enhanced survivability measures, and stealth technologies.
Land force applications of the emerging battlefield technologies 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 corridor in air defense warning capabilities and signaled the

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STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS

start of the wars air bombardment campaign a 40 day


aerial assault frequently described in near Biblical proportions.
The Abrams main battle tank also saw significant attention 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 divisions 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 Iraqs top-of-theline T-72M1 tanks, coalition planners focused on the need to
field the M1A1 with 120mm main gun and on-board chemical 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

18 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

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. Armys 1-27 Field Artillery launched historys


first long range precision tactical missile strike against an
Iraqi SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) site located 30 kilometers inside Kuwait.
The countdown to G-day (official start of ground operations) 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 planners 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 operations performed by special operations forces (SOF). Special 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 Armys 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 operations (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 position land force elements for the long-awaited ground campaign. 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 coalition ground force staging process had crafted a battlefield arrayed with five major formation groupings.
The western-most grouping on ODS battle maps was
based around the XVIII Airborne Corps and included the

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STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS


82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division, 24th Mechanized Division, 6th French Armored Division, 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 Division, 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 defenders 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 AlTahrir 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. Armys
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 formations: 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 Othman 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 Arabian 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 leaders elite Republican Guard located in the
KTO. The operational concept involved a massive coordinated 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

20 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

this period reportedly exceeded that moved by General Pattons Third Army during World War IIs 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 process helped to highlight a number of logistics hardware deficiencies for coalition planners (see following story).

G-DAY
G-day actions got their violent start at 0400 local time on
February 24 when 1 MEFs 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 Marine Division repeated the breaching and attack process on
1st Divisions left flank. The Armys Tiger Brigade, equipped
with the highly lethal M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, supported the M60A1-equipped Marines through the destruction of Iraqs 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 Persian Gulf.
XVIII Corps G-day movement began with a massive helicopter air assault by the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division. 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 encountered 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 Division attacked and destroyed Iraqs 12th Armored Division.
In the center, JFC-Ns Egyptian Corps expanded their
bridgehead, capturing quantities of Iraqi troops and equipment in the process.
1 MEF elements continued the attacks they had started
on the 24th. 1st Marine Division consolidated on the newlyseized Al-Jaber airfield and penetrated to within an estimated 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.

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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.

22 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

THE LAND WAR

Aftermath. The muzzle of a destroyed Iraqi tanks cannon frames oil well
fires lit by the retreating Iraqi forces.
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 Iraqs III Corps were caught in a gridlock of looted
greed stretching along the main highway back to Iraq. Punishing aerial attacks turned the congestion into a massive
kill zone.
XVIII Corps 24th Mechanized Infantry Division completed 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 Kuwait and southern Iraq.
JFC-N continued seizing its objectives before elements
turned east to seize the Al-Salem airfield.
1 MEFs 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 Kuwait City itself.

By the end of the land wars second day, coalition ground


forces had captured an estimated 30,000 enemy prisoners of war and destroyed or neutralized 26 out of Iraqs 42
ground divisions.
Continuing the advances that began on the night of February 26 that included attacks against three Republican
Guard Mechanized Divisions the Hammurabi, the Medina, and the Tawakalna VII Corps elements attacked Iraqs
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 Desert 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.

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THE LAND WAR

SOME LESSONS LEARNED


FROM THE LAND WAR
by Scott R. Gourley

n terms of lessons learned, the land war operations associated 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 international conflict of the post-Cold War era. As such, positive 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 development of a new American strategy, one focused more on regional threats than bi-polar global conflicts.
The initial pursuit of that new strategy focused on development 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 thinking 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 focus. In fact, regional conflicts are now considered so likely
by senior U.S. military planners that the U.S. Army has created entirely new Brigade Combat Team forces and is preparing 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 August 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 Activity (CATA), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Titled Winning in

24 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

the Desert, the document was being printed for distribution within days of Iraqs 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 cant drink too
much water to Dont 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 operational 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 throughout both Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Moreover, the
rapid dissemination of these lessons took on added importance for the Army and all armed service participants as
the cessation of hostilities happened to coincide with finalization of the FY92 defense budget by defense and Congressional 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.

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.

It is the immediacy of the report gathering that provides


this initial post-war offering with such a wealth of valuable lessons regarding critical land warfare and land warfare support systems like the Abrams tank, Bradley fighting vehicle, multiple launch rocket system, Hellfire missile
system, army tactical missile system, Copperhead artillery
projectile, Patriot missile system, helicopter aircraft survivability equipment (ASE), AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Blackhawk,
CH-47 Chinook, OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, and the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).
The Abrams tank, for example, was praised in the emerging Congressional feedback for its reliability, survivability,
and lethality.
In terms of reliability, the report points to operational
readiness rates that exceeded the Armys 90 percent standard 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 kilometers (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.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 25

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

On the flip side, however, the T72s served as unwilling


teachers for combat lessons focused on lethality and battlefield performance.
Other crews reported that the M1A1 thermal sight allowed 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 Fighting 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

26 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

THE LAND WAR

A civilian worker spraying the finishing touches of desert camouflage on


the Abrams. The importance of civilian contractors efforts should not be
underestimated.

as the ODS Upgrade Package, the field retrofit program


addressed six specific vehicle modifications identified during the lessons learned process. The upgrade, first fielded
in FY96, includes an eyesafe laser rangefinder (which is
also incorporated in the M2A3 [Improved Bradley Acquisition System] (IBAS), a combat identification system, GPS/
POSNAV, drivers 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 programs 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 featureless terrain; Helicopter communications during nap-of-theearth flight; Anti-jam capability for tactical satellite communications; [and] Improving the lethality of light forces.
Many of these preliminary combat lessons were highlighted 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 specific 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 equipment 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) represents one of the greatest equipment shortfalls highlighted
by Desert Storm / Desert Shield. Specifically, U.S. planners 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 multiple sources while the remaining tractor and trailer combinations 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 assembled 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 materiel 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 Cheneys report introduction alludes 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 vehicle 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 mobility and performance limitations of their aged cousins. Postwar 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 Vehicles (FMTV) have entered operational use.
Desert Shield/Desert Storm operations by the (then) newly-fielded Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT)

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 27

THE LAND WAR

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

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 operational profile.
Post-war years have seen further quantum improvements
in the battlefield logistics arena with the fielding of the Armys Palletized Load System (PLS).
Likewise, the tragedy of friendly fire casualties continues
to be addressed through evolving programs like the vehiclebased 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 biological weapons. A clear example of a rapid post-conflict materiel solution to this deficiency can be seen in the development and fielding of the M31 series Biological Integrated
Detection System (BIDS). Although U.S. forces reportedly
received rushed fielding of limited biological detection capabilities during the conflict, it was not until fielding of the
multi-component BIDS that the U.S. military could truly
claim to possess the worlds first capability for monitoring,
sampling, detecting, and presumptively identifying battlefield biological warfare (BW) agents.
As a post-conflict development program, BIDS was developed by the U.S. military with participation by several
agencies including the U.S. Armys Chemical and Biological
Defense Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.
For the most part the basic system features off-the-shelf

28 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

technology of a type found in many microbiology or research 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 converted a motorized smoke unit to begin training as its first
BIDS-equipped biological defense company.
Along with biological defense needs, ODS also presented the Army with a mandate to accelerate their fielding
of a previously-planned Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical
Reconnaissance System (NBCRS). The M93 was the sixwheeled lightly armored vehicle serving as a rolling laboratory that samples and analyzes air, water, and ground samples 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 Systems 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 production 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 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, while U.S. Army troops trained to perform NBCRS functions at the German Army NBC School in
Sonthofen, Germany.
Although performing well in ODS, the 60 Americanized Fox vehicles did not satisfy the Armys February 1991
NBCRS Required Operational Capability (ROC) requirements. As a result, in addition to working in concert with
Thyssen Henschel to produce the 48 basic vehicles designated as limited production urgent fielding, GDLS also
produced 10 vehicles modified to meet ROC requirements.
Those vehicles, designated XM93E1, entered operational 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 Cheneys 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


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 operations 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 delivered to Congress, Marine Corps service representatives
were releasing their own equipment assessments stemming from lessons learned during the ground war experiences 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 MCRCs Battle Assessment Teams (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 reports 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 station) during either Desert Shield or Desert Storm. It was
considered to be just as relevant to collect data from individuals who may have missed the target, or experienced an
erratic or malfunctioning weapon, as it was to collect experiences from gunners or crews who claimed to have hit the
target.
Like the Army, the Marine Corps assessment team quickly 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 MEFs 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 Tiger Brigade (a brigade of the U.S. Armys 2nd Armored Division 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 engaged 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 vehicles 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. Engagements 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. Interviews 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 effectiveness is in the depleted uranium (DU) ordnance fired by
Army crews...
Many similarities between Army and Marine Corps
ground war lessons continued through reported experiences 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 weapons, 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 tactical 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 technology and a knee jerk search for the technological solution,
we will be better off in the long run.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 29

THE NAVAL WAR

NAVAL
FORCES
IN THE
GULF WAR
By Norman Friedman

ost observers think of the Gulf War as a land


and air campaign; surely the naval aspect
was secondary. In fact it was primary: Without 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 example, 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
countrys authority in the way that a base on foreign soil is.
Given such mobile territory, the U.S. government can decide 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
governments problem.

30 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

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 defenses have been erected ashore, they are difficult to withdraw and reposition. In a larger sense, the sea is both potential 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 guided-missile cruiser USS Mississippi at sunset during Desert Storm.


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 Saddams army just across the border
in Kuwait.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 31

THE NAVAL WAR

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.

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 missilearmed surface ships provided both much of the air defense 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 several 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 provided not only the airplanes but also everything the airplanes 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 decade the U.S. Marines had maintained a Maritime Prepositioning Squadron at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean,
against just such an emergency: a land attack somewhere
in Southwest Asia. The prepositioning ships carried equipment sufficient to arm a Marine brigade for 30 days of combat. 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.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 33

THE NAVAL WAR

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 ships rails.

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 leakproof, but it was effective. Blocking Saddams 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 nervously 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 different 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 Kuwait. 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 under 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

34 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

THE NAVAL WAR

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.

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 denounced 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 Qadaffi backed Saddam and he had six old Soviet-built submarines. 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 territorial 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 embarrass 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 Egyptians relied partly on deployable U.S. seapower, particularly
carriers, to help them in the event that Qaddafi made any

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 35

THE NAVAL WAR


move. The long history of U.S. seapower in the Mediterranean 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 material 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 countermeasures 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 modern 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 potentially, 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 Saddams air
power and from any special forces he might possess. The
carriers, the missile ships in the Gulf, and then the groundbased 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-forces 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 intentions 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 Iraqs 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 dominate 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 bloodied in the fight against Iraq. Iran had a substantial air arm,
and throughout the war it represented a potential threat.

36 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

For that matter, the Gulf was a potential avenue of access 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. Actually 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 individual Iraqis to save themselves from the relentless bombardment, 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 contributed 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 operated 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 capabilities. The Navys EA-6B Prowler was the best jamming airplane in the Gulf, so it often supported Air Force strikes.
Similarly, the TARPS (tactical reconnaissance) pods
available only to naval aircraft provided the Gulf commanders with their best reconnaissance asset; it had no
Air Force equivalent.
In addition to carrier strike aircraft, the Navy contributed large numbers of Tomahawk missiles, in the first combat 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 alternated.
In a wider sense, to the extent that the navy could run
freely through the Gulf, it could threaten the seaward
flank of Saddams position in Kuwait. During the war, the
Marines rehearsed a major amphibious landing near Ku-

THE NAVAL WAR

A Marine Harrier from VMA-513 prepares to refuel. Harriers flew from


sea and shore. Their amphibious ships gave them great mobility.

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 navigate the trackless desert. Any attempt to outflank him
had, therefore, to come from the sea. Conversely, the very
visible seaborne threat presumably deflected Saddams
attention from the land flank which coalition forces actually 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 assault, Saddams defending force could not be reoriented
to reinforce the troops facing Coalition forces coming up
from Saudi Arabia. Even though the Marines invaded Kuwait over land, some of their air support came from Marine Corps Harriers (AV-8Bs) flying from Marine amphibious 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 succession 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 powerful 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, aborting 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 inflict 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 forces 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.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 37

THE NAVAL WAR

NAVAL LESSONS
OF THE GULF WAR
By Norman Friedman

or 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 Vietnam. 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 changes 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 onboard a ship crewed in part by Iraqi women. Saddams 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 shorebased data fusion centers, communicating by satellite with
computers aboard deployed ships. The computers were necessary 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 identities 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 depended mainly on computer software, not specialized hardware. Software is very easy to copy. This particular software

38 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

ran on a standard commercial computer, many hundreds of


which were in Navy warehouses. It did have to be connected 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 software 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 demand precise timing of aircraft launched from a land base.

THE NAVAL WAR

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.
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 Navys 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 impossible 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 requirements 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 Navys 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.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 39

THE NAVAL WAR


This result seems, in retrospect, somewhat ironic. The
Iraqis never challenged coalition dominance of their airspace, 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
werent needed. Many of them hit strategic targets, the destruction 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 independent means of verifying target identity. Naval fighters,
which generally relied on orders from their carrier- or E2-borne controllers, lacked both onboard IFF interrogators
and alternative identifiers (they did have stabilized telescopes). In the aftermath of the war, there was much greater 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.

40 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

However, the war revealed some important limitations.


Foremost among them was the missiles 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 ballistic 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 missiles final target, 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 powerful 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 Tomahawk land-attack missiles effectively. At the time, that
seemed little more than a stunt; surface ships could carry more missiles, and they could more easily be reloaded.
However, submarines are now often the preferred Tomahawk 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 extremely 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

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.
ized craft literally search the bottom, foot by foot, examining 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 numerous. 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 assault. Amphibious attack generally relies on surprise. Typically several beaches can be struck. If the potential victim
of the attack cannot be certain of which beach will be attacked, he has to spread defending forces over all of them.
Indeed, by adopting air-cushion landing craft (LCACs) the
Marines had considerably complicated the enemys task
of identifying likely assault beaches. Any such confusion,
however, would quickly be resolved if mine countermeasures 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. warships that were mined, U.S.S. Princeton and U.S.S. Tripoli, 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 other 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 reconnaissance still possible? The U.S. conclusion was that underwater 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 potentially mined area altogether. Reconnaissance of this type
would have to be covert, because it would often be carried
out before hostilities opened. Moreover, overt reconnaissance might identify U.S. intentions quite as clearly as mine
clearance. The solution currently being developed is an unmanned 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 traditional means of mine clearance. Once a force has landed, a wider area must be cleared for resupply. Clearance is needed
to make resupply safe, and then to reopen an area to commerce. The technology of mine hunting is well developed;
the great current question is the extent to which helicopters
can take over from surface craft.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 41

Note that neither reconnaissance nor mine-hunting applies 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 problems 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 therefore 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 concentrated 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 organic 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 supporting 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 missiles (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 targets. One fell into the water; the British destroyer Gloucester shot down the other. This type of danger had long been
foreseen; many countries have bought coast-defense missiles. 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 before 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

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.
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 Antonio class LPDs are being fitted with a fairly sophisticated
self-defense system and, for that matter, why other comparable 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, however. 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 destroyed by British naval helicopters and by U.S. Army helicopters. Prior to the war, the Navy had modified a few helicopters 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 modified to launch an inexpensive anti-fast attack craft missile,
a version of the standard Army Hellfire which had apparently 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.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 43

REPUBLICAN GUARD NEMISIS

REPUBLICAN GUARD NEMESIS


FEINT AND DECEPTION DOOMED IRAQI UNITS
By Clarence A. Robinson, Jr.

he mission was straightforward find, attack and


destroy major Republican Guard elements, the
heart of Saddam Husseins ground forces. Intense realistic training and rehearsal, accurate intelligence, 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 executed complicated large-scale maneuvers against Iraq.
The scope of this tank warfare had not been accomplished
since World War IIs Africa campaign. These tricky maneuvers by VII Corps armor were against an entrenched enemy
equipped with Soviet-built tanks. Coalition deception operations, 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 History, 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 Brigade 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 coalition armored divisions could outflank the worst of enemy
defenses.
Massed firepower from the corps 669 artillery tubes initiated 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-

44 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

mander later said that 90 percent of his artillery was ready


to interfere with the attack across the deep minefield. However, in a 24-hour U.S.bombardment, he lost most of his artillery capability.
Blades mounted on the front of M1A1 tanks began plowing 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 rehearsed 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.
Browns parent brigade pulled around the British 1st Armored Division in a short arc. This passage-of-lines maneuver 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 generals
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 objective 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 anticipated, Gen. Brown said. The use of Global Positioning
System (GPS) receivers enabled navigation while continually maintaining speed. In Gen. Browns battalion there was
a GPS unit in each of the company commanders tanks. In
each company, a receiver was in at least two of the platoon

leaders 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 positions oriented the wrong way, they were not in a position
to effectively fire at our armor. Gen. Browns 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 revetments. 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.
Browns tanks passed them by, presenting a significant danger from the rear. The Iraqi tanks got between the battalions main body and the reserve company, which was moving 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

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 45

REPUBLICAN GUARD NEMISIS


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 training that enabled armored units from Germany and a mechanized infantry division from Fort Riley, Kansas, to execute
incredibly difficult fighting maneuvers. Sergeant tank commanders 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 exposure 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 hadnt 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 generals 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. Browns
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 general 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 drivers 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 themselves in a difficult situation among some 2,000 Iraqi soldiers 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
brigades 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. Browns bat-

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 assault 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 battalion 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.

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 Iraqs escape from Kuwait.
Desert Storm provided a wisp of the future in the value 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.

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 47

STEALTH

EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS


GETTING STEALTH INTO THE GULF WAR
By John D. Gresham

ne of the unforgettable symbols of 1991 was the


bizarre-looking F-117A Nighthawk, the worlds
first stealth combat aircraft. Looking like something 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 destroy high-value enemy command, control, communications, 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) environments.
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 Vietnam 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 radar 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 others
radar developments. Out of these efforts came such
well-known techniques as radar warning receivers, electronic jamming, and chaff/window decoys. All proved
useful in degrading the capabilities of enemy radar systems, though they were heavy, expensive, and not suitable for installation into every platform that might need
such protection.

48 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

This led to various passive efforts to degrade the performance of radar. The most interesting came from German
research on radar-absorbent coatings, along with structures 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) profiles. 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 propulsion 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 vulnerability 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 procurement 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 perhaps even radar itself.
Strangely, the beginning of the technology that we today
call stealth was to be found in an obscure technical document published in 1962 by a Russian physicist named Pyotr

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.
DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 49

STEALTH
Northrop Grummans B-2 could be considered second generation stealth.

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, Ufimtsevs documents laid out the actual mathematical formulas and calculations 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 government 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 Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), it was realized that Ufimtsevs calculations might prove useful in the
construction of certain types of aircraft and missiles. A
small study contract was issued to six aerospace companies, which resulted in the Experimental Survivable Testbed
(XST) contract to Lockheed and Northrop. XST was a paper 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 almost 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, budget, and results, no longer existed to the public or even on
the federal budget.
Lockheeds famous Skunk Works was the only manufacturer in the world that had previously built low-observable 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

50 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

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 designed 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 Ufimtsevs calculations.
The key to the Lockheed design was based upon shaping, the form of which came from the results of studies developed from Ufimtsevs 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 materials or composites in the airframe. Now those earlier technologies 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. Ufimtsevs equations 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 F22A 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 possible to make such a shape (essentially a flat-surfaced lifting 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 technically flagged a fighter. It would be armed with passive sensors (no active radar), have only a single pilot, carry all its
fuel and weapons internally, and be armed only with pre-

STEALTH
cision guided munitions (PGMs) to hit those IADS control
centers and other high-value targets at the center of Sovietstyle 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 plans
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 supporting infrastructure needed to make it into a combat warplane. 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 selected 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 suppression 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 fighter. 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 highly 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 operations snatch of Gen. Noriega of Panama in the early
stages of Operation Just Cause. While the kidnapping operation 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 indicated 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 publicity 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

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

might have done the job were in the middle of transitioning 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 being 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 Khalid 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-

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 51

STEALTH

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

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 operations (CONOPS) for the coming war. Much effort was spent
coordinating with the various intelligence organizations
within the U.S. Central Command Air Force (CENTAF) organization, 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 order 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.

52 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

Because the F-117s entire ordinance load is carried internally, 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 thirdgeneration 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 Infrared 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), flying straight and level to the target on autopilot. Once in position, 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 effective, the first warning the Iraqis would have of an F-117 attack 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 wellplanned aim point. Even more deadly was the new BLU109 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 formidable 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 worldwide. 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 attack helicopters. The IADS takedown would take place in a
matter of several hours on the first night of the war, and the

STEALTH

Lockheed Martins F-35 echoes the smooth lines and canted tails of the F-22.

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 campaign 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 Nighthawks ready for combat. The key to the 37ths operations
would be to deliver roughly two dozen sorties a night for
the duration of the campaign, something that would tax everyone from the bomb builders in the ordinance shop to the
putty pushers maintaining the RAM and RAS of the Nighthawk 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 Ufimtsevs 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 associated 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 almost 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 important aircraft program in the U.S. Air Forces 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 important 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.

TRAINING AND SIMULATION

THE BATTLE
OF 73 EASTING

AND THE ROAD TO THE SYNTHETIC BATTLEFIELD


By John D. Gresham

here is an old training axiom that a military force


usually learns a great deal more from their defeats 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 during 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.
Armys 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 officers, not used to the fast pace, physical rigors, and mental
stress of war. The names also remind us that enemies usually 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 Americas conflicts 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, American 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 minuscule, suffering more from friendly fire than anything sent
back from the Iraqis. Strangely, even trained military historians 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.

54 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

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. Armys 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 reconnaissance for the corps, was the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR). The 2nd ACRs 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 Armys 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

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

was the unit that would bear the brunt of the coming battle
with VII Corps.
As 2nd ACR moved forward, the regiments three squadrons 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 cavalry 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 vehicles. On the right (south) side of 2nd Squadron/2nd ACRs
(2/2nd ACR) sector was Eagle Troop, commanded by Captain 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 eventually turn his graduate thesis into the bestselling book Deriliction 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 commercial 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 afternoon drew on, they were groping forward a kilometer or
Easting line at a time, expecting to hit the Tawakalna Division 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 buildings, 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, McMasters crew destroyed three Iraqi

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 55

STOPPING SMOKING PROGRAMS

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.

tanks in just under eight seconds. What immediately struck


McMaster as he peered through the M1s 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 Divisions 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 divisions of the corps passed through them to engage in battle.
Practically, he had stumbled into the heart of a dug-in battalion 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 captain 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, essentially 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 battalions laager. At the
same time, two other 2nd ACR cavalry units, Ghost and

56 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

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 TOW2 missiles. By the time it was over, Eagle Troop alone had destroyed over 30 tanks, several dozen armored personnel carriers 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-

TRAINING AND SIMULATION

Taken by surprise, badly positioned, and with inferior equipment, Iraqi


armored forces became a learning tool for the next generation of soldiers.

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 masterpiece, not unlike Jacksons flanking march at Chancellorsville 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 federally 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 office, 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 American 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 technology) into a common terrain database to replicate the rudiments 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,

DE SE RT SHI E L D II DE SE RT STORM 57

TRAINING AND SIMULATION

Iraqi tanks burning against the night sky.

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 services and the Department of Defense (DoD). With a declining 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 training 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 version 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 development of what was now being called the Synthetic Theater of
War (STOW). Software was being developed to cover everything from the flyout characteristics of missiles to the shading 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 single ship leaving port or a plane lifting off the ground. Larger

58 DE SE RT SHIE LD II D ES ERT S TO R M

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 improving microprocessor and software technology driving new
features and capabilities of the STOW program. The various SAF modules even underwent Y2K upgrades to maintain
their viability into the 21st century.
As the Army enters a new millennium and administration, 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. McMaster 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 ACRs 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 provided by 73 Easting.

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