25, in a remark later repeated in media broadcasts, he told U.S. Am-
bassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, that the United States could “not ac-
cept 10,000 dead in a single battle, as Iraq had done.” The British and
the French, meanwhile, competed with one another to sell advanced
weapons, such as the Exocet anti-ship missile-carrying F-1 Mirage
fighter and state-of-the-art technology to Hussein up until the crisis
broke. In addition to being isolated, Kuwait, because of its relatively
tightfisted monetary policies and abuse of contract laborers, was un-
popular in the Arab world.

On August 2, 1990, in a single day of violent blitzkrieg, Iraqi
armed forces overran and occupied Kuwait. Within the week Iraq an-
nexed Kuwait as a new province. These moves brought Hussein direct
control of twenty percent of the world’s oil reserves and placed his
armed forces directly across the border from the eastern province of
Saudi Arabia, which contained most of that country’s oil reserves. The
prospect of greatly altered international oil production and distribution
arrangements likely to follow fixed the world’s attention immediately
on the Persian Gulf.

Before August 1990 the United States had followed a concili-
atory policy toward Iraq, hoping, as President Bush observed, to draw
that country “into the family of nations.” The U.S. government guaran-
teed agricultural purchases which made Iraq one of the principal buy-
ers of American grains, and it granted to Iraq hundreds of export
licenses for so-called “dual use” manufactured items. The nature of
these goods, for example, high quality machine tools, allowed the re-
ceiving country to employ them for either military or civilian purpo:
During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Reagan Administration had
shared detailed imagery and intelligence with Iraq, some of it almost
“real-time.” This information aided Iraq’s military efforts, but also en-
abled its military leaders to deduce sensitive U.S. intelligence capabili-
ties and adopt countermeasures, such as emphasizing land-line com-
munications by laying fiber optic cables and concealing projects from
imaging satellites. The sharing of at least some forms of U.S. intelli-
gence continued until at least May 29, 1990. At the end of the Iran-Iraq
War in July 1988, the United States shifted its attention from Iraq to
other crises; with finite intelligence resources, it concentrated on other
pressing situations, such as the internal crisis within the Soviet Union
and events in eastern Europe. This rational allocation of priorities had
unforeseen consequences. A conciliatory policy toward Iraq, the com-
promise of intelligence capabilities, and the shortage of up-to-date in-
telligence on the Persian Gulf area combined to handicap subsequent

14


penetrate the bunker. At 0305L (H+5) five more F-117As bombed the
sleeping quarters of the Abu Guryahb Presidential Palace (the possible
quarters of Hussein and the wartime home of the Iraqi General Staff),
restruck the AT&T building, and hit the Baghdad Sector Operations
Center at Al Taji, just north of Baghdad.

On the heels of the F-117As, between 0306L and 0311L (H+6 to
H+11), U.S. Navy Tomahawk land attack missiles hit the National
Baath Party Headquarters and the Presidential Office Complex, known
as the Republican Palace. The air planners hoped that visible damage
to these structures would demonstrate that the Coalition was not after
the people of Baghdad; it was after the regime and the files and equip-
ment housed within a key organ of its sinister internal security. The
Republican Palace was not only a psychological target but the admin-
istrative nerve center of Hussein’s personal government. It included
several large office buildings and facilities for the Republican Guard.
Additional Tomahawk missiles, worth $1.1 million apiece, landed atop
all six electrical plants supplying Baghdad, and their warheads reput-
edly dispensed spools of carbon fibers that festooned powerlines and
transformer yards to cause massive short circuits and countless auto-
matic shutdowns.

The electrical attacks proved extremely effective. By 0310L
(H+10) CNN (Cable News Network) reported that Baghdad had com-
pletely lost commercial power. Few, if any, electrons flowed through
Iraq for the remainder of the six-week war. The loss of electricity shut
down the capital’s water treatment plants and led to a public health cri-
sis from raw sewage dumped in the Tigris River. It further disrupted
the commercially-dependent Kari system, forcing its defenders to re-
sort to backup generators. Fluctuating output, the air planners knew,
would play hob with sensitive electronic equipment and computers.
The loss of electricity further hampered daily governmental functions
and literally put Iraq’s leaders “in the dark.” In the following week,
Tomahawk land attack missiles and Coalition aircraft reduced every
major city in Iraq to the same unhappy situation. At 0330L (H+30)
twenty Tomahawk missiles crashed into the Scud assembly plant at Al
Taji, a mammoth, centralized logistical facility with maintenance,
overhaul, construction, research, and assembly facilities for every mili-
tary item in inventory; now, at least, Iraq could not assemble any more
Scuds. Coalition aircraft would return to Al Taji repeatedly throughout
the war while striking other key production and support targets.

After the F-117s and cruise missiles came conventional aircraft.
From 0355L to 0420L (H+55 to H+120) large numbers of USAF,

35


in the field, but in strategic points as well. Much like the French Army
before World War II, the Iraqi Army suffered from a “Maginot Line”
complex, which led it to rely on a few more inches of concrete and
steel rather than mobility. This made good sense in the face of regional
threats; and indeed, many in the U.S. defense establishment in the fall
of 1990 argued that Iraqi forces would have to be dug out of Kuwait
foxhole-by-foxhole. Iraq’s enormous number of hardened concrete fa-
cilities made it the most highly protected target base in the world. The
array could conceivably withstand even tactical nuclear weapons. But
because of the USAF’s monopoly on hard target-penetrating precision
guided munitions, facilities hardened to withstand blast overpressures
proved vulnerable to the scalpel-like lancing of laser-guided bombs.
Almost all of Iraq’s air defense command and control facilities rested
within massive concrete structures whose distinctive configura
easily identified them to Coalition pilots. The Iraqi Air Force hid its
aircraft in 594 hardened shelters and its crews in many more.

General Schwarzkopf, scant hours before the outbreak of hostili-
ties, issued the initial operations order (CENTCOM OPORD 91-001)
for the upcoming campaign. He restated the Coalition’s key military
objectives as follows:

ons

1. Attack Iraq’s political-military and leadership and
Cc.

2. Gain and maintain air supremacy.
3. Sever Iraq’s supply lines.

4. Destroy known nuclear, biological, and chemical
production, storage, and delivery capabilities.

5. Destroy Republican Guard forces in the Kuwaiti
Theater of Operations.

6. Liberate Kuwait City with Arab forces.
The strategic air campaign against Iraq would play a direct role
in all but the last of the general’s objectives; Coalition air forces pur-
sued five specific objectives related to those of the theater commander:

1. Gain and maintain air supremacy to permit unhin-
dered air and ground operations.

2. Isolate and incapacitate Iraq's regime

3. Destroy Iraq’s known nuclear biological and
chemical warfare capability



every three hours for the remainder of the war. The B—52Gs, dropping
iron bombs from medium and higher altitudes, proved better employed
against large diffuse targets, such as dug-in military units, logistics
dumps, and spread-out industrial complexes, than against individual
air defense operations centers and assembly plants.**

B-52s were employed almost exclusively against ground support
targets in Kuwait.> Sixty-eight launched 1,175 strikes against Iraqi
ground troops while forty-two F-117s launched only forty-nine. In
fact, CENTCOM ground commanders from General Schwarzkopf on
down so valued the B-52’s strikes against those particular targets that
they routinely opposed any suggestion from air planners to employ
them outside Kuwait. After the war, Iraqi troops in debriefings re-
vealed that of all of the Coalition aircraft sent against them they feared
the B-52s more because of the concussions of their ordnance falling
on or near adjacent units than because of actual damage they inflicted.
No more than a dozen B-52s with approximately 400 tons of bombs
were ever sent into even deepest Iraq, where they compiled impressive
performance figures in over 1,600 sorties. Although they made up only
three percent of the Coalition’s total combat aircraft, they delivered
thirty percent of the total tonnage of air munitions (72,000 bombs or
cluster bomb units totaling 27,000 tons of munitions), most from high
altitude using radar ground mapping for target acquisition. Because of
their long flights from the United States, Diego Garcia, Spain, and
England, they also consumed twenty-five percent of the theater’s air-
to-air tanker fuel off-loadings and tied up forty percent of the USAF’s
most modern tankers. Nonetheless, only 4,000 tons of the bombs (less
than one in six) dropped by B-52s during the war were released over
targets that the Black Hole designated as “strategic.” The B-52s going
into Iraq also required the same large packages of supporting aircraft
as did those that participated in LINEBACKER II against the Hanoi-
Haiphong area of North Vietnam. In contrast, F-117A Nighthawks
flew 1,296 sorties (two percent of all attack sorties) against strategic
targets, yet they struck forty percent. Only F—-117s hit targets in down-
town Baghdad. In addition, they delivered more than 3,000 tons of pre-
cision guided munitions, placing eighty percent on target, while expo-
sing no support aircraft to enemy fire.

Since the middle of the “Great War” in 1916, aircraft designed to
bomb strategic targets (high-value targets usually located deep within
the enemy’s heartland) had to carry the weight of bomb loads, fuel,
and defensive systems to the target and then return to base. The only
aircraft possessing the requisite payload, range, and survivability was

40


which were relatively small and coatec| with radar absorbent material.
Stealth technology uses surface shaping to eliminate direct returns,
minimize dwell, and produce deceptive returns. It employs radar ab-
sorbent materials to reduce its radar cross section. RCS has no direct
relationship to the aircraft's physical cross section. Although not in-
tended to make an aircraft invisible, stealth technology makes an air-
craft difficult to detect and virtually impossible to track and engage.
Stealth works against all types of radars. A powerful ground search ra-
dar may get a weakened return, but less powerful SAM and AAA
tracking radars or airborne fighter/interceptor radars will not produce
an image suitable for lock-on of their weapons; they are thus unable to
engage stealth aircraft. The F-117, to reduce the chance of visual
sighting, attacks only at night. With “eyeball” tracking eliminated,
only a very lucky random shot will bring one down. Stealth aircraft,
which can operate in areas closed to other attacking planes, directly
threaten high value targets. Like Great Britain in 1905 and 1906 when
it introduced the first all-big-gun battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought, the
USAF had scored a unique technological triumph with the F-117A of
dramatic political, military, and even economic impact. Just as the
Dreadnought rendered obsolete the battle fleets of Britain’s enemies,
stealth nullified the standing air defenses of the Soviet Union and other
states. The tremendous Soviet investmeat in comprehensive and redun-
dant radar warning networks and air defenses now required enormous
upgrading with a technology to counter stealth, if such could be devel-
oped, and at a staggering cost.

Other newly deployed technological devices, from Earth-orbiting
satellites to secure facsimile (FAX) machines, aided air operations in
matters both great and small. Space-based systems proved invaluable
in the Gulf War. Satellites of the Defease Support System, originally
designed to warn of a Soviet ballistic missile attack against the United
States, scanned Iraq for the exhaust glow from Scud short range ballis-
tic missile (SRBM) launches. The Navstar GPS satellite network revo-
lutionized air and surface navigation. Hand-held receivers and other,
more accurate, receivers in aircraft, vehicles, ships, and weapons al-
lowed Coalition forces to locate their positions to within fifty feet in-
stead of eight miles with older ground-based navigation systems. Low
orbiting satellites of the Defense Meteorological Support Program and
their civil counterparts operated by the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration provided accurate weather updates in as
little as ninety minutes, sometimes allowing near real time” retargeting
of missions. The Defense Communications Satellite System provided



plies and materials in the months between their invasion of Kuwait in
August 1990 and mid-January 1991. In fact, the vast physical extent of
the numerous revetted and highly dispersed Iraqi supply dumps, so dis-
couraged Coalition tactical air planners that they “never attempted a
coherent campaign to interdict the flow of supplies into the theater.”
Iraqi forces in Kuwait had consumed only a fraction of the stores
available before the ground offensive began on February 24, 1991. But
overwhelming Coalition air presence over the front denied them mo-
bility and prevented them from using the stores they had so carefully
hoarded. Thus, some frontline forces were virtually on the brink of
starvation even though prewar stockpiles were ostensibly “easily with-
in reach.” Why was this so? The Coalition tactical air campaign in Ku-
wait succeeded in greatly complicating Iraq’s supply distribution from
its dumps in Kuwait to its unit logistics centers and troops in the field
by targeting supply convoys and even individual trucks. Although the
Iraqis had adequate supplies in Kuwait, they could not get them to the
front where some units had few or no deliveries of rations and water
after the air offensive began. This interference with Iraqi supply distri-
butions resulted more from the pattern of Coalition tactical air attacks
than from a consistent assault on the supply system. Coalition aircraft
operating in their assigned “kill boxes” routinely struck at any moving
target (supply, fuel, and water trucks are more vulnerable to enemy fire
than armored fighting vehicles) or at any target in the open (the Iraqis
did not routinely park their trucks in revetments). Reports from Iraqi
prisoners-of-war clearly reveal that Coali:ion tactical air power caused
serious logistical difficulties for front-line forces. If the ground war
had lasted much longer their resupply incapacity would have fatally
handicapped them.

General Schwarzkopf’s Operations Order of January 17, 1991,
reflecting his instructions from Secretary Cheney, identified the Re-
publican Guard as an “Iraqi center of gravity,” that is, a target essen-
tial to Iraq’s conduct of the war and to the survival of Hussein’s
regime. The DoD Final Report claimed that thirty-one percent (5,646)
of all strategic air campaign sorties flew against these units. Although
the number of strategic sorties expended on the Republican Guard is
“official,” it is most misleading in two ways. The inclusion of all Coa-
lition air sorties flown against the Republican Guard in the summary
count for strategic target sets (it is the largest number of sorties flown
against any of the twelve strategic target sets) overstates by one-third
the overall size and level of the strategic effort compared with both the
Coalition air effort in Kuwait and the overall Coalition air effort.»

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began intensively reattacking strategic Iraqi leadership targets in and
around Baghdad. The first wave hit the Iraqi Intelligence Service
Headquarters, the Ministry of Information (an organ of internal con-
trol), and the large complex that formed Baath Party Headquarters.
The second wave struck the Ministry of Defense, the Abu Guryahb
Presidential C? Bunker, and the Ministry of Information. Aircraft of
the first wave over Baghdad on the night of February 12 and 13, 1991,
unloaded their weapons on Iraqi Air Force Headquarters, the Ministry
of Defense, the Taji Governmental Command Bunker, and the Bagh-
dad Conference Center, a prestige project built to host a meeting of
nonaligned nations. They also bombed the International TV and press
buildings employed for propaganda broadcasts, Baghdad Director of
Military Intelligence Headquarters, Baath Party Headquarters, and
Iraqi Intelligence Service Headquarters. Wave three kept up the pres-
sure, assailing two Baghdad bridges spanning the Tigris River, Bagh-
dad Baath Party Headquarters, Iraqi Intelligence Service Headquarters,
Baghdad Director of General Security Headquarters, Baghdad Director
of Military Intelligence Headquarters, Baghdad Presidential Residence
and Bunker, Camp Taji Presidential Retreat (one of Hussein’s favorite
residences), and the Al Firdos District communications bunker. In five
waves during these two nights, ninety percent of the bombs struck
their primary targets.

The attack on the Al Firdos District bunker would prove to be the
most controversial raid of the war. Two F-117As dropped one bomb
each on the bunker; one clipped the outside of the facility; the other
penetrated the bunker and exploded inside, killing up to three hundred
Iraqi civilians who had taken shelter on its upper floor.”~ Earlier in the
month, air planners had received information that the bunker had been
“activated” and that its communications capabilities were being used
by senior Iraqi military officials. That made the bunker, previously off-
limits, a probable communications or intelligence headquarters“? anda
legitimate target of war. After some deliberation, air planners added it
to the list of important leadership targets. If the bomb had hit the bun-
ker’s fuel tanks as intended, no one would have survived. Water from
ruptured internal water tanks, however, flooded the basement floor
where intelligence activities took place. The real impact was political
and public. Coverage of the incident by the international press and
comments by a spokeswoman from the Ministry of Information ignited
a firestorm of criticism of the Coalition bombing campaign throughout
the world. U.S. leaders feared that another such incident might under-
mine both international and U.S. domestic support for the war at a time

48


methods and tactics and by Coalition hos: nations on the Arabian Pen-
insula who feared that possible destabilization could not be confined
solely to Iraq.

Although Hussein’s regime did not fall, it possessed only a mini-
mal ability to communicate with its forces in Kuwait and its organs of
control in other areas. The disappointment of Coalition air planners re-
flected overly ambitious goals applied in circumstances beyond their
control. In any case, aerial attacks agains: leadership and communica-
tions facilities served an important purpose. They caused the regime
untold inconveniences, forced the expenditure of valuable spares and
repair effort, and heavily damaged essential government buildings.

Traq’s twenty-five major electrical plants made up a compact and
highly leveraged target system. The loss of their services would force
the Iraqis to use back-up generators and thus would vastly complicate
military operations. Coalition air attacks by both manned strike aircraft
and Tomahawk land attack missiles shut down southern and central
Iraqi power grids within hours, demonstrating that matching an appro-
priate weapon to a vulnerable target produces outstanding results. In
January 1991 Iraq was a potential major oil producer, controlling ten
percent of the world’s oil production and twenty percent of its known
reserves. Three large refineries produced ninety percent of Iraq’s re-
fined petroleum products; Tomahawk land attack missiles hit the dis-
tillation towers of two of those refineries in the first two days of the
war. Aircraft equipped for both PGM and non-PGM also conducted
extensive raids—S00 sorties delivered 1,200 tons of bombs on twenty-
eight different refineries. By conflict’s end, refined petroleum produc-
tion had effectively ended. In ten days, Iraq’s oil refinery capacity was
shattered. Ironically, the fact that the war was so short and Iraqi forces
so static worked against the effectiveness of Coalition oil strikes to
hinder Iraqi movement. The Iraqi military establishment had consider-
able refined petroleum stocks throughout its logistics system and sup-
ply dumps, thanks to prewar preparations. Given these stocks and the
absence of any significant Iraqi air and ground force activity until the
last moment, when Coalition air power forced them to move in the
face of certain destruction, the oil campaign had little measurable im-
pact on the outcome of the war. The war’s speedy conclusion could
not, of course be foreseen, and military prudence dictated the imple-
mentation of a campaign against a target system that, in the long run,
completely controlled Iraqi mobility.

The air planners had hoped that the Iraqi people, suffering from
the lack of power and fuel for heat, hot water, cooking fuel, private

54


on limited intelligence and intended for execution in late August 1990.
Although more intelligence did become available, Iraq gained five
months to take countermeasures, such as moving or more thoroughly
hiding its Programs. Thus, by January 16, 1991, the earlier promise of
“destruction” of these targets had become more a planning goal than
a realistic objective. Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical capabili-
ties proved surprisingly diverse. After the 1981 Israeli air raid on its
reactor complex at Tuwaitha, just south of Baghdad, Iraq dispersed
and duplicated all of the important segments of its nuclear program.
Before the Gulf War began, it removed all fissionable materials, equip-
ment, and documentation from that location and dispersed or buried
them. Thus, U.S. intelligence failed to locate and identify the bulk of
Iraq’s nuclear effort. The air planners on January 16, 1991, carried
only two nuclear targets: Tuwaitha and the Al Qaim uranium mine
near Syria. The list grew to eight (five destroyed and two damaged) by
war’s end. The facilities the air planners knew about, the USAF struck
hard. By October 1991, U.N. inspection teams had uncovered twenty-
one nuclear weapons-related facilities. A lack of adequate intelligence,
not a lack of capability, hindered the aerial destruction of Iraq’s nu-
clear program. The Coalition air effort and forced dispersion delayed
Iraq’s atomic bomb project to an unknown extent, but certainly by
many months. Unquestionably, the postwar air blockade enabled the
U.N. to dismantle many if not most of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc-
tion and supporting programs.

Attacks on Iraq’s chemical and biological production and re-
search fared better than those on its nuclear effort. The Coalition de-
stroyed or heavily damaged seventy-five percent of Iraq’s known
chemical warfare research and production and almost all of its known
biological production. Nonetheless, in addition to facilities it con-
cealed or those that had escaped Coalition intelligence, Iraq had a fair-
sized pharmaceutical industry that on relatively short notice could
convert to enough chemical warfare production to threaten its neigh-
bors. As for weapons, U.N. inspectors located over 150,000 chemical
artillery shells but found no evidence of b.ological types. The strategic
bombing campaign also delayed the reconstitution of this target system
for an indeterminate time, certainly many months, if not years. The air
planners’ promise to “destroy” Iraqi chemical and biological capabili-
ties was like its promise to “destroy” Iraqi nuclear capabilities, beyond
their capability to deliver.

Altogether, nuclear, biological, and chemical targets accounted
for only seven percent of the strategic air campaign’s total sorties. Per-

58


ened aircraft shelters concealing the bulk of the Iraqi Air Force. This
was intended to prevent an Iraqi “Air Tet” or, more appropriate, an
“Operation Bodenplatte”-like response (a last-gasp effort near the end
of World War II, when the Luftwaffe lashed out at allied airfields in
northern Europe on January 1, 1945). Swing-wing F-111Fs, which
could carry four laser-guided bombs to the FI17As two, served as
principal airfield-busters. F-117s continued to fly against Baghdad and
other more heavily defended targets where their stealth features were
critical to success. For three days the Iraqi Air Force stayed under
ground instead of over it, its entombed airplanes, one after another,
dissolving into fireballs. It mounted not a single fighter sortie on Janu-
ary 25, 1991, as if standing down to assess what was happening. By
the end of the war the Coalition had destroyed or severely damaged
375 of Iraq's 594 hardened air shelters and the majority of its hardened
maintenance hangers (double-size hardened air shelters). Their loss
cost Iraq vital spare parts, specialized ground equipment, and unique
shop equipment and would greatly delay its reconstitution of a fully
operative air force.

For the Iraqi Air Force and Saddam Hussein, if confronting Coa-
lition air forces aloft meant certain destruction, so did staying in pro-
tective holes. Only the option of escape remained. As early as January
21, 1991, Iraq had sent twenty-five large aircraft, including fourteen
looted from Kuwait, to Iran, ostensibly its mortal enemy. Iraq’s other
neutral neighbor, Jordan, apparently refused to accept them. In any
case, routing the aircraft east to Iran moved them away from Coalition
air operations while directing them west to Jordan put them squarely in
the path of American F—15Cs protecting those operations. On January
26, 1991, first-line Iraqi combat planes began to flee to Iran. By Janu-
ary 28, 1991, nearly eighty aircraft rested on Iranian airfields; more
than forty additional aircraft, avoiding barrier air patrols hastily estab-
lished by the Coalition, arrived by February 10, 1991. Iran was the big
winner in this affair. If Iraq somehow won the war or gained a political
stalemate, Iran gained its favor (for what that was worth). If Iraq lost
the war, then Iran gained its air force. Subszquently, the hard currency-
starved Soviet Union and its successor states were easily persuaded to
sign maintenance and training contracts for Iran’s new Soviet-made in-
ventory. (France proved less helpful concerning the F-Is.) The 148 in-
terned Iraqi aircraft included the following squadron-size blocks:
twenty-four Mirage F—1 interceptors, twenty-four Sukhoi Su—24 Fen-
cer strike aircraft, and forty Sukhoi Su-22 Fitter—H fighter-bombers.

46


it must be restruck because it has been repaired or resuscitated. The
five rings, as conceived of by Warden, were a guide for air campaign
planners, not a straight jacket for the conduct of actual air operations.
Once hostilities began, political and military realities could and did
change the order of targeting.

Warden himself predicted that an aerial attack would lead to a
change in the political regime, eliminate Iraq’s strategic offense and
defense capability, disrupt its internal economy (while leaving its abil-
ity to export oil intact), and enable the nations of the Persian Gulf to
deal effectively with its residual forces. Like many air planners before
him, Warden set ambitious goals. Still, his plan rested on two major
unproven assumptions. Given prewar U.S. intelligence, was it built on
a firm foundation of targeting information? And could an intense stra-
tegic bombing blitz change the regime of a police state?

By the start of the war in January 1991, strategic air planners had
added two more target sets to INSTANT THUNDER’s descendants and
modified a third. At Cheney’s and Schwarzkopf’s direction, the Re-
publican Guard was added in late August 1990. The Republican
Guard, a praetorian force politically loyal to Saddam Hussein much as
the SS had been loyal to Adolf Hitler, served as a prop for the regime.
Theoretically, its weakening would ease the path to power for Regular
Iraqi Army or other plotters who opposed the regime or for Kurdish
and Shiite opposition groups. The Republican Guard also formed the
most militarily effective portion of all Iraqi ground forces. It had first
call on quality personnel, received the most modern weapons avail-
able, and had the most thorough training. During the Iran-Iraq War it
performed as a strategic reserve used to seal and drive back Iranian
breakthroughs, and it led the victorious Iraqi counteroffensives into
Iran that ended the conflict. In August 1990, by then a force grown to
two armored, one mechanized, and four infantry divisions, and one
special forces division, it spearheaded Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and
apparently stood poised to invade Saudi Arabia. The immobilization of
or severe damage to the Republican Guard with tactical air power
would greatly hamper the ability of Iraqi ground forces to conduct of-
fensive operations, a prime concern to Coalition leaders in August
1990. Likewise, air attacks could limit its capacity to counter Coalition
ground attacks when and if Kuwait were liberated physically. The Re-
publican Guard’ s political function and its military potential made it a
prime target for both strategic and tactical air operations.

By late August 1990 the strategic air planners added fifty-four
major highway and road bridges between Baghdad and Basra to the

18


USN, USMC, RSAF, and RAF aircraft smashed Iraqi air defenses and
fields from H-3, an airfield located in western Iraq, to Ahmed Al Jaber,
an airfield in occupied Kuwait. Two packages of aircraft, one a USN
package from the Red Sea carriers and the other a USAF package from
the south pointed directly toward Baghdad. These “gorilla” packages
were intended to seem threatening enough to force the Iraqis to hurl
their air resources in defense. Air Force ground-launched BQM-34
and Navy air-launched TALD pilotless decoys mimicked the radar re-
turn of conventional aircraft to further arouse Iraqi radar operators,
many already confused by the absence of central control from Kari.
They responded by turning on their equipment. Finally, radar-jamming
aircraft radiated blanketing electronic emissions that drove Iraqi radar
operators to go to full power in an attempt to break through the inter-
ference. Then, the two incoming Coalition flights revealed their true
nature and pounced in a shrewd and devastating ruse.

Instead of bomb-carrying fighter-bombers, they were radar-kill-
ing electronic warriors carrying AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation
missiles (HARMS) designed to home in on SAM and AAA radar.
USAF FG Wild Weasels alone expended dozens of HARMS in
twenty minutes, while USN/USMC F/A-18s fired one-hundred for the
night. HARMS filled the air over Baghdad, the site of over one-half of
Iraq’s SAM and AAA batteries. Foolishly, the Iraqis did not turn off
their radars, even when the HARMS fireballed in their midst; as one
USAF flight leader averred, “the emitters came on and stayed on for
the entire flight of the missiles.” This deadly surprise not only de-
stroyed many Iraqi radars, it also terrified their operators. For the rest
of the war, they showed great reluctance to use radar and often chose
to launch their SAMs with optical or even no guidance. The initial
HARM attack and the F-117 bombings of the Kari system left Iraq’s
integrated air defense system shattered, opening up the country so
completely that, within days, Coalition air-to-air tankers regularly op-
erated in Iraqi airspace. Other non-stealthy aircraft, meanwhile, pum-
meled Iraqi airfields. At 0400L B-52s from Diego Garcia, flying at
less than four hundred feet and behind the cover of the ongoing
HARM mission, made shallow penetrations into Iraq to strike forward
airfields and runways that might service enemy aircraft waiting to
strike at high value Coalition aircraft, such as the Airborne Warning
and Control System (AWACS), or deliver chemical weapons on Coali-
tion troops. The B-52s carried CBU-89s and a special 1,000-pound
bomb and delayed-fuse combination borrowed from the RAF. Not to
be outdone, RAF Tornadoes dispensed JP-233 runway denial muni-

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Decisive Force

Strategic Bombing in the Gulf War

In the Persian Gulf War the U.S. Air Force (USAF) demonstrated
that a new era in strategic bombing had begun. Air power could now
destroy key portions of a country’s military and economic infrastruc-
ture without resort to nuclear weapons and heavy bombers and with
low losses to both the attacker and enemy civilians. This achievement
rested on technology, which both increased bombing accuracy and de-
creased the effectiveness of enemy defenses, and the reexamination
and reapplication of traditional strategic bombing theory by USAF
planning officers. Alone of the world’s air forces the USAF possessed
a 2,000-pound bomb designed to penetrate many feet of hardened con-
crete and steel. Its use destroyed the most heavily protected and impor-
tant Iraqi targets. American anti-radar missiles intimidated Iraqi radar
operators, leaving middle and upper altitudes free for Coalition air op-
erations. American stealth technology, in the form of the F-I17A
fighter gave the attacker virtual invulnerability while leaving the en-
emy defense! Behind this new technology lay the USAF planning
officers, who laid out their offensive in a logical manner designed to
minimize both friendly and enemy casualties while excising Iraq’s
military potential. The offensive, of course, did not achieve one hun-
dred percent perfection, but it carried out its goals in a manner sure to
make any future aggressor state hesitate to call such destruction down
upon itself.



three boxes in numbers of Coalition air strikes and absorbed almost
one-third of the total fixed-wing strike sorties allotted to the Kuwaiti
Theater of Operations. Prior to the start of the ground war Republican
Guard heavy divisions had lost by the most conservative estimates at
least twenty-four percent of their armored fighting vehicles to air at-
tacks. By the end of the war, the Iraqi Army deployed in the KTO had
suffered the loss of approximately seventy-six percent of its tanks,
fifty-five percent of its armored personnel carriers, and ninety percent
of its artillery, while the Republican Guard heavy divisions had suf-
fered only a fifty percent loss in the same categories. (On G-day, the
beginning of the ground operation, CENTCOM accepted that air attack
had already caused a forty percent loss of tanks, forty percent of artil-
lery, and thirty percent of other armored vehicles in the KTO. Sub-
sequent analysis indicated true figures on the order of sixty percent of
tanks, sixty percent of artillery, and forty percent of other armored ve-
hicles).

Several factors account for lighter losses among the Republican
Guard heavy divisions. One was the desert itself. Many analysts have
remarked that its open spaces served Coalition air power well by mak-
ing enemy concealment more difficult. But it also gave the defenders
an advantage by absorbing and muffling the high explosive effects and
concussion of bombs and shells—unlike more compact soils, which
spread blasts and fragments over wide areas.”” It thus reduced secon-
dary bomb damage and direct hit accuracy. The Republican Guard’ s
geographical position in the Iraqi theater, fifty or more miles removed
from the front line, enabled it to exit or avoid combat without having
to abandon its vehicles to Coalition ground forces. The Tawakalna Di-
vision, the closest Republican Guard division to the front suffered the
heaviest losses. The heavy divisions’ geographical position also put
them closer to the excellent Iraqi combat engineering corps, which ap-
parently constructed more bomb-proof revetments for the Republican
Guard heavy divisions’ equipment than for other Iraqi formations
closer to the front. Moreover, their distance from the front line relieved
them of having to deploy themselves into relatively tight tactical de-
fensive positions to repel immediate Coalition ground attacks. Instead,
they could disperse their formations over a much wider area, taking
advantage of the blast protection of the sand, which further attenuated
the effect of tactical bombing done largely with non-precision “dumb”
ordnance. This extra protection made them a more difficult target.
Their distance from the front also increased the logistical effort needed
to mount an air package against them, while their heavier air defenses

70


Second, at war's end, a higher percentage of Republican Guard units
and their heavy equipment avoided destruction in Kuwait than any
other part of the Iraqi army.°? Placing “all sorties” flown against the
Republican Guard against the strategic air campaign appears to place
the blame, if any, for failure to destroy the Republican Guard on the
strategic air campaign alone. It also capriciously absolves tactical air
power, Coalition ground forces, and U.S. military and political deci-
sionmakers of their responsibility to destroy Saddam Hussein’s politi-
cal lifeguards.

The fact that much of the Republican Guard survived the war in-
tact has prompted controversial and heated debate that has already
generated revisionist interpretations. The survival of the Republican
Guard recalls the successful German and Italian evacuation from Sic-
ily in August 1943 (which took place in the face of overwhelming al-
lied land, sea, and air superiority), and, to some degree, the escape of
German forces after the near-disaster of the Falaise Gap in 1944. Like
that of the Germans at Falaise, the survival of the Republican Guard
rested as much on a complicated series of decisions taken by Coalition
ground commanders and political leaders as it did on Iraqi initia-
tives.°! Hussein committed eight divisions of the Republican Guard to
Kuwait.°2 The three heavy divisions, the Tawakalna (We Trust in
God) Mechanized Division, and the Hammurabi and Madinah Ar-
mored Divisions held second-echelon or strategic reserve positions on
the Kuwait-Iraq border. Traditionally, after an operation (such as the
invasion of Kuwait) the Republican Guard was withrdrawn from the
front to rest, rehabilitate, and retrain for future operations. Because it
performed internal security functions it had to preserve its fighting
ability at all times. The southern and westernmost, as well as the most
powerful of the three divisions was the Tawakalna, covering the Wadi
Al Batin, where the Iraqis anticipated a major Coalition ground attack.
Its placement also gave it the potential to swing westward to confront a
Coalition flanking attack (the actual Coalition maneuver). It was the
most militarily threatening of the Republican Guard divisions. Conse-
quently, it received the heaviest aerial bombardment. The Madinah Di-
vision had dug in and dispersed where the Kuwait-Iraq border began to
curve to the south, while the Hammurabi Division stood on the border
midway between the Persian Gulf and the Madinah Division.

When Coalition commanders referred to the Republican Guard
they invariably meant these three units. The three “kill boxes” contain-
ing the heavy Republican Guard divisions and parts or all of eight out
of twelve of the Regular Iraqi Army heavy divisions ranked as the top

69


Republican Guard and Regular Iraqi Army heavy divisions. If they
moved forward they faced heavy Coalition units while on the march or
within hastily prepared defensive positions, which offered little protec-
tion. These units made no attempt to engage Coalition ground forces.
By the end of the first twenty-four hours of the ground war three of
them had left the theater. The remaining two either left the theater soon
afterwards or retreated to the relative safety of the Basra pocket. Al-
though not unscathed by Coalition air operations, they probably suf-
fered, all told, only light casualties; the rumber is unknown. Assisted
by troops remaining in Iraq and other relatively intact units escaping
from the theater, they would prove decisive in suppressing later Kurd-
ish and Shiite uprisings.°°

The theater commander directed air and ground forces against the
Republican Guard because he identified it as a “center of gravity.”
However, he overemphasized its military threat to Coalition ground
operations and underemphasized its political function to maintain Hus-
sein’s regime. Concentrating the ground and air forces on the three Re-
publican Guard heavy divisions, he wisely made little effort against
the Republican Guard infantry, which was militarily insignificant and
a difficult target for both air and ground operations. The Republican
Guard ground forces in practice and actuality were not, and could not
be, a “strategic target” system. The survival of the Republican Guard
should not be used to discredit strategic bombing as a method of wag-
ing war. After all, tactical air attacks on other Iraqi ground forces and,
especially, vehicles, were so successful as to obviate any need for a
traditional ualty-heavy ground war. The Gulf War was, in fact,
most remarkable because no armored battle occurred equivalent to an
El Alamein, or Kursk, or Mortain, or even a 1973 Arab-Israeli War in
the Sinai. Air power, attriting more than sixty percent of Iraq’s tanks,
eliminated the need for a punishing force- on-force battle.

When compared with earlier strategic air campaigns, that of the
Gulf War had a final and significant achigvement: it avoided inflicting
large numbers of civilian and military casualties. Although an initial
(later disavowed) DIA estimate reported 100,000 dead and 300,000
wounded in Kuwait, more than all Iraqi forces there, by 1993 the fig-
ure of Iraqi military casualties had shrunk from 700 to 2,000 dead and
3,000 to 7,000 wounded. John G. Heidenrich determined the latter fig-
ures, basing his analysis on the absence of mass Iraqi graves in Kuwait
and mammoth field hospitals with Iraqi wounded, and the small num-
ber of wounded Iraqi prisoners. He argued convincingly that few
wounded meant even fewer dead. He plazed the number of Iraqi civil-



force performed reasonably well in the Iran-Iraq War, but its ultra-cau-
tious tactics and reluctance to press home any attacks demonstrated its
aversion to suffering casualties. Iraq apparently regarded air power as
something better preserved for future intimidation than expended in
combat for immediate gain. The Iraqi Air Force in 1991, the sixth larg-
est in the world, had 24 main operating bases, 30 dispersal bases, 750
to 800 fixed-wing combat-capable aircraft, and 200 support aircraft.
Combat planes included 265 ground-attack aircraft (some capable of
chemical weapons delivery), 405 fighter-interceptors, and 130 combat-
capable trainer aircraft.

The aging short-ranged Soviet-designed MiG-21 made up 204 of
Iraq’s 405 interceptors. It lacked modern avionics and carried an anti-
quated Soviet air-to-air missile, the Vietnam-era heat-seeking AA-2
Atoll, It had little utility beyond point cefense. More capable Soviet-
built MiG—23s and 25s (the latter having an early generation look-
down shoot-down weapon system) made up an additional 99 aircraft.
Finally, the Iraqis had 35 MiG-29s, with modern lookdown-shoot-
down capability, and 65 French-built Mirage F-IEs, aircraft roughly
comparable with U.S. F-4 Phantoms, the mainstays of the USN and
USAF forces deployed in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. But all of
these aircraft consisted of less capable export versions than the supply-
ing nation’s frontline counterparts. Iraq further sabotaged itself by in-
sisting that pilot transition training to the MiG—29s take place within
its own borders rather than in the Soviet Union. The MiG-29 pilots
had not begun to master their machines when war erupted. Although
the F-IE pilots were given mixed reviews by their French instructors,
they were the best in the Iraqi Air Force, and Israeli Air Force analysts
urged the Coalition not to dismiss them lightly. Iraqi doctrine empha-
sized point, not area, defense and the use of fighters over anti-aircraft
artillery (AAA) and surface-to-air missiles (SAMS). Finally, some
suppliers compromised Iraq’s inventory by turning over their equip-
ment specifications to Coalition intelligence organizations. Altogether,
the Iraqi Air Force possessed inferior aircraft and inferior pilots, all in
inferior numbers, with weapon systems that were an open book to their
opponents.

The Iraqi air defense system suffered similar defects. Most of its
French and Soviet radars were no longer top-of-the-line, and equip-
ment performance (and countermeasures) were known to the Coali-
tion. The five month Sitzkrieg had permitted Iraqi technicians to
reorient the air defense system from east-west to north-south. Iraq pos-
sessed approximately 970 AAA sites with 7,000 AAA pieces (4,000 of

29


vital U.S. efforts. From the start of the crisis to the conclusion of the
Persian Gulf War, the United States found itself with insufficient intel-
ligence and Bomb Damage Assessmen: (BDA). In some activities,
such as nuclear weapons manufacturing and research, the United
States never realized the extent of Iraq’s technical progress until after
the cessation of hostilities.

The United States, nonetheless, reacted immediately to Hussein’s
invasion of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, President George H. W. Bush
froze Iraqi assets in the United States. That day the President also met
with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), General Colin
E. Powell, USA, and with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA,
Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Comraand (CINCCENTCOM), and
told them he would consider an attack or Saudi Arabia by Iraq a casus
belli. Two days later President Bush and civilian and military leaders
met and agreed to send troops to Saudi Arabia, if it requested them,
and a delegation led by Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney. The
next day, August 5, 1990, President Bush publicly stated U.S. objec-
tives in the crisis:

Immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal
of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait;

Restoration of Kuwait’s legitima‘e government;
Security and stability of Saudi Arabia and the Persian
Gulf; and

Safety and protection of the lives of American citi-
zens abroad.

These uncompromising U.S. objectives reassured the nations of
the Persian Gulf and guaranteed a full-scale confrontation with Iraq.
On August 6 the U.S. delegation met with the Saudi Arabian King,
Fahd ibn Al Aziz, who agreed to accept U.S. troops on Saudi soil. Pre-
sident Bush ordered their deployment to begin at once.

By August 8, 1990, USAF McDonnell-Douglas F-15SC Eagle
fighters and Boeing E-3B Sentry AWACS aircraft landed in Saudi
Arabia. General Schwarzkopf assigned Lieutenant General Charles A.
Horner, ! 3 USAF, to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, designating him CENT-
COM Forward. Horner was given the responsibility of receiving U.S.
forces arriving in Saudi Arabia, while Schwarzkopf returned to the
United States and the even more complicated task of overseeing the
deployment. Although CENTCOM had drafted deployment plans for
the Persian Gulf and was creating a hasty plan for defensive opera-


publican Guard by November 1990 had withdrawn from forward posi-
tions on the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border to reserve positions along
both sides of the Iraq-Kuwait border, where it assumed its traditional
counteroffensive role.) In mid December 1990 the Special Planning
Group was combined with CENTAF Director of Operations tactical air
planners and the officers who prepared the Air Tasking Order (ATO)
to form the CENTAF Directorate of Campaign Plans, led by Brigadier
General Glosson in Riyadh. Within that directorate, on the eve of the
Gulf War in mid-January 1991, direction for bombing the Republican
Guard in the field shifted from the strategic planners to the KTO tar-
geteers.!7

Meanwhile, U.S. aircraft flowed into the region, increasing the
number of aircraft available to deliver precision guided munitions by
almost 150 percent. Altogether, they gave CENTAF 700 Air Force
combat aircraft. These included 93 percent of the USAF’s precision
delivery-capable aircraft inventory and 63 percent of its laser-guided
bombs. Offshore, USN carriers had 62 A-6Es, all guided-bomb unit-
capable, on their flight decks, although that service faced a serious
shortage of “smart” munitions. Indeed, during the war, the USAF
would drop or launch 90 percent of all precision air-to-ground muni-
tions. By January 15, 1991, it had deployed over 200 air-to-air in-flight
refueling tankers—the single most important aircraft type in the thea-
ter, Without in-flight refueling, most of the aircraft flown in the strate-
gic air campaign would have been unable to reach their targets and
return. Likewise, no less than 70 percent of the USN’s strike flights!®
needed land-based USAF tanker support to complete their missions.

The Special Planning Group worked at CENTAF Headquarters,
which was located in the Royal Saudi Air Force Headquarters Building
in downtown Riyadh. Once the war started they guided operations. In
another section of the headquarters, officers aided by computer soft-
ware compiled a daily ATO.!? CENTAF transmitted appropriate por-
tions of the ATO to USAF wings, USN carrier battle groups, and air
organizations of the Coalition allies. Although the USN withheld some
aircraft from the tasking order for fleet defense flights and the USMC
withheld some for organic ground support, as a rule no allied aircraft
overflew Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Iraq without the tasking order’s
authorization. The ATO was the crucial enabler of air operations.
However, it did not conceptualize air operations. That function be-
longed to the Black Hole Special Planning Group in Riyadh.

After September 15, 1990, the Special Planning Group constantly
updated the strategic air campaign plan, almost always because a deci-

21


as its third target set; oil (internal distribution and storage, not produc-
tion and export capability) as its fourth target set; nuclear, biological,
and chemical (NBC) research, development, and production facilities
(including airfields with chemical-capab.e aircraft) as its fifth target
set; and military research, production, and storage (including mobile
short-range ballistic missile launchers) as its sixth target set. Because
the air planners worked with a limited attack force in the area of “in-
frastructure” they confined themselves to making Iraq’s railroads their
seventh target set. A single-track rail lire between Baghdad (Iraq’s
capital in the center of the country) and Basra (Iraq’s second largest
city, near the Persian Gulf and Kuwait) carried most of the freight be-
tween the two cities and supplied Iraqi forces in Kuwait. As for Iraq’s
people, INSTANT THUNDER only called for psychological operations
against them and foreign workers. Against the outermost ring, Iraqi
fielded forces, INSTANT THUNDER made the strategic integrated air de-
fense system its eighth target set. In addition, the plan included Iraq’s
only naval facility, Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf and associated anti-
shipping missile sites, as its ninth target set and seven airfields with
modern interceptor aircraft as its tenth target set. The air planners se-
lected the final two target sets to protect Coalition air and naval forces.
Among the ten sets, INSTANT THUNDER required Coalition air forces
to bomb eighty-four targets and fly a total of 4,200 attack sorties in six
days. The air plan stressed the use of precision guided munitions and
“bombing for effect.” The planners expected the impact of this bomb-
ing to devastate Iraq’s war effort.

The ordering of INSTANT THUNDER’S target sets resulted from
the Air Staff’s recommendations of August 17, 1990, for assigning tar-
geting priorities against Iraq. The target priorities assigned in this pro-
cess were the ones desired, but were not permanently fixed, that is, the
tenth target set did not necessarily have. and was not necessarily ex-
pected to hold, the tenth priority throughout the campaign. Some tar-
gets by their nature might fall into more than one ring. For example, an
enemy’s integrated air defense system (interceptors, SAMS, AAA, and
air defense command and control facilities) has large components in
the fifth ring—fielded forces—although its command and control sys-
tem center of gravity lies in the first ring, leadership. The overarching
operational consideration in any sustained air campaign is obtaining
air superiority with immediate attacks on the opponent’s air defense
system. However, few target priorities remain absolutely constant
throughout a campaign. A high-priority target rendered ineffective and
thus low-priority after initial attacks may become high-priority again if

17


them 23-mm or less), most without radar direction, and 16,000 SAMS
(not counting shoulder held and other missiles in the hands of Iraqi
ground forces), many concentrated in the Baghdad area. Altogether,
Baghdad was twice as heavily defended as the most heavily defended
eastern European target at the height of the Cold War and seven times
as heavily defended as Hanoi at the height of LINEBACKER II. From
the outset of the war until its end, the SAM threat—particularly hand-
held weapons—denied low altitudes to ettackers. The Iraqi air defense
system optimized AAA to defend altitudes of up to 10,000 feet and
employed missiles beyond that limit. It relied on aging, yet still dan-
gerous, export versions of Soviet surface-to-air missiles such as SA—2s
and 3s, more modern Soviet missiles, such as the SA-6 and SA-8, and
the low-altitude French Roland for strategic air defense.

Defects in Iraq’s air defense command and control system added
to its military shortcomings. The Iraqi-designed Kari system,?® built
after Israel’s air raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, exhibited a flaw
typical of many items built for its dictator—overcentralization. Kari
divided the country into four defense sectors, with Kuwait added as a
fifth. Each Sector Operations Center (SOC) reported to the national
Air Defense Operations Center in Baghdad and was reported to by two
to five subsidiary Intercept Operations Centers (IOCs). Each IOC had
several early warning radar posts reporting to it. Information flowed
from the Intercept centers to the Sector centers and thence to Baghdad,
but information did not flow laterally to other sector headquarters. Iraq
designed the system to repel its worst case threats—regional enemies,
Iran, Israel, or Saudi Arabia—and the system was well thought out to
do it. Faced with a threat far greater than anticipated, it simply could
not handle the sheer number of Coalition aircraft. The Sector or Inter-
ceptor Operations Centers made the decision as to what weapon sys
tem would engage intruders—SAMS or fighter-interceptors. U.S. in-
telligence judged Iraqi pilots to be inordinately dependent on Ground
Control Intercept information received from Kari and probably incapa-
ble of managing an aerial intercept on their own (although in fact some
did so on the opening night of the war after Kari shut down). SAM and
AAA batteries used information from Kari to avoid turning on their
own fire control radars until the last possible moment, which helped
them negate or diminish allied countermeasures. In the prewar period
the Coalition detected a daily average of 1,300 to 1,700 individual
SAM/AAA and Early Warning radar emitters.

The trench fighting of the Iran-Irac, War from 1980 to 1988 left
among Iraq’s military leaders a preference for fixed defenses—not just

30


a nation in an arrangement of five concentric rings that resembled an
archery target. Each ring contained specific strategic target sets ranked
by the effect their loss would have. The innermost ring, or bull’s-eye,
contained a nation’s leadership and its connections, such as communi-
cations, propaganda media, organs of internal control, etc., to the
population and armed forces. The ring adjacent to the bull’s-eye con-
tained a nation’s key production centers, such as energy, advanced re-
search facilities, and bottleneck industries. The third ring from the
center encompassed a nation’s infrastructure, such as its transportation
systems. A nation’s population constituted the fourth ring. In consider-
ing population as a target, Warden did not propose to inflict physical
damage, but rather to conduct psychclogical operations that would
break morale or lower support for the war and the ruling regime. A
fifth outermost ring contained the most difficult and costly targets to
destroy—a nation’s military forces in the field. Although the air offen-
sive had to penetrate the hard outer fifth ring to reach the softer interior
rings, any sustained attack on targets in the fifth ring would most likely
consume aerial resources which could more effectively be used else-
where.

The ordering of the five rings delineated their relative vulnerabil-
ity to attack. The outermost ring of fielced military forces consisted of
numerous dispersed targets, all of which had the capacity to shoot back
(many targets, costly to destroy), while the fourth ring of population
presented an extremely diffuse target, both physically and psychologi-
cally. The destruction of even a minor portion of a nation’s population
contravened U.S. national policy and en:ailed adverse domestic and in-
ternational political repercussions (many targets, costly to influence).
The third ring, infrastructure, offered a large number of targets of dif-
fering degrees of difficulty. Individually they might be vulnerable, but
in total, although they could yield significant results, they would also
consume a great deal of effort (many targets, good return). The second
ring offered a far more vulnerable target. The hitting of a few vital
spots in key plants could disrupt entire sectors of an enemy’s war
economy and his ability to continue fighting (few targets, high return).
Finally, an attacker would find enemy leadership the most important
and vulnerable target of all. Theoretically, the knocking out of a hand-
ful of super-hardened bunkers could “behead” a nation in a single raid
(very few and difficult targets, very high return). CHECKMATE adopted
this model, which Colonel Warden continued to refine in the following
months.



defender thus has more difficulty preparing shelters with adequate overhead covering
in the absence of proper, easily available local building materials.

“Regular Army Iraqi division air defense elements had a few Soviet SA~2s or
3s (with a maximum altitude of 25,000 meters), a few more modern SA~9s (limited to
an effective maximum altitude of only 4,500 mete’s), and some shoulder launched sur-
face-to-air missiles. Republican Guard division air defense elements possessed more
plentiful numbers of the more modern Soviet SA--6s (with a maximum effective alti-
tude of 10,000 to 15,000 meters) and SA~13s (with a maximum effective altitude of
5,500 meters), as well as more modern SA-I6 sroulder-launched missiles. All Iraqi
heavy divisions had plentiful AAA.

SUS. intelligence sources differed as to the exact number of Republican Guard

infantry divisions in the theater and variously place it at two, three, or four divisions.
GWAPS uses the high figure. I see no reason to disagree. GWAPS places the infantry
divisions, from west to east within the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, as follows: Ne-
buchadnezzar, Baghdad, Adnan, and Al Faw. The Special Forces Division appears to
have stationed one brigade at each end of this line.

The lightly armed, haphazardly organized and trained, and internationally iso-
lated rebels would stand little chance of sustained resistance against Iraqi Army units,
let alone the Republican Guard. The Iraqis also had large stockpiles of second-line ar-
mored and other equipment, notably around Tikit, that they used to re-equip their
forces. Thus they could readily field repatriated prisoners or units that had escaped
with their personnel but had abandoned their equipment.

84


made it more costly for Coalition aircraft to approach them.TM The
Coalition’s policy of avoiding casualties also contributed to the Repub-
lican Guard’s survival. CENTAF limited its A-10As to shallower
penentrations at higher altitudes after losing two to ground air defenses
in Republican Guard areas on February 15, 1991. At the same time, at
the insistence of Coalition ground force corps commanders, General
Schwarzkopf concentrated tactical air efforts on Iraqi front line divi-
sions and lessened those against the Republican Guard.

During the Coalition ground assault, the U.S. Army VII Corps
caught up with the Tawakalna Division, which apparently served as a
rear guard, and inflicted severe casualties. The VII Corps also encoun-
tered elements of the Madinah Division (which suffered nearly a fifty
percent loss of equipment from all Coalition ground and air action) re-
treating into an assembly of Iraqi forces near the Basra pocket. The
Hammurabi Division (which sustained a twenty-five percent loss of
equipment to all Coalition action) was already there. Unlike the desert,
the Basra pocket contained a large city, suburbs, and numerous farm-
ing villages. Imagery shows that the Republican Guard and other Iraqi
ground forces were well aware of the Coalition’s policy of limiting
collateral damage and took advantage of it to huddle as close as possi-
ble to civilian structures. This situation in the pocket and bad weather
lowered bombing accuracy and frustrated Coalition air forces. The
close proximity of Coalition ground forces heightened the chance of
losses to friendly fire and required careful identification of ground tar-
gets. Finally, General Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi territory near the bor-
der of Iran off-limits to avoid airspace incursions and unnecessary
international incidents. Nonetheless, by the last day of the war, Coali-
tion air power had managed to damage or destroy every bridge out of
the pocket. On February 28, 1991, both the Hammurabi and Madinah
Divisions had reached Iraqi-controlled territory in the area.

The tale of the Republican Guard infantry”” and special forces
divisions is quickly told. They occupied positions at least ten to fifteen
miles behind the Republican Guard heavy divisions in an arch stretch-
ing from An Nasiriyah to the Persian Gulf. They were, of all of the
Iraqi ground forces in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, closest to the
escape routes over the Euphrates River and Basra bridges and farthest
from Coalition ground and air forces. They not only occupied reserve
positions but blocked the retreat of individual Iraqi deserters and all
other Iraqi ground forces. These units, far as they were from potential
ground battle areas, offered little military threat to Coalition ground
operations. They also received far less tactical air bombardment than

71


Gulf War Results

TOP: Tab-Vee aircraft shel-
ter at Jalibah Air Base, Iraq,
destroyed by precision air

attack.
CENTER: Destroyed Iraqi Sukhoi
Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack air-
craft in a shattered shelter at Talil
Air Base, Iraq.
sailors Eh

BOTTOM: A Matter of Interpretation—a target at Talil Air Base, Iraq, cate-
gorized as “moderately” damaged by intelligence analysts. The air planners
considered it destroyed.



up to thirty tons, the amount of high explosives delivered in a 25-plane
raid compared favorably with the typical 750- to 1,000-plane raids by
B-17s of the Eighth Air Force in World War II. The LINEBACKER II
missions with single formations of aircraft occupying over seventy
miles of airspace marked the end of massed heavy bomber formations.
By the end of the 1960s not even the United States, much less any
other power, could afford to build and maintain large numbers of
heavy, multi-engine bombers. The USAF’s strategic bomber inventory
steadily declined from 624 B-52s and FB-I11Is in 1973 to 266 B-Is,
B—2s and B-S2s in 1993.

During LINEBACKER II more supporting combat aircraft were de-
voted to a raid than attacking bombers. In a raid of thirty B-52s on
Haiphong on December 22, 1972, sixty-five other aircraft provided
crucial support. These included: USN EB-66s and EA-6Bs that fur-
nished electronic countermeasures; F--105 Iron Hands (the famed
“Wild Weasels”) that suppressed surface-to-air missile (SAM) de-
fenses; F-4 Hunter/Killers that struck anti-aircraft artillery (AAA);
and numerous other F—4s that provided close escort, counter-MiG
combat air patrol, chaff, and chaff escort. During World War II the
Eighth Air Force required one fighter 2scort for two bombers. How-
ever, the complexity, layering, and integration of modern electronic/
missile/gun/aircraft air defenses have reversed that ratio and more than
justified the expenses of a modern air defense system.

On one LINEBACKER mission, thet of December 22, 1972, thirty
bombers exposed ninety-five supporting aircraft to enemy counterair
measures. Such mass bombings would be rare in future. Requiring so
many support aircraft, they were too large to adequately defend. At-
tacking aircraft, to meet the complex dzmands imposed by the multi-
faceted air defenses they were facing, were subsequently divided into
different specialities or roles and then combined into “packages” tai-
lored against specific threats within the expected target area. After the
war in southeast Asia the USAF contined to develop strike packages
in its overall target planning methodology. The Gulf War planners
made heavy use of force packaging, but the revolution of precision at-
tack had introduced a new twist—smaller packages of strikers going to
multiple aim points in the same area, rather than a single large package
going to a single aim point.

Achieving invisibility to the foe has been the stuff of legend for
thousands of years. More recently it hes become the goal of aviation
technology. From 1940 to the mid-1970s aerial opponents sought to
jam, spoof, or destroy radar with electronic countermeasures—by dis-


When Lieutenant General Horner added the CENTAF staff divi-
sion in charge of preparing the daily Air Tasking Order and the Air-
borne Command Element/Current Operations Division to the Direc-
torate of Campaign Planning in mid December 1990, he consolidated
the training, the defensive, and (eventually) the offensive ATO into a
single function. This allowed the air planners to fly on AWACS air-
craft, monitor plan execution, and modify future work in light of actual
operational feedback. Horner placed the directorate under Brigadier
General Glosson and designated him to command the 14th Air Divi-
sion (Provisional), composed of all USAF tactical fighter wings in the
theater. Thus, the officer in charge of plans also had direct control of
the largest single force of Coalition strike aircraft.

The four-month shakedown period before the end of 1990 gave
Coalition forces the opportunity to fine-tune their training. It also re-
vealed a flaw that would plague the war effort throughout. CENTAF-
IN, CENTAF Headquarter’s intelligence organization (and to a lesser
extent CENTCOM Headquarter’s own intelligence organization) often
failed to supply the Special Planning Group and the operations officers
in USAR combat wings in the field with timely and accurate target ma-
terials.2> Neither the Black Hole nor the F-117A-equipped 37th Tacti-
cal Fighter Wing (TFW) ever established smooth, cordial working
arrangements with CENTAF intelligence before the war. Officers in
flying units complained that CENTAF intelligence failed to meet their
specialized requirements for planning and targeting materials.

For their part, CENTAF intelligence officers, complaining that
the units failed to follow “standard procedures,” tried to beat the sys-
tem by establishing “work-around” links directly with non-official
contacts in the United States, such as CHECKMATE. The Special Plan-
ning Group (later the Iraqi Target Cell), of course, had a voracious and
immediate appetite for almost every item of intelligence on Iraq to de-
velop the first phase of the air campaign. CENTAF intelligence, how-
ever, had only begun to collect material in the spring of 1990 and at no
time before the war did requests from. the Special Planning Group,
routed through CENTCOM intelligence, receive the highest priority at
either the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the Defense Intelli-
gence Agency (DIA).

The problems of timeliness and interpretation of intelligence, es-
pecially Bomb Damage Assessment,” became far more acute during
the war and created a mutual aura of distrust and bitterness between
CENTAF intelligence and its customers. Before, and even more di-
rectly during, the war, air planners and officers in the air combat wings

27


Self-Defense Targets

The achievement of air superiority and the protection of friendly
bases and forces are vital for a successful strategic air campaign. To
guarantee those prerequisites Coalition air forces attacked three Traqi
strategic target sets capable of harming Coalition air and naval forces
or of protecting the “core” strategic targets:

1. The Iraqi integrated air defense system (ADS)
2. The Iraqi Air Force

3. The Iraqi Navy, and its associated port facilities
and anti-shipping missiles

The Coalition directed twenty-nine percent of its strategic air ef-
fort to the suppression or destruction of these three vital target sets. All
three proved extremely vulnerable to Coalition air action.

CENTAF air planners directed the first air actions against Iraq’s
integrated strategic air defense system, Coalition aircraft with anti-ra-
diation missiles intimidated Iraqi SAM and AAA radar operators, who
hesitated to operate their equipment lest their signal lock-on attract a
destructive, beam-riding response. Because of the anti-IADS strikes,
within minutes of the start of hostilities on the night of January 17,
1991, Coalition aircraft could operate with impunity at high and me-
dium altitudes. From that date, Coalition aircraft took losses primarily
at low altitudes during the last weeks of the war, delivering attacks on
Iraqi ground forces to pave the way for Coalition ground operations
and to supply close air support when the liberation of Kuwait began on
February 24, 1991. (Iraqi ground units, especially the Republican
Guard, had ample anti-aircraft artillery and numerous shoulder-held
surface-to-air missiles to create a dangerous ground environment.) In
brief, the speedy destruction of Iraq’s integrated air defense network
allowed the Coalition freedom of the air. It was a success for the stra-
tegic air campaign and set the tone for the rest of the war.

Iraq’s airfields and the aircraft they housed absorbed twenty-four
percent (3,047) of the strategic air campaign’s total sorties. Initial Coa-
lition air attacks concentrated on runway denial and then switched to
hardened air and maintenance shelters. These attacks destroyed or
forced out of the country nearly one-half of the Iraqi Air Force and
damaged its essential support facilities and equipment. The remainder
of the Iraqi Air Force would suffer from spare parts, maintenance, and
training problems until it could regain access to the international arms
market. Until then it possessed a limited ability to suppress internal re-

63


volts, but not to threaten neighboring states. Given the Coalition air
forces’ lopsided advantages in quality and quantity of men and maté-
riel, the destruction of the Iraqi Air Force was but a question of time
and blood and how much the Coalition wished to sacrifice. In fact, che
Coalition lost only a single F/A-18 and pilot to a look-down shoot-
down MiG-25, and only a handful of both to ground fire or SAMs
over enemy airfields. It achieved air superiority the moment the first
F-15C crossed into Iraq’s airspace and total air supremacy soon there-
after. The USAF had trained for counterair operations and its use of
precision guided munitions denied [raq a secure sanctuary. The Coali-
tion’s air campaign achieved success sooner even than its planners an-
ticipated. It ranks with the 1967 Six Day War as the quickest seizure of
air supremacy in military aviation history.

The U.S. Navy, relying heavily on its air arm, overwhelmed the
Iraqi Navy. The only target environment offering less concealment for
enemy forces from air power than the desert is the water’s surface. Na-
val aircraft and helicopters destroyed 11 of 13 anti-ship missile boats,
destroyed or damaged 143 of 165 Iraqi combatant vessels, eliminated 3
of 7 shore-based anti-ship missile sites, and heavily damaged Iraq’s 2
naval facilities. This, plus the absence of any air threat, allowed the
Coalition to bring its U.S. aircraft carriers closer to Iraq, easing the air
refueling workload that hampered naval aviation operations. The
elimination of the Iraqi Navy also increased the effectiveness of a ma-
jor Coalition deception—the threat of a U.S. Marine Corps amphibious
invasion near Kuwait City. This target system absorbed two percent
(247 sorties) of the total strategic effort.

The attack on Iraqi air defenses was by far the most successful
part of the strategic air campaign. U.S. intelligence could easily locate
massive support facilities—hardened air operations centers, airfields,
and naval ports that could hardly be dismantled, dispersed, or buried.
Enemy SAMS and AAA without central control rapidly lost effective-
ness, as did aircraft and ships separated from their permanent bases.

“Mixed” Target Sets

The last two target systems of the strategic air campaign—rail
and highway bridges and the Republican Guard—shared political and
strictly military considerations belonging to the tactical air campaign
conducted by the Coalition in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations and
to the strategic air campaign against Iraq. The bombing of bridges for
the purposes of interdicting Iraq’s lines of communication”’ into Ku-

65


wait, thereby depriving Iraqi forces there of the necessary means to
fight, was strictly a military objective. But the destroying of bridges to
prevent the escape from Kuwait of Iraqi ground forces, particularly the
Republican Guard, involved both military and political considerations.
The strategic air campaign expended six percent of its effort against
bridges,”® a vital target system (but less vital than anticipated by air
planners) to Iraq’s war effort. As evident from historical experience,
bridges were highly resistant to the effects of “dumb” bombs, but
shockingly vulnerable to precision guided munitions. The strategic air
campaign destroyed or heavily damaged three-fourths of the major
bridges between Baghdad and Basra, including all nine railroad
bridges whose single-track railroad carried most of the Iraqi Army’s
and Republican Guard’s heavy equipment being moved for other than
tactical or battlefield operations. The coraplete loss of Iraq’s rail ca-
pacity out of the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations inhibited the speedy
retreat of its armored and mechanized units. The elimination of rail
transport constricted Iraq’s supply lines to Az Zubayr, the supply head
for Iraqi troops in Kuwait, on the Iraq-Kuwait border. The loss of brid-
ges reduced truck traffic to Az Zubayr down the four-lane superhigh-
way and rail traffic down the temporary line which linked the town to
Kuwait City and points west and south. The resupply of the occupation
forces in Kuwait dropped to a small fraction of its prewar level and
proved unable to meet Iraq’s needs for sustaining either offensive or
defensive operations.

Bridge bombing also produced traffic jams vulnerable to Coali-
tion air power and increased wear and tear on Iraq’s motor transport
fleet, which was forced to travel greater distances over alternate routes.
In response, the Iraqis built numerous pontoon bridges (of much lesser
capacity than the permanent bridges they replaced) and other work-
around solutions, such as earthen causeways. But in the precision
weapons era, Coalition air power easily countered these historically
useful defensive measures by destroying many of them and mounting
frequent “river reconnaissance” patrols to disrupt other Iraqi efforts.
Thus, as in LINEBACKER I, precision guided munitions inflicted the
greatest damage to bridges, accounting for forty-five percent of all mu-
nitions expended against them. In this instance, the strategic air cam-
paign achieved an ideal match between a weapon’s capability and its
target system.

Anticipating the interdiction campaign, Iraqi forces in Kuwait at-
tempted to offset the effect of Coalition air power’s severe constriction
of their lines of communication by stockpiling large amounts of sup-

66


TAF’s “Offensive Campaign-Phase I” and carried out with precision
guided munitions, force packaging, and stealth technology, give air
power a preeminent role in the conflict.

But Deptula’s concept of “simultaneity and careful sequencing of
attacks” in some instances had the effect of seemingly blurring target
priorities and making the conduct of the strategic air campaign appear
unfocused. For instance, an attack on a Scud solid-propellant produc-
tion plant in central Iraq, planned for C700 might be preceded by at-
tacks against airfields in southern and western Iraq at 0645 and a
communications center in eastern Iraq at 0655. These attacks, to the
uninitiated, would not necessarily appear related and might even seem
haphazard, for they fell in multiple target sets. But, by distracting and
spreading Iraqi air defenses, they decreased the losses of Coalition pi-
lots and aircraft”? and increased the chances of a successful attack on
the primary target. In this case, as in mest executed air campaigns, the
realities of planning for combat forced compromises in targeting pri-
orities. The Special Planning Group finalized the first day’s plans only
a week before the war.

The overall air plan had to be ready to execute at all times. More-
over, once the air campaign began, Deptula, Glosson, and other air of-
ficers feared that Hussein might quit at the first blow, or, more likely,
that the U.N. might impose a cease fire, or that some other political de-
cision might end the campaign in as little as a week’s time. Because
the air campaign might be short-lived, the Black Hole planners se-
lected a broad variety of target systems for attack as soon as possible
rather than one target system at a time. It seemed better to inflict some
damage on many target systems/centers of gravity than to attack two or
three and leave the rest untouched. This approach reflected Warden’s
belief in bombing for effect and not always for destruction and in the
systemic disruption that ripples through an enemy’s economy and soci-
ety from bombing multiple centers of gravity. Consequently, to
broaden the initial and following attacks as much as possible, Deptula
prepared a plan that spread strike forces widely and employed the
minimum number of weapons on the meximum number of targets. He
placed a premium on first smashing highly leveraged targets (centers
of gravity whose destruction would have the widest effect on as many
target systems as possible).

In mid-December 1990, to streamline and coordinate planning
for the looming air offensive, Lieutenant General Horner reorganized
CENTAF’s air planning. He combined the strategic air Special Plan-
ning Group with CENTAF’s defensive/tactical air planners to form the

24


hole in a hardened structure before exploding. It essentially does no damage beyond
obliterating aerials and other “soft” protrusions from the target. Penetrating munitions
burrow through several feet of hardening to explode inside the target.

“Lockheed had amassed considerable experience in this field. In the late 1950s
and 1960s, designers of the A-12 Oxcart and SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnais-
sance aircraft gave considerable attention to the reduction of their radar return. In the
1970s Lockheed built the experimental Have Blue stealth technology demonstrator,
the first aircraft designed and built when stealth characteristics were paramount. Have
Blue, a milestone in its own right, furnished a valuable data base for the later F-117A

“The Schnorkle was a captive buoy with an air hose attached. It allowed a sub-
marine to stay below the surface to avoid detection and still use its air breathing diesel
engines and conserve or recharge its electric drives. Use of the more powerful diesel
engines doubled a submarine’s speed. However, iraproved radar permitted the allies to
locate even the Schnorkle. The Germans countered with radar-absorbent material.

°“Near real time” in military parlance accounts for the delay between the occur-
rence of an event and the receipt of data about it at some other location by automated
data processing and display. “Real time” signifies essentially no delay between the oc-
currence of an event and receipt of data elsewhere except for that of transmitting elec-
tromagnetic energy. Definitions are found in The Official Dictionary of Military Terms
(ICS Pub 1), compiled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Cambridge, Mass: Hemisphere
Publishing Corp, 1988)

'During the Gulf War CHECKMATE, located in the Pentagon sub-basement, be-
came the short hand reference for all Deputy Directorate of Warfighting Concepts. The
deputy directorate funneled most of its communications to the Special Planning Group
(the “Black Hole”) in Riyadh through CHECKMATE,

"'During the Gulf War members of the deputy directorate went so far as to put a
plaque on the door of the CHECKMATE office stating simply “Air War Plans Division.”

"The Official Dictionary of Military Terms (JCS Pub 1), compiled by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (Cambridge, Mass: Hemisphere Publishing Corp, 1988) defines air su-
periority as “that degree of dominance in the airbattle of one force over the other
which permits the conduct of operations by the former and its related land, sea, and air
forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by the opposing
force.” Air supremacy is defined as “that degree cf air superiority wherein the oppos-
ing air force is incapable of effective interference.”

'3In addition to his temporary assignment as CENTCOM Forward, Lieutenant
General Horner simultaneously held several othe- positions. As a USAF General he
commanded the U.S. Ninth (Tactical) Air Force (a command composed entirely of
USAF units). When the Ninth Air Force acted as part of CENTCOM Horner became
the Air Component Commander (ACC) and the Commanding General, Central Com-
mand Air Forces (CENTAF), which included all USAF units (the Ninth Air Force plus
reinforcements) save USAF $pecial Operations Forces units, in the CENTCOM area
of responsibility. General Schwarzkopf also appointed Horner the Joint Force Air
Component Commander (JFACC), with the duties of planning, coordinating, allocat-
ing, and tasking theater-widq air operations (including U.S. Marine Corps (USMC)
and U.S. Navy (USN) aviation and all aircraft be.onging to Coalition air forces com-
mitted to the defense of Saudi Arabia) in accordance with the Commander in Chief,
U.S, Central Command's (Schwarzkopf’s) apportionment decisions. Horner's duties

76


Strategic Air Power in Desert Storm

From January 17 to February 28, 1991, aircraft of the United
States Air Force (USAF), United States Navy (USN), and United
States Marine Corps (USMC), under the control of the United States
Central Command (USCENTCOM)! as well as contingents of the air
forces of eleven other western European and Arab countries,” all under
the aegis of the United Nations (U.N.), systematically attacked and de-
stroyed targets inside Iraq and Iraqi armed forces occupying Kuwait.
The air attack was the international community’s response to Iraq’s oc-
cupation of Kuwait, a small oil-rich Kingdom at the western end of the
Persian Gulf, on August 2, 1990, and its obdurate refusal to abandon
its conquest. The air war against Iraq consisted of two separate cam-
paigns distinguished by different sets of f targets. In the campaign in the
Kuwaiti Theater of Operations (KTO),” 5 Coalition air forces had three
objectives; suppression of Iraqi air defenses in the KTO; preparation of
the battlefield for a planned Coalition ground attack (by striking Iraqi
ground forces and interdicting Iraqi supply lines), and support of Coa-
lition ground force operations with tactical airlift and aerial firepower.

The second air campaign, the strategic bombardment of Iraq,
struck at twelve sets of strategic targets. It sought to disrupt Iraq’s air
defense system, destroy its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons’
research, production, and storage; demolish its offensive strategic
weapon systems (short-range ballistic missiles [Scuds] and bombers);
cripple its oil production and electrical industries; impair its war indus-
try; and nullify its communications system. In addition, USAF plan-
ners hoped to “incapacitate” Saddam Hussein’s regime. This objective
had the readily apparent, but unstated, goal of creating a set of condi-
tions within Iraq conducive to the overthrow of its political leadership.
This work focuses on the use of strategic air power—on Coalition air
operations devoted to the strategic bombardment of Iraq. It does not
address directly the large-scale and deadly tactical air operations in the
KTO, which consumed seventy-five percent of the total Coalition air
effort.

The USAF supplied the largest air contingent employed in the
Gulf War—approximately 807 aircraft—and conducted the bulk of
strategic air operations. USAF technological trends and doctrinal
thought in the twenty preceding years culminated in this short, but pre-
cise and destructive, strategic bombing campaign. Some technical de-
velopments had proceeded openly, such as advances in navigation
made possible by signals from satellites of the Global Positioning Sys-



Relative Distances in the Area of the Operation

wine

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“Pe ‘

(Khamis Mushait)



The Kuwait Crisis, U.S. Deployment, and War Plans

The Emirate of Kuwait, a small Sunni Islamic Arab monarchy,
lies at the northwestern edge of the Persizn Gulf. Topographically it is
part of the desert covering much of the Arabian Peninsula. Because the
emirate sits astride a pool of thirteen and one-half percent of the
world’s known supply of petroleum, in 1990 its 2.1 million inhabitants
(many of whom were imported laborers) had the highest per capita
standard of living in the world. Its armed forces consisted of 20,300
troops, 245 tanks, and 35 combat aircrart. Its much larger and more
conservative southern neighbor, also a Sunni Arab monarchy, Saudi
Arabia, possesses another twenty-five percent of the world’s known
petroleum reserves, The Saudi population of 15 million supported
armed forces three and one-half times the size of Kuwait’s. To Ku-
wait’s north and west lies its most powerful neighbor, the Republic of
Iraq, a single-party Arab socialist state ruled autocratically by its
strongman and President for Life, Saddam Hussein. Iraq, with a popu-
lation of 18.8 million, fielded armed forces outnumbering Kuwait’s by
fifty-to-one in manpower, twenty-five-to-one in tanks, and twenty-to-
one in combat aircraft. The Islamic Republic of Iran, with a population
in 1990 of 55.6 million and a civil government dominated by conser-
vative Muslim Shiite clerics, lies across the Persian Gulf to the east.

By the summer of 1990, following a bitter, protracted, and ulti-
mately victorious, war against Iran, Hussein’s regime desperately
needed hard currency. At the same time, the price of oil, Iraq’s only
marketable cash commodity, continued to fall. In July, Hussein ac-
cused Kuwait of exceeding its Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) production quota and demanded that it forgive an
estimated Iraqi war debt of ten billion dollars. Kuwait, through pride,
miscalculation, or simple refusal to submit to blackmail, refused to ac-
cede to any of Hussein’s threats. At the OPEC meeting of July 26,
1990, the states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the OPEC majority voted
a target oil price of twenty-one dollars per barrel, sixteen percent less
than the twenty-five dollars per barrel advocated by Iraq. Thwarted by
OPEC and the other gulf states, and unwilling to cut his grandiose
military, social, and nation-building expenses, Hussein dispensed with
bluster and resorted to action. He had not anticipated that anyone, least
of all the world’s so-called superpowers, would oppose him. Months
earlier, on February 12, 1990, he had informed U.S. Diplomat John
Kelly, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and South Asian
Affairs, that the Soviets were “finished as [a] world power.” On July



launch capability. By mid-1990 the USAF’s entire precision guided
munitions-capable fleet consisted of only 125 to 135 fighter bombers:
64 swing-wing F-111Fs, 56 stealth F-117As, and a handful of F-4Es.
Twenty-four more F—-ISE “Strike Eagles” would replace the F4Es
and come on line as precision guided munitions-capable aircraft by the
end of 1990.

While many nations and the other U.S. armed services possessed
precision guided munitions by 1990, the USAF alone possessed air-
delivered precision guided munitions with a “hard target” penetrating
capacity. By May 1988 the large BLU-109/B (I-2000) “bomb live
unit” penetrating bomb had completed much of its initial operational
tests and evaluations, both in an unguided version (intended for F—16s)
and in guided versions for precision guided munitions-capable aircraft.
The streamlined 2,000-pound bomb’s tallistic and handling charac-
teristics were similar to the standard U.S. Mk-84 blast and fragmenta-
tion bomb, which simplified employment to the field. But it had a
body of high-strength forged steel, thick bomb walls that encased 550
pounds of Tritonal explosive filler, and a tail-mounted, delayed-action
fuse. Striking with a high kinetic impact at the proper angle, it could
penetrate hardened concrete, rubble, and other filler. (The I-2000
penetrator also came in Paveway II variants for the F-111F as well as
the F-117A, designated GBU-24 and 27 respectively.) When joined to
a guided delivery system the BLU-109/[-2000 offered a weapon sys-
tem of awesome lethality, overwhelming leverage, and surgical preci-
sion. Like the Belgians at the fortress of Eben Emael in May 1940, the
Iraqis in January 1991 would find hardened concrete woefully insuffi-
cient against a foe’s ingenuity and unconventionality.

If LINEBACKER I pointed to the future, LINEBACKER II sent a
somewhat mixed signal to the analyst. LINEBACKER II intended not
only to deny valuable matériel and safe areas to the enemy, but also to
force him back to the peace table by employing large-scale B-52
strikes on key targets primarily in the Hanoi-Haiphong areas. With ap-
proximately 200 B-52Ds and Gs available at Andersen Air Force
Base, Guam, and U-Tapao, Royal Thai Air Force Base, the USAF
launched eleven days of massed heavy bomber raids of 60 to 129 air-
craft, using radar bombsights and conventional iron bombs. From De-
cember 18 to 29, 1972, American bombers blasted over thirty-four
targets, including marshalling yards, storage and warehouse facilities,
fabrication plants, and airfields with 500- and 750-pound bombs. They
flew 729 sorties, dropped 15,237 tons of bombs, and lost 15 B-S2s for
a loss rate of two percent. Because of the B-S2D’s enormous bomblift,


Suggested Readings

Atkinson, Rick. Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War.
Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1993.

Blackwell, Major General James. Thunder in the Desert: The Strategy
and Tactics of the Persian Gulf War. New York, NY: Bantam
Books, 1991.

Cohen, Eliot, and Thomas Keaney. Guif War Air Power Survey. Wash-
ington, DC: GPO, 1993.

Coyne, James P. Airpower in the Gulf. Washington, DC: The Air
Force Association, 1992.

DoD. Conduct of the Persian Gulf War. Washington, DC: Department
of Defense, unclassified version, April 1992.

Hallion, Richard P. Storm Over Iraq. Air Power and the Gulf War.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

al Khalil, Samir. The Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Hussein ’s
Iraq. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1989.

Mann, Edward C., III. Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the
Airpower Debates. Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press,
April 1995.

Powell, Colin L. My American Journey. New York, NY: Random
House, 1995.

Reynolds, Richard T. The Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air
Campaign Against Iraq. Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University
Press, January 1995.

Schwarzkopf, Norman H. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the Auto-
biography: It Doesn't Take a Hero. New York, NY: Bantam
Books, 1992.

Warden, John A., III. The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat. Wash-
ington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1988.

Woodward, Bob. The Commanders. New York, NY: Simon and
Schuster, 1991.

x U.S. Government Printing Ottice: 1999 - 454-173 (14705) 85


availability and suitability of attack assets. It attempted to match the most appropriate
weapon and/or delivery system, given current circumstances, with a target. Unlike the
Air Tasking Order, the Master Attack Plan was relatively concise. The first day’s
(January 17, 1990) Master Attack Plan, the only one to include two nights January 16
and 17 and 17 and 18 and the day of the 17th), consisted of only twenty-one pages.

*Sometimes a military planner such as Lizutenantt Colonel Deptula occupied
important positions with more control over actions than his rank might suggest. His-
toric examples of other field grade planning officers with seemingly disproportionate
influence include Colonel Max Hoffman, Imperial German Army, plans officer for
Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorf from 1914 to 1917; Commander Minoru Genda,
Imperial Japanese Navy, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack; and U.S. Army Air
Forces (USAAF) officers, Lieutenant Colonels Harold L. George and Kenneth N.
Walker, Major Haywood S. Hansell, and Captain “awrence S. Kuter, who created Air
War Plans Division Plan No. | (AWPD/1) in nine days (August 1941). AWPD/I
served as the early blueprint of the USAAF’s wartime expansion and employment.

* Before and during the conflict, Licutenant General Horner and Brigadier Gen-
eral Glosson stressed to air planners and air wing commanders alike that minimizing
Coalition losses came before any other considera ion. (See, Interview (S/NF), Major
General Buster C. Glosson, Director of Legislative Affairs, USAF Air Staff, with
Richard G. Davis, Perry D. Jamieson, and Diane T. Putney at Bolling Air Force Base,
Washington, D.C., December 11, 1991.)

°*The Department of Defense in 1989 defined target materials as “graphic, tex-
tual, tabular, or other presentations of target intelli zence primarily designed to support
operations against designated targets by one or more weapon systems. Target materials
are suitable for training, planning, executing, and evaluating such operations.” The
Black Hole also had difficulty obtaining target folders for specific targets and informa-
tion about Iraqi air defenses through CENTAF intelligence channels.

Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) assays the effects of all air attacks (bombs,
rockets, and strafing) on a target. The prime source of BDA is photographic intelli-
gence from various means of collection such as satellite imagery, reconnaissance air-
craft, and strike aireraft gun cameras or video tare recorders. All aircraft capable of
designating for laser-guided bombs have video tape recorders. As one would expect,
poor weather over a target can seriously degrade or delay BDA

The F-15E, the F-111F, and the F-117A, all designated to participate in the
strategic offensive air campaign, carried video tape recorders.

61 ow-Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) is a

two-pod electronics system that increases aircraft capability in night flying, The navi-
gation pod, which equips the F-15Es and some F-16s, allows for precise nighttime lo-
cation and navigation, The targeting pod, just coming into service in mid-1990, gave a
self-designating precision guided munitions (PGM) capability to its carrying aircraft.
There were too few targeting pods for both the F-1SE and F-16, thus all available
pods were reserved for the more capable F-1SEs.

?Pave Tack was a belly-mounted laser and infrared (IR) sensor system that al-
lowed the F--111Fs to self-designate for their own laser-guided bombs.

°SThe French, who built the system, naried it “Kari”"—Iraq spelled back-

wards—in French.

78


altitudes saved allied lives by placing attacking aircraft beyond the effective range of
low-level Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) It further increased the effect of bad
weather in that more clouds cause mission carcellations at 10,000 feet and above than
at 2,500 feet, Higher altitudes requiring higher releases also adversely affect bombing
accuracy. The longer the distance a bomb must travel the greater the magnification of
any errors. Lack of high-altitude training for crews and delays in reprogramming on-
board aircraft bomb-aiming software to compensate for the new height variables also
contributed to bombing inaccuracies. In the first ten days. (See Conduct of the Gulf
War, p. 169.)

#26 of February 1, 1991, the USN had 96 A-6Es on board carriers in the Ara-
bian Gulf and Red Sea, while the USMC had twenty A~6s at Shaik Isa. During the war
‘A-6s {lew 2,617 strikes of all types, including 307 precision strikes. The USN ex-
pended 149 precision guided munitions strikes against the Iraqi ground order of battle
(tanks) and thirty-nine against naval targets, leaving 119 strikes (an average of 3 a
day) against all other targets. (See GWAPS, Vol. V, Statistics, Table 187 “Strikes by
AIF Categories,” p. 436, and Table 193 “PGM Strikes by AIF Categories,” p. 532. The
tables are unclassified.) Throughout the war, naval aviation forces labored under short-
ages of precision weapons, insufficient ship-based tankers and electronic warfare ait-
cratt, and the inability to do more than sequential (as opposed to simultaneous) cartier
strike packages.

\Pank-plinking,” a term coined by USAF pilots, described the act of targeting
individual Iraqi tanks, usually under cover in revetments or bunkers, with 500-pound
GBU-12 laser-guided laser bombs. The bor bs would locate a tank by its thermal sig-
nature and subsequently illuminate it with a laser for destruction. Armor adherents
took great umbrage at the term, which of course ensured its widespread use among
aviators!

“In this period the majority of B-52Gs based in Diego Garcia continued to
strike Iraqi ground targets in Kuwait. The B-52Gs based in the Gulf region were also
directed almost exclusively at Iraqi ground targets in Kuwait and southern Iraq

45Phe Al Firdos District Bunker was enclosed by high fences topped with
barbed wire and clearly marked as closed to the general public. Apparently, the civil-
ian occupants of the facility were family members of high ranking Iraqi government
officials or intelligence personnel working on the lower floors

46Baehdad contained twenty-five burkers similar to the Al Firdos District Bun-
ker. Before the war these structures, given the Iraqi proclivity of placing many impor-
tant functions in hardened facilities, had confused the Special Planning Group. The
bunkers appeared to be more than just ordinary bomb shelters; they seemed to have
military purposes, and the Iragis had painted them in camouflage colors. The air plan-
ners had carried them on their prewar target lists and asked U.S. intelligence about
them shortly before hostilities began. Intelligence would not confirm any designation
for these structures beyond that of civilian tomb shelter. Therefore, the air planners, in
accordance with U.S. policy, placed them off-limits to bombing.

47Cheney may have personally requested White House approval for the resump-
tion of the bombing of Baghdad

48) borrowed the term “core” from GWAPS, Vol. II, Effects, p. 269. The chiet
authors of that volume, Barry D. Watts and Thomas A. Keaney, use it to define what
they consider “the eight ‘strategic’ target categories that were perceived by those who

81


railroads as an eleventh target set. New intelligence, unavailable at IN-
STANT THUNDER’S inception, had revealed the target system’s vulner-
ability to air assault. Also, by November 1990, in-theater planners had
separated Scud ballistic missile production, research, and mobile and
fixed launchers from overall Iraqi military research and production and
established it as yet a twelfth target set.

General Schwarzkopf fully endorsed INSTANT THUNDER on Au-
gust 17, 1990, and sent Colonel Warden to Riyadh to brief Lieutenant
General Horner. Horner rejected the plan’s “airpower alone” aspects,
but he accepted its target list and selected three key members of War-
den’s team to compose a small and highly secret Central Air Forces
(CENTAF) Special Planning Group.!> This group, in the process of
completing an offensive air campaign plan ready for execution by Sep-
tember 15, 1990, became known as The “Black Hole” when other
members of CENTAF’s staff observed that resources, personnel, and
intelligence all seemed to go into the Special Planning Group, but
never seemed to come out again—activity not unlike that which occurs
in a collapsed neutron star. 6 In late August 1990 Horner appointed
Brigadier General Buster C. Glosson, USAF, to head the Special Plan-
ning Group. One of Glosson’s first moves was to augment the Special
Planning Group to twenty officers, adding one experienced weapons
officer from each USAF combat wing in Saudi Arabia to act as a sub-
ject matter specialist. For the next five months, in response to new in-
telligence and to the growing number of Coalition aircraft available,
the Special Planning Group expanded its target list. The group, too, in-
creased in size with the addition of Strategic Air Command (SAC) re-
fueling experts, USN and USMC representatives, and, on September
19, 1990, British Royal Air Force (RAF) planners.

If Lieutenant General Horner rejected the form, he kept the sub-
stance of INSTANT THUNDER. Although he co-opted the Warden group
into a planning process under his own control, he did not fundamen-
tally change its campaign plan. At his prodding, the term INSTANT
THUNDER and overt traces of the group disappeared from briefings. By
September 2, 1990, INSTANT THUNDER had transmogrified into CEN-
TAF “Offensive Campaign-Phase I.” But the targets and the philoso-
phy that identified them remained in place. They formed the core of
subsequent offensive planning, which continued to emphasize leader-
ship; electrical, nuclear, biological, and chemical facilities; and the
other targets sets derived from the five rings. Glosson himself became
a convert to the principles of INSTANT THUNDER, largely owing to the
inclusion of one of Warden’s key planners, Lieutenant Colonel David

19


Fiftieth snide

Commemorative Edition



planned and executed the Desert Storm air campaign as constituting the core of Iraq's
current and future military power.” However, I have deleted one of their eight catego-
ries, “Rail and Highway Bridges,” from the “core” and placed it into what I designate
the “mixed” target category. Since much of Iraq's political status in the region rested
on its powerful military capabilities, an attack on those capabilities can be constituted
as an attack on its political position in the region as well.

“Warden expected that leadership bombing would result in Saddam Hussein's
elimination or overthrow. Most others, including some of his own planners, thought
not. but they did not deny that Saddam Hussein’s overthrow would be a welcome and
positive result of it. In September 1990 the Black Hole proposed to “decapitate the
Saddam Regime.” (See Slide 17, Brigadier General Glosson’s Brief to the CJSC, Sep-
tember 13. 1990, information cited is unclassified.) When Glosson briefed President
Bush on October 11, 1990, he stated that the strategic air campaign would destroy the
Iraqi leadership's command and communications network and disrupt its ability to
communicate with the Iraqi people. Glosson also received the impression the President
did not want to go on the record as targeting Saddam Hussein.

“Because these rebellions were untimed and uncoordinated, after the Coalition
Iraqi cease fire of March 3, 1991, Saddam Hussein was able to crush them separately.
Apparently, the leaders of the uprisings delayed action in hopes that the Coalition
would destroy Hussein's regime for them. Had the rebels taken action during hostili-
ties and appealed for Coalition aid at that point, they might have had a better chance
against him. They would have had a good claim to Coalition aid and Coalition forces
would have continued to tie up the bulk of the Iragi armed forces. A scenario of this
sort would have made the bombing of leadership and command and control facilities a
clear success. Instead, the Coalition appears to have left itself open to the same charge
leveled against the western nations in the aftermcth of the Hungarian revolution of
1956—that it egged the rebels on with no intention of aiding them.

‘The bombing of the Al Firdos Bunker, waich took place during Primakov
visit, may also have affected Saddam Hussein's calculations.

Phe origin of the Baghdad target holds is a problem requiring further investi-
gation. General Schwarzkopf placed the Baghdad bridges off-limits in early February.
After the bombing of the Al Firdos Bunker on February 13, Lieutenant General Horner
had to obtain Schwarzkopt’s approval for any targets in downtown Baghdad. In turn,
Schwarzkopf discussed the targets with General Powell in Washington before granting
his permission. Powell seems to have imposed this restriction by his own authority, but
there is some evidence that the target hold may have come from the White House. Sec-
retary Cheney apparently went there to get the bomping hold removed on February 21,
1991, See (S/NF/WN/NC) GWAPS, II, Operations. pp. 249-251.

“The air planners assumed that Saddam Hussein would have fallen and that
there would be few or no import restrictions on the new regime. By making oil and
electricity unavailable during the war but speedily available to the new regime, the air
planners hoped to a strengthen Hussein's successors in the eyes of the Iraqi people.

“The author discussed the use of the word “destroy” in relation to Iraqi nuclear,
biological, and chemical (NBC) capabilities with members of CHECKMATE and the
Black Hole. They intended to eliminate all NBC capability, not just to damage it.

55. . . «
The Iraqis possessed an inventory of several hundred missiles, several fixed
launchers (simple rails on a concrete pad) and prebably no more than twenty-five to

82


from their logistics bases; and, more important, prevent Iraqi ground
forces, especially the Republican Guard, from retreating from the thea-
ter. Generals Schwarzkopf and Powell wanted the Republican Guard
fixed in place, vulnerable to subsequent air and ground operations.
Soon, Coalition aircraft went after rail bridges as well, since Iraq pos-
sessed only a single-track line between Baghdad and Basra. But in
these and later attacks they failed because their aircraft had no preci-
sion guided munitions. U.S. and RAF aircraft that did were soon di-
verted to the task. By February 6 the Air Staff informed Secretary
Cheney that Coalition bombing had destroyed twenty-two of twenty-
four critical highway bridges, a feat unparalleled in air power annals
and one made possible entirely by precision guided munitions. As in
LINEBACKER I, the destruction of so many key bridges in such a short
time choked the logistics system supplying Iraqi troops in Kuwait.
Coalition aircraft revisited the bridges whenever necessary and by the
end of the war had “dropped” forty-one of fifty-four rail and highway
bridges between Baghdad and Basra, as well as thirty-two pontoon
bridges built as replacements.

At the same time, on the night of January 17 and 18, 1991, a Joint
Task Force Proven Force, consisting of approximately 100 USAF air-
craft, none precision guided munitions-capable,> began operations
from the Republic of Turkey. These aircraft remained under the opera-
tional control of the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), but Gen-
eral Schwarzkopf held tactical control. Striking from | the northwest,
they placed all of Iraq in reach of Coalition air power. ° Attacks duing
the daylight hours of January 18, 1991, continued the assault on Iraq’s
air defense system (after forty-eight hours of aerial attacks the number
of active enemy SAM and early warning radars detected operating by
Coalition forces declined by almost ninety percent, from 1,700 per day
to 200). Other attacks continued against Iraqi air base runways and fa-
cilities, blasted chemical and biological warfare bunkers, and further
damaged communications. Tomahawk land attack missiles rained
down on the Ministry of Defense, power plants, refineries, and the
Abu Guryahb Presidential Grounds. But bad weather now intervened.
On the night of January 18 and 19 it completely disrupted two F-117A
attacks on Baghdad and the nearby nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha.

Altogether, in the first two days, Coalition air attackers struck
169 of 298 potential strategic targets, rendered Irag’s air defenses inef-
fective (allowing CENTAF to order all strike aireraft to operate with
relative impunity at medium and high altitudes),* ' drove the Iraqi Air
Force from the skies (its night sorties ceased on the night of January 18

42


Gulf War Aircraft

TOP: Boeing's aged but still impressive B-52G Stratofortress was the
most feared Gulf War attacker according to Iraqi prisoner-of-war in-
terrogation reports.

BOTTOM: The Lockheed F-117A Stealth Fighter, representing only 2.5 percent of all
Coalition attack aircraft, struck over 30 percent of all strategic targets on the first day of
the war alone. Its ability to penetrate and incapacitate hardened enemy targets was formi-
dable. The product of super-secret advanced technolgy, its faceted angular surface and
“vee” tail helped to reduce its radar return dramatically.



pensing various configurations of chaff (metallic coated streamers
dropped in bundles from aircraft to deceive and mislead enemy radar),
and by developing anti-radiation missiles to home in on and destroy
emitters. These measures proved subject to countermeasures, inter-
fered with one’s own electronic equipment, and were seldom broad
enough to blind every specific threat. The U.S. experience in Vietnam
and the Israeli experience in the October 1973 War with ever more
complex air defenses, however, stimulated interest in a passive re-
sponse to the problem—air vehicles that presented little or no radar
cross section from any angle and that minimized heat signature to foil
infrared detection. In late 1978 the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and
the USAF began development of a stealth combat aircraft, the first de-
signed on the basis of its radar cross section (RCS) instead of aerody-
namic or flight performance requirements.’ The resultant F-117A
entered the active USAF inventory in 1983.

In November 1988 the USAF brought the F-117A stealth fighter
(known as the Nighthawk) out of the black world and introduced its
distinctive appearance, but not its sophisticated technology, to public
view. It had first flown back in June 1981, and the service took deliv-
ery of the last of fifty-nine aircraft in June 1990. Given the aircraft’s
technical potential against enemy air defenses and its effectiveness as a
bombing platform, the USAF received a bargain whose cost was com-
parable with conventional (non-stealthy) alternatives. In 1991 dollars
the total F-117 program cost a relatively modest $8.2 billion overall,
with a unit flyaway cost (airframe, engines [installed], electronics, ord-
nance, and armament) of $52.5 million. The F-111F “Aardvark” had a
unit flyaway cost of 10.9 million in 1973 dollars (roughly equal to 45
million in 1991 dollars), but it required a supporting package of elec-
tronic jamming aircraft and air defense suppression aircraft to reach its
target. The F-117, except for flight refueling, needed no other aerial
support, thus saving the high costs of fuel, weapons, refueling, mainte-
nance, escort aircraft, and personnel. To minimize financial risk and
expense and to speed the new aircraft’s development, Lockheed used
parts from F-18s and F—-16s and adapted existing attack, computer,
and electronics systems. The F—16’s fly-by-wire digital flight control
system proved particularly beneficial in controlling the dynamically
unstable F-117, and computer modeling at levels far exceeding those
available to previous designers greatly assisted its development.

Stealth technology evolved during World War II with the British
Mosquito light bomber, whose plywood construction gave it a low ra-
dar return, and with later models of the German U-Boat Schnorkle,®


automobile fuel, and labor-saving electric appliances would become
further alienated from their government and overthrow it. Their frus-
tration and anger over intensifying deprivation in everyday life, in ad-
dition to traditional grievances, certainly helped to spark Shiite and
Kurdish mutinies. But the air planners underestimated the stake of
Saddam Hussein’s Sunni followers in the status quo and the strength
of Iraq’s internal security and its ability to bank or deflect from the re-
gime the fires of popular dissatisfaction. This underestimation of the
hold of a police state on its thralls was not unique to USAF planners.
Outside observers also underestimated the hold of both the Nazi and
Soviet states on their people prior to World War II. One might also
suggest that the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s resulted more
from the recognition of economic failure among the regime’s ruling
elite than from the push of the people from below. As to the strength of
internal security, the continued survival of the KGB and its successors
provides an object lesson in their durability and strength. Although the
combined bombing of leadership, coramunications, and control centers
seriously crippled it, Hussein’s regim2 managed to survive.

The air planners had sought to limit any damage to power and
fuel target systems to facilitate eventual and speedy repairs.” To stop
the electricity from flowing into Iraq’s national power grid, Coalition
aircraft did not have to bomb the generating plants into rubble. Rather,
they had merely to stop operations for a few weeks or months, when
the actual fighting would take place. To encourage eventual oil exports
they avoided bombing oil fields or leveling refineries & la Ploesti or
Balikpapan in World War II. The air planners, naturally, took umbrage
in the immediate post-war period when the Iraqi government and inter-
national visitors exaggerated the public health and economic conse-
quences of the damage inflicted on the electrical power and oil sys-
tems. In fact, despite a continuing international embargo and non-co-
operation from Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq recovered much of its
electrical generating capacity by mid-1992. By October 1992 it was
actually once again exporting finished petroleum products. The bomb-
ing of these targets, located outside city areas, resulted in little collat-
eral damage and represented an almost perfect example of Warden's
theories of bombing for effect, not for destruction.

The Coalition went after Hussein’s nuclear, biological, and che-
mical weapons research, development, and production because they
were key to his efforts to destabilize the Persian Gulf region. They
formed part of the original INSTANT THUNDER plan, which promised
to “destroy,” that is, obliterate, them. That plan, however, was based

wn
a


tions that cratered the paving at Al Taqqadum, Iraq’s largest air base,
while Saudi Tornadoes attacked Shaibah in Iraq, a few miles north of
Kuwait.

This sudden, overwhelming aerial onslaught against Iraq vividly
illustrates the changed roles of USAF tactical and strategic aircraft.
The large eight-engine B—S2G, once the queen of the strategic nuclear
bomber fleet, made shallow, low-level conventional assaults against
weakly defended tactical targets while preceded by waves of friendly
aircraft deflecting attention away from them. Light, single place, twin-
engine fighter-bombers had flown into the teeth of enemy defenses
against strategic targets. Late 20th century offensive and defensive
technology had dramatically redefined the “strategic bomber.”

F-117A Nighthawks returned to Baghdad at 0420L, January 17,
1991. They blasted the Kari Interceptor Operations Center at Al Taq-
qadum airfield, the Baghdad area Kari Sector Operations Center at
Taji; North Taji Military Related Facility #2, and the new Iraqi Air
Force Headquarters complex. Bad weather prevented a strike on Bagh-
dad’s primary TV transmitter, the leveling of which would have sepa-
rated Hussein’s propaganda machine from any audience still retaining
electrical power.

Seven F-117As attacked bunkers holding possible biological
warfare material in central Iraq in the last strike of the night. This ma-
terial required distinctively configured refrigerated bunkers for stabil-
ity and safety. Air Planners had debated not only how but even
whether to breach these bunkers at all. The likely release of their con-
tents—anthrax and other toxins—might create horrific conditions over
a highly populated area or contaminate the Tigris and Euphrates Riv-
ers. Not until late December 1990 did President Bush authorize strikes
on biological warfare bunkers. The United States decided to attack an
hour before dawn, the day’s low ebb for wind, just before maximum
exposure to sunlight.> First, F-117As would make precision strikes to
crack the bunkers open. Then F-111Fs carrying CBU-87s and 89s
would make additional passes to ignite fires and mine the area to pre-
vent salvage. The mission, at OSO00L on the morning of January 17,
demonstrated once again that Clausewitz’s concept of “friction” ap-
plies to any military operation, as do Murphy’s Laws. The F-117As,
followed by sixteen F-111Fs, attacked thirteen biological warfare bun-
kers. But late night fog, a common January occurrence near the
Euphrates River, obscured the targets and prevented many pilots from
dropping their bombs or identifying their targets. Of all of the bombs

38


2rhroughout the war, the USAF provided its units in-theater with excellent
combat logistics and support. A reliable locel airlift composed of C-141 and C-130
transports carried vital spare parts from logistics facilities in the United States and dis-
tributed them to the field, permitting ground crews to turn around F-15Es in twenty-
two minutes.

1 gal Baghdad Time, not Zulu (Greenwich Mean Time), is used here, as it
was by the strategic planners. H-Hour was or ginally set for 0300 Baghdad time, but in
the many modifications of the plan pre-H-Hour attacks were added. It seemed easier to
leave them pre-H-Hour than to rearrange the times for all of the other units, at least
one of which could be counted on not to get it right at the worst possible time. Wash-
ington, D.C., on Eastern Standard Time was seven hours behind Baghdad time.

SIphis electronic assistance for the attacking F-117As was unique in the cam-
paign, The F-117 wing, over objections of the Iraqi Target Cell, insisted on EF-IIIA
support for this one attack, which was to be the first and only attack against the all-up,
uundegraded defenses of Baghdad. At no other time in the conflict did the F=1 17s re-
quest or receive dedicated electronic warfare support for a mission, On occasion, of
Course, they gained some benefit from electronic warfare aircraft supporting other
force packages operating in their proximity.

Phe Tomahawk land attack missile (TLAM), a USN ship-launched cruise
missile containing stealth design elements, featured inertial digital precision guidance
and could carry either a single warhead or a warhead capable of dispensing multiple
sub-munitions, It did not mount a penetrating or hard-target-killing warhead.

“Horner and Glosson had received expert advice that Anthrax would decom-
pose rapidly when exposed to sunlight,

My Strategic Air Command briefing, circa 1991, claimed the following circular
error probables for SAC bombers: less than 300" for offensive avionics systems (radar
bomb sights and supporting systems) and less than 100° using the Global Positioning
System (GPS). These statistics do not state if the figures apply to the B-52 or the
much more modern B-I or both, Nor do these figures indicate at what altitude the
hombs were dropped. High-altitude drops, such as the majority of those employed in
the Gulf War, are inherently less accurate than low-altitude delivery. Even with GPS,
B-52-dropped iron bombs were an order of magnitude less accurate than precision
guided munitions. (See “Bomber Capabilities: Precision and Mass” slide from Brief-
ing “Strategic Air Command,” ca 1991, in SAC Historian's Office, Historians Work-
ing Files for FY 1991 Annual History.) Bombing computer software or personnel
training problems (such as those caused in switching from low- to high-altitude at-
tacks) might further affect bombing accuracy and introduce additional errors in bomb
delivery. A shortage of Bomb Damage Assessment data might compound any delivery
problems by allowing missions to repeat m stakes until told to make corrections.

Sorc 5 int - ms -
‘SAC figures indicate that B-52s in the Gulf War flew eighty-five percent of
their sorties against Iraqi ground units or ground support targets and only fifteen per-
cent against strategic targets. The Republican Guard alone absorbed thirty-seven per-

cent of B-52 sorties. A fact-tilled but distorted picture of the B-52's performance tn
the war is presented on pp. 675-676 of Conduct of the Gulf War (unclassified), DoD

B-52s flew 954 air interdiction sorties against strategic targets (indus:
trial facilities, C° facilities, nuclear/chemical/biological facilities. and
short-range ballistic missiles), inte-diction targets including Republican

719


Strategic Targets Level of Effort
— — — — —
Fercentages of Percentages of
Strategic Effort Strategic Effort
Strategic Combat Including Excluding
Strategic Target Sets. Sorties Flown R2publican Guard Republican Guard
Electrical Power 215 1 2
Naval 247 2 2
Leadership 429 2 3
Air Defense 436 2 3
oil 518 3 4
ic? 601 3 5
Railroads/Bridges 712 4 6
Nucl/Biol/Chem 902 5 7
Military Support 2,756 15 22
Scuds 2,767 15 22
Air Fields 3,047 17 24
Republican Guard 5,646 31
Total Strategic Sorties 18,276
Strategic Effort as a
Percentage of Total
Coalition Air Combat 36 24



and 19, 1991), established air superiority, shut down Iraq’s electrical
grid, and began to dry up the internal reserves of one of the world’s
largest petroleum producers. Coalition aircraft erased fifty years of
Iraqi development in as many hours. However, by January 19, 1991,
because of weaknesses in prewar intelligence estimates, significant
Iraqi biological and chemical warfare and short-range ballistic missile
capabilities remained. Furthermore, Iraqi troops in Kuwait had not yet
suffered significant damage. Their time would come soon enough.

The Strategic Air Campaign Concluded

On days one and two of the war the Coalition devoted approxi-
mately 2,400 combat sorties to strategic targets in Iraq. From this peak
the total dropped daily. By day five, January 21, 1991, Coalition air-
craft flew 550 strategic sorties. By day nine, January 25, 1991, the
number of tactical combat missions directed against Iraqi forces in Ku-
wait and in direct support in southern Iraq equaled the strategic sortie
total. By day thirteen, January 29, 1991, the number of sorties directed
at strategic targets within Iraq had shrunk to 250 per day. Of those,
Coalition air forces expended approximately 75 per day on Scud-re-
lated targets while sorties against tactical targets had increased to 800
per day and continued to rise. This strategic total did not include ap-
proximately 100 daily sorties flown from Turkey. Sorties directed to-
ward Kuwait averaged more than 1,200 per day. For the last two-thirds
of the Gulf War the Coalition conducted the strategic air campaign at a
minimum level.

Not unexpectedly Iraq’s Scud ballistic missiles forcefully in-
truded into Coalition military and political calculations. Beginning on
the night of January 17 and 18, 1991, a volley of seven ballistic mis-
siles exploded in the nearby state of Israel. Attacking this neutral
power with the cynical purpose of provoking a Pavlovian military re-
taliation, Hussein hoped to exploit the decades-long history of mutual
antipathy between the Jewish nation and its Arab neighbors. Using an
Israeli counterstrike as a wedge to split some or all of the Coalition’s
Arab member states from the rest of the alliance, he would thereby dis-
rupt or even end the Coalition’s attacks. Whatever the validity of that
calculation, Coalition leaders could take no chances, especially when
their intelligence services credited Iraq with chemical warheads for its
Scuds. For the first time U.S. combat units (Army Patriot anti-tactical
ballistic missile batteries) arrived on Israeli soil, set up, and sub-
sequently fired, Patriot missiles at incoming Scuds. The Coalition’s

43


Guidance, Apportionment, and Tasking Division (GAT), in a newly
created Directorate of Campaign Plans. From that time onward the
Special Planning Group became the Iraq) Target Cell, responsible for
the strategic air campaign, and CENTAF’s tactical planners became
the KTO Cell, responsible for tactical air planning and targeting in the
theater. The Iraqi Target Cell designated its strategic targets individu-
ally. It had approximately 600, but could only apportion 250 to 300
sorties a day among them after January 29, 1991. Before that point,
strategic sorties had numbered more than 600 a day. This planning ap-
proach lent itself particularly well to the anticipated campaign against
bridges, which overlapped both Iraq proper and the Kuwaiti Theater of
Operations. Thus, the Iraqi Target Cell held responsibility for planning
all bridge attacks that, historically, had been interdiction targets.

The Coalition military leadership’s concentration of the air effort
on Iraqi ground forces and related targets in the KTO meant that dur-
ing three-fourths of the conflict, the KTO Cell planned over eighty
percent of all Coalition air operations. The KTO Cell had numerous air
resources, but it faced a seemingly endless number of potential targets.
In theory. each individual artillery piece and armored fighting vehicle
in each of the forty-three Iraqi divisions in the theater, not to mention
infantry concentrations and the many supply dumps and vehicles in the
Iraqi logistics network, could be a separate aiming point. Conse-
quently, KTO Cell tactical air planners adopted an entirely different
targeting approach than did their colleagues in the Iraqi Cell. They did
not usually designate individual targets. Such an attempt would have
overwhelmed planning capacity and the Air Tasking Order system. In-
stead, the KTO Cell employed force on force. It sent packages of tacti-
cal strike and support aircraft to attack designated “kill boxes.” These
were grids, thirty miles on a side, divided into quadrants and laid out
over a standard map of Kuwait and southeastern Iraq. Unless other-

se directed by an airborne controller or changing circumstances,
each day a strike aircraft would hit all targets of opportunity within its
designated “kill box.” A single quadrant comprised an area almost
equaling the size of New York City. These devastating and ubiquitous
operations accomplished both the aerial interdiction of Iraqi supply
and the destruction of Iraqi military equipment and personnel. Obvi-
ously, this approach lent itself to attacks on the Republican Guard, for
which the KTO tactical air planners had responsibility throughout the
conflict. The KTO Cell gave the results of its planning to Lieutenant
Colonel Deptula, head of the Iraqi Cell, who incorporated them into
the daily Master Attack Plan.

25


dragged Israel into it, and the negative publicity they generated further
alienated Hussein's regime from the world community.

The “core” target sets constituted the centerpiece of the strategic
air campaign against Iraq in the Gulf War. They were the objects of
sixty-five percent of the strategic air campaign, a total of 8,188 sorties.
They were of vital importance to Iraq’s war effort, and their vulner-
ability to air attack varied. The attack on Iraq’s leadership and com-
mand, control, and communications assets produced significant, if
mixed, results. It failed to depose Hussein, tainting for some the rest of
what was, undeniably, an extraordinary air campaign. Air power un-
doubtedly succeeded in forcing Hussein to accede to the wishes of the
Coalition, whether he wanted to or not. Its secondary results greatly
complicated his ability to prosecute the war and provide important and
encouraging lessons for future strategic air operations.

In sum, the attacks on oil and especially electrical targets were
highly successful, producing immediate and damaging results. They
validated the Warden group’s methodology of searching for centers of
gravity and bombing for effect. The attacks on nuclear, chemical, and
biological targets were effective against known targets and inflicted
significant delay on Iraqi weapons programs, but they did not destroy
them in their entirety because of intelligence shortfalls.

Although the strikes on Iraq’s military support structure caused
serious delays in production and in the full reconstitution of its armed
forces, they did not entirely destroy its capabilities. Of course, the de-
lay in and of itself benefitted Iraq’s neighbors, who have, since the end
of thr war, launched aggressive acquisition and training programs to
prepare their defenses against a renascent Saddam Hussein or his suc-
cessor. Overall, the striking of support structures suggests that it is far
less economical to bomb the many diffuse factories that produce arms
directly for the military establishment than it is to disrupt the power
sources and transportation nets that feed them.

Finally, the Scud targeting system il-ustrates the intimate link be-
tween military and political power. When considered alone, the anti-
Scud effort was a disappointment that raises disturbing problems for
future air power campaigns. However, when considered in the light of
Clausewitz’s belief that warfare is an extension of state politics, the
anti-Scud effort justified the military resources invested in it for it kept
Israel neutral. It demonstrated yet again, that at the strategic level, al-
most every target system involves both a political and a military calcu-
lus. In this instance the political objective was paramount and the
assault on the target system, therefore, was, ironically, successful.

62


tem (GPS); others, such as electronic combat devices and precision
guided munitions (PGM), proceeded in secret; while some, such as
stealth flight technology hatched and matured out of public sight in the
so-called super-secret “black world.” During this period the USAF
also began to look at its strategic war-fighting doctrine in an effort to
adapt to changing circumstances and technology.

Post Vietnam Changes in Technology and Doctrine

Operations LINEBACKER I and II, conducted by the USAF over
North Vietnam from May to October 1972 and in December 1972,
served as harbingers of things to come and as a “last hurrah” for the
old order of strategic bombardment. In LINEBACKER I, launched to
counter North Vietnam's massive ground offensive into the Republic
of South Vietnam’s northernmost provinces, USAF fighter-bombers
made the first sustained use of precision guided munitions. Employing
electro-optically guided bombs and laser-guided bombs, they were
known generically as guided bomb units (GBUs) and struck key
bridges and other pin-point targets. For example, « on May 10, 12, and
13, 1972, precision guided munitions “dropped” seven bridges, in-
cluding both the infamous Paul Doumer and the Thanh Hoa (dubbed,
not without reason, “the bridge that would never go down”). Heavy air
defenses had frustrated conventional attacks on the two bridges for
five years and had taken a heavy toll of attackers. Between April 6 and
June 30, 1972, precision guided munitions-equipped F—4Cs of the 8th
Tactical Fighter Wing, Ubon, Royal Thai Air Force Base, destroyed
106 bridges, including some previously off-limits spans near the Chi-
nese border. The dropping of numerous bridges in rapid succession in-
terrupted North Vietnamese logistics, and, by denying alternate routes,
overtaxed repair capabilities.

The USAF was slow to address the doctrinal implications of this
new level of bombing accuracy. It did not equip the major portion of
its combat aircraft procured between 1972 and 1990 (the F-I15C, F-16,
and A-10 series) with guided-bomb unit-delivery capability. The
service did upgrade its precision guided munitions technology by fur-
ther developing its initial delivery system, Paveway I. Paveway II
(GBUs-10, 12, and 16) featured improved guidance and structural fea-
tures and folding wings (strike aircraft could carry more of them) and
became operational in the mid 1970s. Paveway III (GBUs—22, 24, and
27) went into service in the mid-1980s and had improved maneuver-
ability, an auto-pilot, a laser scanner for target location, and low-level


tions, the President wanted more flexibility for a wider range of re-
sponses. Therefore, General Schwarzkopf was ordered by Secretary
Cheney to devise a plan for an offensive option in case Saddam
Hussein engaged in further aggression or began killing hostages; but
his CENTCOM and component staffs, almost overwhelmed with de-
ployment and defensive planning, lacked the resources to create one.
On August 8, with General Powell’s permission, Schwarzkopf ap-
proached the USAF Air Staff in the Pentagon directly, asking for a re-
taliation plan directed against strategic targets in Iraq and ready for
execution by the end of August. He spcke to the USAF Vice Chief of
Staff, General John M. Loh, who accepted the task and, in turn, asked
Colonel Warden and his deputy directorate to prepare the air-war plan.
The plan naturally reflected the ideas of the Warden group. On
August 10 Warden briefed the initial version of it to Schwarzkopf,
who approved it, as did Powell the next day. The President learned of
the plan on August 15. On August 17 Warden returned to CENTCOM
Headquarters at MacDill Air Force Bas, Florida, with a final version
and a rudimentary operations order. He called the plan INSTANT THUN-
DER to emphasize its difference from ROLLING THUNDER, the intermi-
nable and constrained bombing campaign over North Vietnam.
INSTANT THUNDER had a clear concept of operations: “conduct power-
ful and focused attacks on strategic centers of gravity in Iraq over a
short period of time (days not weeks).” It rested on four objectives:

Target Hussein’s regime, not the Iraqi people.

Minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage. '*

Minimize American and allied losses.
Pit U.S. strengths against Iraqi weaknesses.

The plan employed the five rings and within them identified ten
target sets. Under government leadership, the primary center of gravity
in Iraq, it struck at two target sets: first, at Hussein’s regime to “inca-
pacitate” it, and, second, at military and civil command, control, and
communications (Cc?) to isolate decisionmakers and slow the transmis-
sion of orders. In targeting Hussein, not his people, the planners would
have liked to physically eliminate him, an outcome considered un-
likely. Instead, they expected to create a set of conditions leading to
his overthrow. Initially, however, they had boldly stated their goal as
eliminating Saddam Hussein himself. That objective they modified
upon learning that U.S. policy forbade the direct targeting of heads of
state. In national production, INSTANT THUNDER identified electricity


fixed installations such as petroleum, oil, and lubri-
s, and railroads.

B-52Gs flew 527 BAI (Battlefield Air Incerdiction) sorties striking ar-
mor, mechanized, and infantry units with a variety of general purpose and
cluster bomb munitions

Including Republican Guard armor, mechanized, and infantry units, not to men-
tion Iraqi ground forces logistics dumps (fixed installations) in the “strategic” category
stands the traditional definition of strategic targets on its head. If those targets are
placed, where they should be, in the BAI or ground support categories one will quickly
arrive at the 15/85 percent ratio of strategic to tactical targets already noted. It would
appear that the authors of Conduct of the Gulf War, were loath to admit to the B-52’s
overwhelming tactical role.

“The F-II7A, F-ILIF, and the F-15E have the following respective takeoff
weights (aircraft, gas, bombs, missiles, and crew) of 52,500; 100,000; and 73,000
pounds. The B-29 (the largest World War I] operational bomber) and the B-52G had
takeoff weights of 140,000 and 488,000 pounds respectively.

“7\ithin a few days of the war's opening, unarmed USAF tanker aircraft began
to cross into Iraq to fuel aircraft for deep missions or to support aircraft in trouble. By
the end of the conflict, tanker refueling operations over Iraq had become routine.

‘Sin the unlikely event of a full-scale nuclear exchange with Russia, China, or
the Ukraine, and whatever the role of intercontinental ballistic missiles, U.S. nuclear-
capable bombers (B-52s and B-Is) might bomb targets deep within those countries
and return. Such nuclear missions likely would suffer heavy casualties and could not
be sustained for any lengthy period. But the hydrogen bomb is both the ultimate area-
bombing attack and the ultimate smart weapon. Even if it misses by a few hundred
feet, one device is almost guaranteed to deliver more than enough destructive energy
on the aiming point (and everything else in the surrounding area).

“hese aircraft consisted of F-1SCs, F-16s, F-4Gs, and F-111Es, plus elec-
tronic and tanker support aircraft, At the end of the war on February 25, four F4Es of
the 3d Tactical Fighter Wing (three fully mission-capable) joined the task force. These
precision capable F-4Es from the Philippines flew only two unsuccessful sorties. (Trip
Rpt [S], Major General G. B. Harrison, JTF Proven Force, AF Center for Studies and
Analysis, March 7, 1991, in GWAPS files; information cited is unclassified.) Initially,
to reduce coordination and the chances of fratricide (engagement of friendly aircraft
by friendly aircraft) JTF Proven Force contined its operations to above the thirty-fifth
parallel, while planes based in Saudi Arabia operated below that line. CENTAF air
planners supplied JTF Proven Force’s targets, but did not include them in CENTAF
daily Air Tasking Orders. JTF Proven Force operated somewhat autonomously, but re-
mained handicapped by its lack of precision guided munitions-capable aircraft. Lack
of precision aircraft either forced precision guided munitions aircraft from Saudi Ara-
bia to undertake difficult missions to northern Iraq or left some important targets not
attacked. (The Turkish Air Force did not participate in operations against Iraq.)

+The Turkish government, in part because of confusion within its military Gen-
eral Staff, did not grant permission for USAF air strikes against Iraq from Turkish ter-
ritory until after the start of Coalition operations from Saudi Arabia.

+1B_52s, for example, began to conduct strikes from 31,000 feet and above. All
F-15Es, F-16s, and F-111Fs switched to medium and high altitudes. The change in

80


building and the news footage of the minaret-shaped microwave tower
of the Al Karakh telephone exchange building, little solid data is avail-
able to connect the bombing of leadership or command and control fa-
cilities with specific consequences. The bombing of primary facilities
forced the Iraqi leadership to resort to far less secure means of commu-
nicating, a circumstance welcomed by Coalition forces, especially dur-
ing the 100-hour ground war. Prisoner accounts were replete with
examples of Iraqi units dependent for information on messages deliv-
ered by bicycle or motorcycle. The bombing of security and intelli-
gence ministries assuredly disrupted their operations, causing a decline
in productivity, a loss of files, and some loss of control by the regime
over the people—as evidenced immediately after the war in the erup-
tions of widespread and unprecedented dissent by Iraqi citizens and the
Shiite and Kurdish rebellions.” To be sure, the visit of Soviet Special
Envoy Yevgeny Primakov to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad from Feb-
ruary 12 to 14, 1991, only highlighted Hussein’s severe communica-
tions problems; Primakov brought Soviet satellite imagery that showed
to a surprised Iraqi President the full extent of the damage Coalition air
strikes had inflicted. From that point onward,”’ using Soviet good of-
fices, Hussein began actively to seek a way out of his predicament.
Precision guided munitions had proved ideal for attacking gov-
ernment buildings and communications centers. Even so, as the war
progressed, the air planners realized that they had selected targets that
were more illusive and redundant than they had suspected. Fiber optics
networks and computerized switching systems were difficult targets to
eliminate completely. Some of the networks ran along the Baghdad-Ti-
gris bridges. Stealth bomber strikes cut the spans on two bridges, but
criticism by media reporters who thought only in terms of their own
road access, coupled with the Al Firdos Bunker aftermath, led Wash-
ington’” to place the remaining bridges off limits in mid-February.
The leadership and communications sites placed off-limits in Baghdad
were the only target systems subjected to detailed approval and review
by higher authorities—Generals Schwarzkopf and Powell—among
others. Their review prevented the full execution of any attack on these
systems. The INSTANT THUNDER planners in their integrated campaign
to undermine the regime had hoped also to employ psychological war-
fare, which should have been effective against such a highly central-
ized state, to separate Saddam Hussein from his people; However, they
were stymied and denied a possibly devastating follow-up punch to
aerial attacks on leadership and communications facilities by competi-
tive bureaucracies among U.S. intelligence agencies unable to agree on

53


as JEACC also made him the Airspace Control Authority (ACA) and Air Defense
Commander (ADC), which in practice gave him control over all Coalition and Iraqi
airspace. He had the last word in controlling flight paths, preventing excessive air-
space congestion, and coordinating flights with air defenses. Any flying had to be
cleared with the JFACC. One way or another Horner had the dominant air power voice
in the in-theater U.S. and Coalition command structures.

\4The USAF defined “collateral damage” as “the damage to surrounding re-
sources, either military or non-military, as a result of actions or strikes specifically
against enemy forces or military facilities.” See Air Force Manual 11-1. Air Force
Glossary of Standardized Terms, HQ, USAF, 1989.

'Sthe secrecy met Schwarzkopf’ wishes that U.S. offensive planning activities
be tightly guarded.

165 with many a nom d’guerre there is some dispute as to how the Black Hole
got its name. The major alternative explanation revolves around the physical space oc-
cupied by the Special Planning Group after a reorganization moved it from an office
adjacent to Lieutenant General Horner's office to a room in the basement of the RSAF
Headquarters Building in Riyadh, soon referred to as the Black Hole.

\7-Phis was neither a formal change of task nor one called for by doctrine or phi-
losophy. Rather, it acknowledged the fact that the Republican Guard's physical loca-
tion in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations placed it beneath air space controlled by the
tactical, not strategic, planners

Ihe USN’s F/A-18C had an unrefueled strike range of 160 miles, while the
A-6E had a 390-mile strike range. Strike range is the distance an aircraft can fly to a
target, attack it, and return. (For example the F/A-18C can attack targets up to 160
miles away and return to base for a total unretueled flight of up to 320 miles.) Strike
range includes fuel consumed in tactical or evasive maneuvers to and from the target,
in carrying weapons, in forming up, and in waiting to land. An aircraft's designed
range may far exceed its actual strike range. If an F/A~18C flew a shuttle mission, not
normally done in the Gulf War, it could take off from Base A, attack a target, and land
at Base B as long as its total unrefueled elapsed flight totaled no more than 320 miles
(160 miles x 2). The maximum distance an aircraft can travel in a straight line, without
refueling is its radius; approximately twice the distance of its designed combat range.

!rhe Air Tasking Order (ATO), known to Vietnam-era USAF veterans as the
FRAG Order, scheduled and coordinated all daily Coalition air activity over Iraq and
Saudi Arabia. It did not cover USN fleet defense sorties. For each individual sortie it
supplied call signs, deconfliction of air space, coordination with friendly air defenses,
electronic warfare, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), and combat search and
rescue (CSAR). It also provided target assignments (sometimes even specific weap-
ons) and escort and tanker rendezvous. A single ATO, when completed, filled a com-
puter printout the size of a telephone book. The ATO controlled all flights over Saudi
‘Arabia and most over Iraq (USAF aircraft flying out of Turkey compiled their own
ATO, but CENTAF assigned their targets) and in theory one could not fly without spe-
cific authorization by the ATO. The ATO was a powerful tool in the hands of JFACC,
Lieutenant General Horner,

20The Master Attack Plan reflected targeting strategy, changing priorities of the
CENTCOM Commander in Chief (CINC) and higher authorities, combat and political
developments, the latest intelligence from multiple sources, weather, threat, and the

77


forty mobile launchers. The Iraqi Scud had a range of approximately 437 miles, a 500-
pound warhead, and circular-error-probablility of 2,000 meters,

SOUSN aircraft burned a less volatile aviation fuel than did USAF aircraft and
could be refueled only with the “probe and drogue” instead of the flying boom, all of
which demanded specialized aerial tanker assistance,

37

Lines of communications are all the routes—land, water, and air—which con-
ect an operating military force with a base of operations and along which supplies
and military forces move.

58} have categorized all bridge sorties, even the fifty-five percent conducted by
F-l6s, F/A—I8s and other non-precision bombing aircraft under the strategic air cam-
paign aircraft serving as the bombing platform, such as a B-17 during World
War Il or an F-15E today, does not define whether a target is strategic or tactical, for
aircraft can do (and in the Gulf War did) both. Target sets can be both, like the “mixed”
targets sets of the Gulf War. Bridges are strategic in this case because the physical tar-
geting and planning was handled by CENTAF strategic air planners; many of the tar-
gets lay outside the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations; and because the political objective
of destroying the Republican Guard may have been of more practical significance than
merely constricting Iraqi supply lines.

the Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS), paid for by the USAF but consid-
ered by Eliot Cohen and its authors to be an “independent” study (similar to the United
States Strategic Bombing Survey [USSBS] and much less widely circulated than the
unclassified DoD Title V Final Report), defines the term “strike” as the delivery of a
weapon against a specific target instead of sorties. According to CENTAF strategic
air planners’ Master Target List target categories the survey records only 33 out of
9,731 total strategic strikes against Republican Guard targets (the least of any target
category). It also notes that the strategic campaign flew only 9,731 out of a total of
41,309 Coalition  strikes—twenty-four percent of the Coalition air effort. (See
GWAPS, Vol V, A Statistical Compendium [S/NF/ WNINTEL/NO)], p. 535, Table
195, “Strikes by Master Target List Categories.” The table is unclassified.)

Og ome of these surviving Republican Guard units that escaped through Basra
as well as other Republican Guard formations which were never committed in Kuwait
were held in Baghdad during the war (to provide security for Hussein's Regime),
proved instrumental in suppressing the post-war Shiite and Kurdish insurrections.

6l-phis relatively unsatisfactory outcome did not result from any weakness of air
power, but rather was a product of a decision insisted on by U.S. Army corps com-
manders and concurred in by General Schwarzkopf. It gave to the front line Iraqi divi-
sions higher air priority than the Republican Guard. It derived from unclearly defined
campaign objectives. (For DoD’s breakdown of campaign results by target system see
Conduct of the Gulf War, pp. 149-159.) At the end of the war, the U.S. Army refused
to allow Coalition aircraft to attack the fleeing Republican Guard; and the VII Corps
proved unable to halt its retreat into Iraq.

62pwo to four independent Republican Guard brigades and some lesser units re-
mained deep in Iraq, where they performed internal security duties as, for example, the
only troops allowed to garrison Baghdad.

Conversely, correctly timed airbursts and proximity fused shells or bombs can
be very effective in the desert because their blasts are still spread over wide areas, The

83


and optical systems and repaired armored vehicles was damaged or de-
stroyed.” The disruption of specific key maintenance and manufactur-
ing, specialty metallurgy, and aircraft engine repair sites probably
affected overall Iraqi arms production more significantly than the di-
rect loss of thirty percent of production capability. Nonetheless, given
its size, diffusion, lack of high priority, and the shortness of the war,
the target system in the main survived, although not in any state to re-
sume prewar production rates.

The Scud diversion likely saved this large, easily located target
system from even more danger, as did the concentration of air effort on
Iraqi ground forces in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations. A greater use
of non-precision B-52s and F—16s and fewer precision sorties directed
to “tank plinking” would have inflicted far greater harm on military
stores and production facilities, but it would have also inflicted greater
collateral damage. What must not be forgotten is that the strategic air
campaign damaged this target system to such an extent that it was un-
repairable without the help of the outside world. Air power had the ca-
pacity to virtually destroy it, but only with more resources than those
committed to the strategic air campaign, given the unanticipated re-
quirements of the “Great Scud Hunt” and the frontline strikes in sup-
port of General Schwarzkopf’s two corps commanders.

The air planners targeted Scud missile support facilities, commu-
nications and testing centers, and launchers to protect Coalition forces
and to procure stability in the Persian Gulf region. In targeting the
Scuds directly they prevented Hussein from using them against Israel
to provoke its retaliation and break up the Coalition.>° The anti-Scud
effort eventually consumed twenty-two percent (2,767) of all strategic
air campaign sorties, an amount equal to that expended by the Coali-
tion on the rest of Iraq’s conventional rnilitary manufacturing com-
bined. Here again, Coalition bombing heavily damaged almost all
known production and research facilities, but subsequent U.N. inspec-
tions revealed that the Iraqis had removed most production equipment,
components, and documents before the start of the air campaign. The
DoD Final Report ruefully stated that “actual damage to Scud produc-
tion and storage facilities is less than previously thought.”

The attack on Scud mobile launchers failed to destroy any sig-
nificant number. The Iraqis never employed the exposed fixed launch-
ers, although Coalition bombs expended on them prevented their fu-
ture use. By the end of August 1990 the Iraqis had dispersed their mo-
bile launchers to areas within range of Israel and Saudi Arabia, where
they continued to operate until the end cf the war. Mobile launchers

60


The First Wave (Planned) 0239 (L) - 0525 (L)
(First Two Hours and Forty Six Minutes)

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ian dead at less than 1,000. Both figures testify to the extent to which
Coalition air strikes concentrated on equipment rather than people and
to the care the Coalition took to avoid collateral damage.

Conclusion

Overall, the planners who put together the strategic air campaign
against Iraq could take justifiable satisfaction in the results. The swift,
devastating attacks against the Iraqi air defense network; the Iraqi Air
Force; and communications, electrical power, and transportation tar-
gets set the stage for the rapid and overwhelming destruction of a na-
tion that had, on the eve of the war, a very large and reasonably
proficient military force and a record of inflicting punishing losses on
an attacker. In any case, Iraq had no hope of denying the Coalition an
ultimate military victory; after the first night’s aerial blitz its ability to
defend itself began to precipitously decline. The war reaffirmed the
most important lesson of air power—without air superiority, a nation
loses its ability to exercise its prerogatives. The success of the air cam-
paign against emplaced and fielded Iraqi forces and the Iraqi Navy
demonstrated that in the air power era, two-dimensional surface forces
are held hostage by three-dimensional aerial forces. The war also con-
firmed the important interrelationship between tankers and airlift, and
airlifV/tanker/strike aircraft and precision munitions. In particular, the
highly controversial stealth fighter, the F-117A, proved its overhelm-
ing value, ending a debate on its relative merits that had raged through-
out the 1980s. The war emphasized that high-technology systems with
precision munitions can offset those that are more numerous and less
sophisticated. It highlighted the advances in surface-to-air missile sys
tems and AAA that have essentially made the low-altitude envi-
ronment “off limits” to conventional strike aircraft and have forced a
resurgence of interest in greater-distance stand-off attacks with autono-
mous or near-autonomous precision munitions. In the air campaign,
the greatest disappointment was perhaps the “Great Scud Hunt,” but,
even here, air presence reduced Scud launches from a peak of ten to
one or less per day. Scud-like systems will require greater attention in
future as ballistic rockets and cruise missiles proliferate.

The strategic air campaign against Iraq did not achieve every
goal of the CHECKMATE and CENTAF Special Planning Groups—par-
ticularly the collapse of Hussein’s regime. But, to echo Robert Burns’
aphorism, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven

73


Air Force MH-53J Pave Low Pathfinders—hedgehopped across the
Saudi Arabia-Iraq border, attacking two Iraqi early warning sites at
0239L (H-21) 400 miles west of Kuwait City, in a welter of rocket and
cannon fire. At least one of the two stations got off a warning. AAA
fire immediately filled the air over Baghdad even though no aircraft
had been overhead. The Black Hole, now designated the Iraqi Cell, had
designed the attacks to punch an opening through Iraq’s air defenses to
conceal the entrance of three EF-111A electronic warfare aircraft
meant to assist the F-117s nearing Baghdad®! and nineteen F-1SE
fighter-bombers headed for fixed short-range ballistic missile or Scud
sites in western Iraq. The execution of the CENTAF’s “Offensive
Plan-Phase I,” the strategic air campaign against Iraq, had begun.

For the Air Force, the war had commenced hours before in the
United States with the takeoff of seven B-52Gs bound for Iraq. The
big bombers left from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, at 0735
(EST) on January 16 to begin a 14,000-mile round-trip flight, carrying
air launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) on their first combat test. Mean-
while, the first attack wave of F-117A and F-15E fighter-bombers
based in Saudi Arabia and Tomahawk land attack missiles launched
from U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea,> had the
task of disrupting the Kari command and control network, hitting per-
manent Scud launchers directed at Israel, damaging land line commu-
nications, and halting the flow of electricity into Baghdad. Southwest
of Baghdad, the three EF-I111As flew in through the gap blown in
Iraqi radar coverage and headed for their stations south of Baghdad.
The F-15Es, flying very low, also flew in through the gap and contin-
ued west to strike close over the fixed Scud launchers within range of
Israel. At 0305L (H+5) they delivered their weapons, Mk-20 Rock-
eyes (munitions canisters containing 247 bomblets) with deadly accu-
racy. The air planners, assuming that when the first bomb fell on Iraq
Saddam Hussein would order Scud launches toward Israel, scheduled
the mission to thwart his action.

A few minutes earlier, at 0251L (H-9) an F-117A Nighthawk
dropped two GBU-27s on the Nukhayb sector air defense center; then,
at 0300L (H-Hour), two F-117As dropped the first bombs on Baghdad
when they attacked communications targets, including the so-called
“AT&T building,” which U.S. intelligence fingered as a node for sixty
percent of Iraq’s military land line communications capacity. Its loss
would disrupt Baghdad’s air defenses, which relied heavily on land
lines. One of the aircraft also struck North Taji Military Facility # 1,
reputedly a shelter for high-level Iraqi officials, but its bomb failed to

34


when Coalition forces clearly had the overwhelming advantage. Gen-
eral Schwarzkopf, on instructions from General Powell in Washington,
informed CENTAF that it could no longer strike any targets in Bagh-
dad, including the Tigris river bridges, without his explicit permission.
This order amounted to a mini-bombing halt on the Iraqi leadership
and its internal instruments of control; CENTAF abruptly cancelled
the air planners’ highest-priority strikes. From February 13 to the night
of February 22 and 23, 1991, Baghdad was “off limits,” but Coalition
raids on nuclear, biological, chemical, Scud, and military support tar-
gets at the city’s periphery continued to shake up its inhabitants.

From February 15 to 23, 1991, as the furor over the Al Firdos
bunker bombing simmered, the strategic air campaign pressed on,
striking targets throughout Iraq including seventeen airfields (to sup-
press the Iraqi Air Force) seventeen nuclear and chemical targets,
thirty-one military support facilities, fourteen C facilities, thirteen
highway bridges, and mobile Scud launching sites. On the night of
February 22 and 23, 1991, F-117As returned to Baghdad, striking
leadership targets, Special Operations Headquarters, and some intelli-
gence headquarters to aid the imminent ground operation."" The next
night, when Coalition ground forces began an almost unopposed ad-
vance into Kuwait and southern Iraq, simultaneous strategic air mis-
sions, in one of the worst periods of bad weather during the war, struck
Iraqi airfields housing ground attack and chemical-capable aircraft
near the front and remaining highway bridges. With targets in Bagh-
dad approved, F-117As attacked the bomb assembly plant, chemical
warfare bunkers, and the Iskandariyah Ammunition Plant, to the south
of the city. Seven bombs hit Baghdad Special Security Headquarters
and three hit Iraqi Baghdad Regional Intelligence Service Headquar-
ters. On the next night F-117As released their laser-guided bombs
over the guard facilities of the Abu Guryahb Presidential Complex, the
Baghdad Special Security Services, and military support targets.

On the night of February 25 and 26, 1991, for the only time dur-
ing the campaign bad weather completely halted F—117A operations.
In the final two nights of the war, the strategic air campaign continued
to strike leadership targets and important industrial facilities. To in-
crease the pressure on Baghdad, the air planners sent the F-111Es
from Turkey on missions to the south to hit the Taji complex on both
nights. On the night of February 26 and 27, 1991, the 37th Tactical
Fighter Wing launched sixty-three F-117A Nighthawk sorties with
forty-three weapons for Baath Party Headquarters in Baghdad, fifteen
for two of Hussein’s residences in Baghdad, and six for his home in

49


U.S. Military Aircraft in CENTCOM (1 Sep 1990-1 Feb 1991)
Service Aircraft” Type 1Sep 10Oct 1Nov 1Dec 1 Jan 1Feb
USAF F-45C. Fighter 70 72 72 72 96 96
F-4G Wild Weasel 24 36 «36 86 48g)
F-16 Fighter Attack 106 120 120 120 168 212!
A-10 Attack 72 9 96 96 120 144]
AC-130 Gunship 0 5 5 4 4 2
F-17A Bomber 18 «18 «618 «618 «S36 |
F-15E Fighter Attack 24 «-230—«O
F-111F © Bomber 18 32 32 «452 «464g
B52 Bomber 20 20 20 20 20 36
RF-4C Recon 6 6 6 6 6 48
JSTARS — Srv & Cntr! 0 0 0 o 2 2
E3A Srvl & Cntrl 6 6 6 6 7 1
EF-111 Ew 10 14 14 14 19 18)
KC-10 Tanker 0 6 6 6 6. 39
KC-135 Tanker 79 93 114 115 164 194
C-130 Airlift 70 9 96 96 96 149)
EC-130E  ABCCC 6 6 6 6 6 6
USN Fa Fighter 56 76 76 76 76 109
FIAA8 Fighter Attck 58 58 58 88 88 29
ATE Fighter Attack 0 24 24 24 24 24
AGE Bomber 35 48 «#448 «662 «62
E-2C Srvl & Cntrl 12017 «17° «21 at ag
EA-6B EW 12°17 «17° «21 at 7]
KA-6D Tanker 8 12 12 16 16 16
S-3A/B Recon 23310 8t8t81 g
USMC F/A-18 Fighter Attack 48 48 #48 #448 «#972 ~=«78
AV-8B Fighter Attack 40 60 60 60 81 84
Ov-10 Sil & Cntr! o 8 8 8 8 149
EA-6 Ew 2 12 «12 «12 0«2 (19
AGE Bomber 9 10 10 10 20 © 29
KC-130 Tanker 6 8 8 8 12 «12
“Aircraft in bold print could deliver laser-guided bombs using self-designation.



these questions is “yes.” But it is profitable to examine each in greater
detail to learn what succeeded and what failed.

The “Core” Strategic Target Sets

In the Gulf War the “core” strategic target sets, those target sets
most vital to maintaining military capability, consisted of Iraq’s:
1. National Leadership

2. Military and civil command, control, and commu-
nications

3. Electric power generation
4. Oil refineries, distribution, and storage

5. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons re-
search, development, and production

6. Military support (research and development, pro-
duction, and storage of conventional armaments)

7. Scud ballistic missi

les

To incapacitate Hussein’s regime’? the strategic air campaign
targeted Iraqi leadership and command, control, and communications
targets. From January 16 to February 28, :991, the number of leader-
ship targets grew from 33 to 44, while the number of command and
control targets grew from 56 to 146. The later target set grew in order
to shut down alternate means of civil and military communications. In
the past half-century the speed and flow of information exchanged be-
tween a modern military establishment and its leadership has greatly
expanded. Restricting an enemy’s information flow delays his reaction
time and causes him to fall behind an attacker’s actions until he is
knocked out. The inclusion for the first time of these target sets in a
strategic air attack stemmed directly from the ideas of the Warden
group. The promise of the total incapacitation of the regime and the
severing of its communications with the forces in Kuwait depended on
what proved to be inadequate intelligence. Thus, some important com-
munications means remained unknown until a few days before the war,
some were too closely associated with targets declared off-limits, some
were more damage-resistant than realized, and some were difficult tar-
gets for precision guided munitions. Even so, the damage inflicted on
them was debilitating and must be counted effective.

Other than images of damage and destruction, such as those in
the well-known strike footage of the Iraqi Air Force Headquarters

52


proved difficult for strike aircraft to locate for, within only ten min-
utes, they could move more than five miles from their firing sites com-
pletely off-road. To mislead Coalition aircraft Iraq employed num-
erous high and low quality decoys, some indistinguishable from actual
launchers at more than twenty-five yards. Launcher crews practiced
extreme electronic emissions control and night time light discipline,
and they streamlined Soviet procedures to shave launch time from
hours to minutes. They also received launching instructions from lan-
dlines and couriers, which were impossible for Coalition electronic in-
telligence to intercept. In late 1990 USAF exploitation flights against a
borrowed launcher and crew revealed that U.S. strike aircraft had diffi-
culty visually or electronically acquiring launchers during the day and
even more difficulty at night. Iraqi mobile Scuds were a mismatch of
available weapons to selected targets, and they could not be located
readily with existing air technology. The Coalition was able to make
use of special operations forces such as the British SAS and American
Delta to physically locate them, fix them with laser designators, and il-
luminate them for laser-guided weapons. As of early February 1991,
after Coalition air forces had already expended more than half of their
total effort against the Scuds, there were no confirmed kills of mobile
launchers, although postwar special operations force accounts suggest
otherwise. Nevertheless, any successes air attacks may have scored
against the Scuds serve to illustrate the general relative immunity of
mobile Scud ballistic missiles at the time of the Gulf War. After the
war U.N. inspectors oversaw the destruction of the nineteen mobile
launchers and several decoys which Iraq admitted it still possessed.
The Coalition’s anti-Scud air effort should not be seen as a dead
loss to the overall war effort. It kept the rate of Scud firings, which av-
eraged approximately one per day, to levels tolerable to both Israel and
Saudi Arabia. Israeli counterattacks might have given Saddam Hussein
his one chance to end the war on favorable terms. But the compara-
tively successful Scuds presented a troubling new challenge for air
power—they were relatively cheap to purchase or produce, very easy
to hide, and accurate enough to inflict great, if indiscriminate, damage
with nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads. Scuds confront mod-
ern air forces with many of the problems peculiar to guerilla warfare.
Militarily, the anti-Scud air effort was a successful strategic diversion
imposed by Iraq on the Coalition. S:rategic sorties expended on those
missiles might have damaged targets of much more lasting signifi-
cance. However, in both political and diplomatic terms for Iraq the
Scuds failed. They neither drove Saudi Arabia from the conflict nor

6l




the heavy multi-engine bomber. For the next seventy-five years the
heavy bomber and strategic bombing became synonymous. All of this
changed in the first two months of 1991. The USAF carried strategic
bombing aircraft on its books in the Gulf War, primarily the F-117A,
the F-111F and the F-15E, as “fighter-bombers,” aircraft of fighter
size*® with the principal mission of bombing enemy targets rather than
dog-fighting. These fighter-bombers employed new technologies to
meet classical strategic specifications. Air-to-air refueling extended
their range and reduced the weight of their required fuel load.” Preci-
sion guided munitions multiplied the effectiveness of their bombload
by increasing the amount of high explosives delivered exactly on tar-
get. An aircraft with few bombs and precise weapons could equal the
effectiveness of a large aircraft with many “dumb” or conventional
iron bombs. Precision guided munitions eliminated the need to carpet a
target area to ensure one or two hits. Indeed, as Gulf War strike re-
cords showed, a single F-117 with two laser-guided bombs could
achieve the same destruction that in World War II required /08 B-17s
with 648 bombs. Those changes also enabled both the F-111F and the
F-15E to hit all but the most heavily defended strategic targets.
Cloaked by stealth, the radical F-117A could strike any target. The
twin-engine strike aircraft thus replaced the traditional heavy bomber
as the “strategic bomber” of choice.” 8

At random intervals throughout the first and second days more
Tomahawk missiles roiled the pot and strained enemy nerves, hitting
power plants, oil pumping stations, and the Ministry of Defense in
Baghdad. The second night, on January 17 and 18, 1991, F-117As hit
more air defense operations centers and targets in the Baghdad area—
the two modified IL-76 Iraqi AWACS aircraft, Iraqi Air Force Head-
quarters, Taji Command Bunker #2, the Ministry of Defense Computer
Center, Iraqi Intelligence Service Headquarters, and a VIP bunker and
possible location of Saddam Hussein and other leaders. Also on the
second night, January 17 and 18, 1991, two B-52Gs conducted a low-
level raid on Al Sahra Undergraduate Pilot Training Airfield north of
Baghdad. It housed the Iraqi Air Force Academy, within sight and
sound of the city of Tikrit, Saddam’s home town and base of the clan
which supplied the bulk of his political support.

That same evening Marine air and USAF F-1SEs began attacks
on highway bridges in the Basra area using conventional bombs. Iraq’s
second city, Basra, located near the Persian Gulf, served as a major
supply and reinforcement terminus for the Iraqi Army in Kuwait. The
“bridge busting campaign” sought to isolate Iraqi forces in Kuwait

41


carried into Iraq against that target on that night, almost eighty percent
would not be dropped because of bad weather.

In sum, the first night’s Coalition air attack severed Baghdad
from the national power grid, disrupted and heavily damaged key ele-
ments of the national air defense network, cut a significant percentage
of the state’s land line communications system, suppressed some Iraqi
airfields, and struck the Scud assembly and launching complexes. Af-
ter that one aerial action, Iraq’s military establishment was on the
ropes, mortally wounded, albeit still twitching.

A few hours later, at 0830L on January 17, 1991, the first B-S2G
air launched cruise missiles fired in combat exploded in Iraq. The mis-
siles struck targets in northern Iraq, out of range of Coalition strike air-
craft based in Saudi Arabia, and other targets near Baghdad. These
B-52s, from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, completed the long-
est combat mission ever flown (over thirty-five hours) and demonstra-
ted that the USAF could respond forcefully within hours to any crisis
anywhere, underscoring its claim to “Global Reach-Global Power.”

Intense preplanned aerial attacks against strategic targets contin-
ued for the next two days. Still later on the morning of January 17,
1991, U.S. aircraft struck the oil refinery at Samawah, halfway be-
tween Baghdad and Basra, inaugurating a series of attacks against re-
fineries and oil storage centers. Their goal was to eventually limit fuel
to both the civilian and military sectors of Iraq’s economy. These at-
tacks damaged the portion of the industry supplying fuel directly to the
economy—tefineries and oil storage facilities. They spared the oil ex-
traction and export facilities that would permit Iraq to maintain itself
and pay reparations after the war. Their cutting of the enemy military
establishment’s oil supply would severely curtail its mobility, deny ci-
vilians fuel for heating and cooking, halt internal transport and distri-
bution, and heighten popular dissatisfaction with the regime.

With the execution of Phase I (the Strategic Air Offensive
Against Iraq) of General Schwarzkopf’s overall war plan well under-
way, Coalition air power simultaneously executed Phase II (the Sup-
pression of Iraqi Air Defenses in Kuwait) and Phase III (the
Preparation of the Battlefield) at daylight on January 17, 1991. The
three phases ran concurrently thenceforward while Schwarzkopf di-
rected shifts of emphasis or effort among them. A-10As destroyed ra-
dar stations in southern Iraq and Kuwait in pinpoint attacks during the
day, while B-52G bombers began a round-the-clock attack on Repub-
lican Guard targets. Lieutenant General Horner had promised
Schwarzkopf that the big bombers would hit the Republican Guard

39


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thousands of secure circuits and carried a major percentage of all inter-
theater and intratheater communications, while intelligence satellites,
including the commercial LANDSAT system, identified enemy sur-
face dispositions. The secure FAX and telephone systems of the U.S.
military concealed information from the enemy and allowed unprece-
dented direct access between lower echelon staffs in the United States
and the theater of operations.

U.S. military war planners, however, had not fully assimilated
the import of these changes in aeronautical, munitions, and satellite
technology. In fact, deployment planning, not integrated warfighting,
dominated the attention of both the staffs of the U.S. Combined Thea-
ter Commanders in Chief (CINCs) and those of their subordinate serv-
ice component commanders. In the USAF Air Staff, some general
officers reacted against this focus on deployment and against what
they felt was too great a departure from theories of independent air
power. In particular, they feared that the U.S. Army’s Air-Land Battle
concept, to which the USAF’s Tactical Air Command (TAC) sub-
scribed, would tie air power too closely tc ground battle developments
and deny it the necessary freedom of action for interdiction and strate-
gic bombing. In 1988 Lieutenant General Michael J. Dugan, Deputy
Chief of Plans and Operations, and Majcr General Charles G. Boyd,
Director of Plans, established a Deputy Directorate for Warfighting
Concepts within the Air Staff Directorae of Plans. They placed in
charge an advocate of independent air operations, Colonel John A.
Warden, III, and encouraged him to refine and disseminate ideas on
the independent uses and functions of air power. Within a year the
Deputy Directorate acquired the CHECKMATE Division, which special-
ized in the analysis of conflicts between Soviet and U.S. alliances. °

A student of military history, Colonel Warden read widely and
deeply. He wrote an influential book, The Air Campaign: Planning for
Combat, expressing his ideas of the dominance of air warfare. In keep-
ing with his charter and sheltered by his superiors, Warden encouraged
other officers to join him in considering and promoting innovative
ideas about air power’s role in modern warfare. Moreover, he encour-
aged free-wheeling discussion and, refreshingly, tolerated dissent. He
and the like-minded air officers that formed around him believed that
air planners should first determine the enemy’s centers of gravity, that
is, those characteristics, capabilities, or locations from which he de-
rives his freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. The air
planners identified these centers of gravity by analyzing the enemy’s
strength and situation, and then locating the critical vulnerabilities



Tikrit. As the Iraqi Army in Kuwait was in total disarray, the air plan-
ners hoped that this and other strikes at the symbols of Hussein's
power would supply the final push to what they suspected must be an
already tottering regime. Other F-117As targeted important industrial
facilities. Bad weather prevented the release of all but twelve weapons
and only two fell on leadership targets. On the last night of the war, a
wave of twenty-one F-117As headed straight for Baghdad. At least
eighteen of them hit Baath Party Headquarters once. A second wave of
ten aircraft attacked the Alteena Nuclear Center, a site associated with
the Al Musayyib Missile Research, Development, and Production
Complex. The center was the construction and assembly facility for
Iraqi’s atomic bomb project. Fourteen of eighteen bombs hit their pri-
mary target. General Schwarzkopf cancelled the night’s third wave and
suspended further air operations.

One of CENTAF’s last strategic missions employed a new laser-
guided weapon, Guided Bomb Unit-28, that was literally hot off the
assembly line. Just before the cease fire, two F-111Fs of the 48th Tac-
tical Fighter Wing each carried a single GBU-28 to Command Leader-
ship Bunker #2 at Al Taji. The specially developed bombs, machined
from the barrels of surplus Army 8-inch (203-mm) howitzers, tested
and deployed in a mere seventeen days, weighed 4,700 pounds each.
They arrived from the United States still hot from the molten high ex-
plosive mixture poured into them just before their departure, and went
straight from transport to strike aircraft. They remained warm to the
touch as the F-1 IIs taxied out. The Al Taji command bunker had suc-
cessfully withstood repeated attacks with BLU-109 penetrators from
the first night of hostilities onward. This night, one GBU-28 missed,
but the second scored a direct hit, with debris and smoke spewing from
the command bunker’s entrances, a sure sign of penetration and de-
struction. The strategic air campaign thus ended, the Nighthawks and
Aardvarks proved to the Baath Regime that it had no place to hide.

Analysis

At the end of any strategic bombing campaign three fundamental
questions must be answered. Did it expend its efforts on targets vital to
the enemy’s conduct of the war? Did it select targets vulnerable to
friendly air action? Did it contribute decisively to the overall success
of air, ground, and sea operations and to achieving national political
objectives? With respect to the Gulf War, the quick answer to all of

SI


TOP: The Al Qaim superphosphate fertilizer plant showing Coalition
bomb damage.

BOTTOM: The burning oil tanks of the Al Basrah petroleum refinery af-
ter being hit by Coaltion bombs.



Gulf War Planners

TOP: Lieutenant General Charles
A, Horner, Commander, Central
Air Forces (CENTAF),

CENTER: Chief Gulf War plan-
ner, Colonel John A. Warden, III,
took Clausewitzian ideas on iden-
tifying an enemy's “centers of
gravity” and applied them bril-
liantly

BOTTOM: In Saudi Arabia, former members of Colonel Warden's planning
group honored the Air Force's first doctrinal goal—the achievement of of air su-
periority. They fine-tuned “force packaging” and advocated bombing for “ef-
fect,” not necessarily for “destruction.”



Decisive Force

Strategic Bombing in the Gulf War

Richard G. Davis

Air Force History and Museums Program
1996


4. Eliminate Iraq's offensive military capability by
destroying key military production, infrastructure, and
power capabilities.

5. Render Iraq’s army and its mechanized equipment
in Kuwait ineffective, causing its collapse.

The strategic air campaign against Iraq, which had principal re-
sponsibility for each of the first four specific air objectives, applied the
twelve strategic target sets developed by the Warden group and the
CENTAF Special Planning Group within the broader contexts of Pre-
sident Bush’s announced political objectives, the theater commander’ s
overall military objectives, and the specified air objectives.

The Initial Attacks

On the evening of January 16 and 17 at air bases throughout the
Arabian Peninsula, U.S. air and ground crews approached the night's
mission with special care and anticipation. Unless Coalition leaders
had a last minute change of mind, the largest multi-nation combat air
operation since the invasion of Normandy would begin in a few short
hours. This time the crew chiefs, armaments specialists, and electron-
ics technicians took even more care in their duties. This time pilots
would be flying into battle, not into practice. ° They would be abso-
lutely dependent on the guns and missiles, chaff and flair ejectors, ra-
dar and communications systems of myriad and complicated aircraft to
function perfectly. In wing meetings with their planning officers they
fleshed out the details of the latest Air Tasking Order, plotted ingress
and egress routes, made attack approaches clear to all, and digested in-
telligence updates. This time, too, they paid special attention to sur-
vival kits, sidearms, water bottles, and last letters home. Each shared in
some fashion an anticipation of possible death and the accompanying
tush of adrenaline and sweaty palms. Despite their high level of pro-
fessional training, most USAF pilots in the Persian Gulf were about to
embark on their first combat mission.

At 0230L (L = Baghdad Time) January 17, 1991, thirty minutes
before H-Hour (H-30),> at a time of night when Iraqi radar operators
were at a physiological and psychological low, ten F-117As dropped
the booms of their tankers near the Saudi Arabia-Iraq border, “went
stealthy,” and headed for key air defense, command, and communica-
tions targets within Iraq, including Baghdad. At the same time, Task
Force NORMANDY—nine Army AH-64 Apache gunships led by three



for?” It certainly fulfilled the theater commander’s expectations of
what air power should do and it played a crucial role in fulfilling Presi-
dent George Bush’s political objectives. (After the war, speaking at the
Air Force Academy, Bush declared: “Gulf Lesson One is the value of
air power.”) Those who fault the strategic air campaign in the Gulf
War because it failed to achieve one hundred percent success argue for
perfection. What can be said now is this: the strategic air campaign
against Iraq was a decisive factor in Iraq’s defeat. But, more impor-
tant, when joined to the tactical air effort—the element which con-
sumed almost seventy-five percent of the total air effort—strategic and
tactical air power together constituted the decisive factor in the Coali-
tion’s quick and almost bloodless victory in the Persian Gulf War.

74


A. Deptula, USAF. The strategic air planners, who remained separate
from CENTAF’s staff in part because of the high security classifica-
tion of their work, also maintained a clcse and continuing relationship
with CHECKMATE in the Pentagon before and during the war, exchang-
ing information frequently. When Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf
received the initial version of CENTAF’s “Offensive Campaign-Phase
J,” on September 13, 1990, they dec:ded that whenever hostil
broke out, even in the event of an Iraqi offensive, they would imple-
ment it rather than respond with a defensive air plan. By mid-Septem-
ber CENTAF’s offensive campaign had already become the first part
of a much larger combined and joint theater campaign prepared by
CENTCOM'’s staff.

Warden intended INSTANT THUNDER to be a “stand alone” war-
stopper; Schwarzkopf saw it merely as the first phase of his integrated
air-ground campaign to liberate Kuwait. As early as August 25, 1990,
he had presented a four-phased offensive plan to Cheney and Powell:

ies.

Phase I: Strategic Air Campaign Against Iraq

Phase II: Air Campaign Against Iraqi Air Forces i
Kuwait

Phase III: Ground Combat Power Attrition to Neutral-
ize the Republican Guard and Isolate the Kuwaiti
Battlefield

Phase IV: Ground Attack to Ej2ct Iraqi Forces from
Kuwait

Air power alone would accomplish the first three phases. Ground
and air power working together would execute the last phase. By mid-
September Horner also assigned Phase II and some Phase III planning
to the Black Hole Special Planning Group under Glosson. Detailed
ground and air planning for Phase IV did not begin until mid Novem-
ber 1990, after President Bush authorized the doubling of American
forces in the theater, including the U.S. Army’s mechanized VII
Corps, transferred from Germany. For practical purposes, the addition
of more aircraft allowed CENTAF to merge the first three phases and
execute them simultaneously instead of sequentially, with situational
changes made in the level of effort among them. The initial air assault
would include attacks on targets belonging to each of the first three
phases. As the ground assault approached, the effort taken from Phase
Land devoted to Phase III would grow. The Republican Guard had fig-
ured prominently in the air planning for both Phase I, the strategic air
campaign, and for Phase III, the preparation of the battlefield. (The Re-

20


The Cover: The Lockheed F-117A spectacu-
larly proved the value of advanced stealth
technology during its combat debut in the
Gulf War.


stationing of U.S. armed forces within the state of Israel and using
them against Arab forces set a precedent that few in the Middle East
failed to notice—when called upon, the United States would physically
defend the Jewish state. Three days after the first Scud attack, January
21, 1991, high U.S. officials, such as Deputy Secretary of State
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, and CENTAF second in command, Major
General Thomas R. Olsen, had hurried to Tel Aviv, where they con-
firmed their impression that Israel was preparing to fight back. Its ob-
vious military preparations, of course, increased apprehensions among
USS. leaders that it might counterattack and possibly fracture the Coali-
tion. Nervousness in Washington translated into a doubled insistence
by senior U.S. commanders in Riyadh that the USAF suppress the
Scuds. Both the demand for this aerial action and the change in priori-
ties, Lieutenant General Horner subsequently stated, caused him his
greatest anxiety of the conflict.

In light of the urgency lent by this political complication to the
air campaign, the Coalition (much to the frustration of the Black Hole
planners) diverted scarce air resources from other strategic targets to
attack Scud manufacturing facilities and search out and destroy mobile
Scud launchers. Hardly ever has one nation expended such effort to
prevent another from acting against its own best interest. By January
25, 1991, the overall rate of Iraqi missile launches declined from a
peak of ten (and an average of four) to just one a day. Scuds launched
toward Saudi Arabia did not create the same political problems, but the
threat of their chemical warheads, which never materialized, created
much consternation. Altogether, CENTAF devoted fifteen percent of
its strategic air effort against Scud manufacturing, assembly, storage,
and launchers, with a high of 200 sorties on January 21, 1991. It fur-
ther held a squadron of F-15Es and LANTIRN-equipped F—-16s on
anti-Scud alert at all times. This counter-Scud effort represented a sig-
nificant diversion of force. The strategic air campaign was already
much attenuated by the increasing concentration of the Coalition on
tactical operations against Iraqi ground forces and related targets in the
Kuwaiti Theater of Operations in preparation for the ground offensive.
Tf Iraq forced a diversion of Coalition aerial resources, Coalition lead-
ers thwarted its main goal. Israel stayed out of the war and did not ex-
ercise its right of retaliation. The Coalition remained intact while
international contempt for Hussein grew.

On day five of the war, January 22, 1991, CENTAF discontinued
the suppression of airfields and switched to the sending of penetrating
GBU-10 and GBU-24 precision guided munitions against the hard-

44


bypassed CENTAF intelligence by developing an unofficial “back
channel” network among themselves for the rapid daily exchange of
video tape recordings of air strikes anc bomb damage. S Moreover,
they established direct (if informal) links with the DIA and CHECK-
MATE in Washington, D.C. CHECKMATE arranged informal repre-
sentation in DIA BDA cells, with the CIA and with other intelligence
agencies in Washington. They cast a wide net for information, even
bringing in numerous outside consultants, including the former ambas-
sador to Iraq, April Glaspie, in an attempt to learn all they could about
Iraq and its potential vulnerabilities. Their broad range of reliable in-
formation and expertise in offensive planning allowed them to serve as
an intelligence fusion center for the Filack Hole. The shortage of
timely and accurate BDA that informed the air planners on what to re-
target threatened to cripple the strategic bombing campaign and force a
“hit or miss” planning approach. This cifficulty revealed a damning
two-way lack of prewar communications between intelligence and op-
erations, although, in fairness, the lack of hard and current data (caus-
ing the intense hurry to discover it once the crisis broke in August
1990) was also a natural outgrowth of the shift of American intelli-
gence assets away from the Persian Gulf during the summer of 1988
following the close of the Iran-Iraq War. Fortunately, the system func-
tioned well enough to not impede either the strategic or tactical air
campaigns.

The Persian Gulf Conflict

On January 16, 1991, the USAF had stationed in Saudi Arabia
approximately one-quarter (700) of its combat aircraft, including
ninety percent of its precision bomb-droppers—46 F—15Es (over half
with LANTIRN* targeting pods), 64 F-111Fs with Pave Tack pods,””
and 36 (soon to be 42) F-117As all capable of precision guided muni-
tions delivery. These aircraft formed the heart and soul of the strategic
air campaign against Iraq. The USAF supplied another 450 support air-
craft. The USN and USMC supplied 724 more, approximately 400 of
them on carriers in or on their way to the theater. Arab allies contrib-
uted 490, while NATO Coalition members chipped in 146. The bulk of
these 2,096 combat aircraft shared experienced pilots, technological
advantages, and sophisticated weapons that far outclassed those of the
enemy.

Iraq had purchased an air force and subordinate air defense force
designed both to overawe, and defend it from, its neighbors. The air

28


Gulf War Weapons

id oS 7

CENTER: A spent Scud
booster being inspected by
Coalition troops after it im-
pacted in Saudia Arabia.

TOP: A GBU-10 laser-gui-
ded bomb being loaded onto
an F-111 prior to a “tank
plinking” mission.

BOTTOM: R-400 nerve agent-
filled aerial bombs such as these
found by U.S. inspectors after the
war were a part of Iraq’s store of
thousands of weapons, many
damaged and leaking, containing
lethal chemicals.


sion in Baghdad or Washington might mandate execution in a few
hours. Additional Coalition forces and new target intelligence ac-
counted for most of the changes. More force meant that more known
targets could be attacked. New intelligence meant new targets. CEN-
TAF’s offensive campaign had a list of almost 300 targets by January
16, 1991, with an additional 300 potential targets under consideration.
To maximize surprise and mission coordination and to ensure that sig-
nificant targets—air defenses, leadership, communications, electricity,
and nuclear, biological, and chemical—were struck as soon as p
ble, the Special Planning Group carefully scripted the air campaign’s
sorties of the first two days and part of the third. Lieutenant General
Horner reasoned that changing circumstances would invalidate any
further detailed advance planning.

The Special Planning Group consolidated its targeting recom-
mendations and guidance into the air campaign’s key internal planning
document—the daily Master Attack Plan.” “It consisted of the se-
quence of attacks for a twenty-four-hour period and included the time
on target, target number, target description, number and type of wea-
pon systems and supporting systems for each attack package.” Once
the conflict began, the daily Master Attack Plan, once approved by
Brigadier General Glosson, became the outline for the officers prepar-
ing the daily Air Tasking Order. As the orficial DoD report on the con-
flict affirmed, the master plan “drove the process,” the basis for all
other daily air attack and mission planning.

Lieutenant Colonel Deptula, on loan from the Secretary of the
Air Force’s staff group, an author of INSTANT THUNDER, and the chief
strategic air planner in the Special Planning Group, prepared the daily
Master Attack Plan.”! It allowed him to maintain, subject to his supe-
riors’ approval, much of the strategic philosophy (the centers of grav-
ity, the five target rings, the decisiveness of air power, etc.) that
underlay INSTANT THUNDER not only within CENTAF’s “Offensive
Campaign-Phase 1,” but within the daily execution of the strategic
bombing campaign against Iraq proper. As he continually laid out reit-
erations of executable plans across the width and breadth of Iraq in the
months before the war, he developed a greater understanding of the
spatial, temporal, and technological relationships between targets and
identified Iraqi air defenses. Simultaneous and carefully sequenced
strikes in different locations, he realized, could have synergistic effects
that increased the shock and destruction to the enemy and protected the
attacker. (The Iraqis would be unable to concentrate their defenses on
any one mission.) Such strikes would, when incorporated into CEN-

Nn
a


TOP: The Boeing E-3 Sentry
AWACS proved critical to
Coalition air success

CENTER: The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark was

precision attacker.

BOTTOM: The McDonnell-Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle was the
most successful conventional attacker in the Gulf War, capable of
tank hunting, deep interdicting, and, most spectacularly, Scud bus-
ling,



haps, not surprisingly, little evidence exists to show that the strategic
air planners received pressure from higher authorities to increase their
efforts against any of these systems. Those higher authorities worked
with the same intelligence limitations that the air planners did, and,
like them, could not realize until after the war that Iraqi nuclear, bio-
logical, and chemical complexes were far more sophisticated than they
had supposed.

The Coalition’s inability to strike such weapons from Hussein’s
hand raises a problem of disturbing raagnitude for international politi-
cal and military leaders alike. Such weapons are all-or-nothing propo-
sitions. [f a potential enemy retains just a handful, or the ability to pro-
uce them quickly, he is in almost as good a political, diplomatic, and
military position as he would be if he had dozens or hundreds. But un-
less his land is thoroughly searched (and 100 percent accurate intelli-
gence is at last acquired), his inventory can never be completely
determined. In fact, the Gulf War demonstrated that even the most sen-
sitive components can be relocated at will. The lesson is as ominous
now as it has been since 1945—any nation wishing to expend the re-
sources can acquire and maintain atomic and other terror weapons. UL
timately, without a basic change in the philosophy of a nation’s ruling
such as occurred in West Germany and Japan after World War
Il, physical destruction is not enough. Military power alone cannot re-
move the desire for these weapons from a leader’s psyche or remove
the knowledge of them from the scientists who create them.

Today, more than ever, intelligence is necessary to the successful
conclusion of any military campaign. In the Gulf War it was adequate,
indeed better than in most wars, but certainly far from perfect. The
United States’ decision to devote only minimal national intelligence
priorities to Iraq and its nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenals be-
fore August 1990 to some extent crippled targeting and campaign
planning throughout the war.

The strategic air campaign plarners went after Iraq’s massive mi-
litary storage and production network to reduce Hussein’s ability to
field and sustain his armed forces. Twenty-two percent (2,756) of the
strategic air campaign’s total sorties and probably even more of its to-
tal bomb tonnage went into this target system to more or less equal the
number of sorties expended on Scuds (2,767). Coalition aircraft de-
stroyed or heavily damaged many physical plants and equipment too
bulky to move. A DoD assessment affirmed that “at least thirty percent
of Iraq’s conventional weapons production capability which made
small arms, artillery, small- and large-caliber ammunition, electronic

class:

59


Notes

'Phe U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) was a unified command estab-
lished and designated by the President under a single commander. It consisted of ele-
ments drawn from two or more U.S. military services and corresponded to the World
War I-cra Theater of Operations. USCENTCOM’s geographical Area of Responsibil-
ity (AOR) in 1990 covered a broad region comprising much of the Muslim world.
Within its purview fell the following nations: Fgypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia,
Djibouti, the two Yemens, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It also included the Red
Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, and the Gulf of Oman. U.S. Air Force
(USAF) aircraft that took part in the Gulf War air campaign but flew from bases in
Turkey, Spain, and Great Britain, belonged to another unified command, the U.S.
European Command (USEUCOM). B-52 bombers that flew from the island of Diego
Garcia, a British possession in the Indian Ocean, belonged to the U.S. Strategic Air
Command (SAC). Diego Garcia lay in the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) AOR.

The following countries, all members of the International Coalition taking
arms against Iraq, contributed combat aircraft to the War in the Persian Gulf: the
United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates, Egypt, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.

Phe Kuwaiti Theater of Operations (KTO) was only a portion of the overall
Coalition-Iraqi battlefield. It was defined as the area north of the Saudi Arabia-Iraq
border; south of the thirty-first degree north latitude line; west of the Persian Gulf and
of the Iran-Iraq border, and east of the forty-fifth degree east longitude line. This area
included Kuwait and southeastern Iraq, including the major Iraqi city of Basra, and
stretched approximately from the Iraqi city of As Samawah on the west to the Persian
Gulf and from Saudi Arabia to the Iraqi city of An Nasiriyah in the north, It contained
most of the elite Republican Guard and a large portion of the Regular Iraqi armed
forces (for a combined total of forty-three under-strength divisions). Most of the op-
erations of the strategic air campaign against Iraq occurred outside the KTO, while all
Coalition tactical air operations took place within it.

“These attacks characteristically left bridge spans all or partially severed from
their supports and resting in the water. They appeared as if they had “dropped” into the
water, USAF pilots quickly made note of this and service slang began to refer to
bridges as “dropped” rather than destroyed. It is a more accurate term in that a perma-
nent bridge is not “destroyed” unless its concrete abutments and piers are demolished

She F-16 and the A-10 can deliver a Maverick air-to-ground missile (AGM).
It is precision guided, designed for an anti-armor role, and achieved excellent results in
attacks on Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers. The Maverick does not have the
penetration, weight, and amount of high-explosives required for strategic bombing.

The British Royal Air Force (RAF) possessed the JP-233 airfield-denial muni-
tions, which dispensed weapons capable of penetrating hardened concrete runways. It
was not designed for use against structures. A hardened structure is an individual
building or facility sheathed in several feet of specially-hardened steel-reinforced con-
crete, often covered with several feet of rubble and earth. Earth fill, hardened concrete,
and sheet steel plate may alternate in covering a single “super hardened” facility. A
conventional high explosive bomb will either explode on contact or only dig a slight

75


Downtown Baghdad

(First Twenty-four hours of the war)

1. Directorate of Military Intelligence
2, 5, 8, 13, 34. Telephone
‘switching station.
3. Ministry of Defense
National Computer Complex
4. Electrical transter station
6. Ministry of Defense HO
7. Ashudad highway bridge
9. Railroad yard
10. Muthena airfield (military section)
11. New Iraq Air Force HO
12. Iraq! Intelligence Service HO
14, Secret Police complex
15. Army storage depot
16. Republican Guard H@
17. New Presidential Palace
18, Electrical power station
19. SREM assembly factors (Scud)
20. Baath party HQ
21. Government Conference
center
22. Ministry of Industry and
Military Production
23. Ministry of Propaganda
24, TV Transmitter
25, 31. Communication relay station
26. Jumhurlya highway bridge
27. Government Control
Center South
26. Karada highway bridge
(14th July bridge)
29. Presidential Palace
Command Center
30. Presidential Palace
‘Command Bunker
32. Secret Police H@
33. Iraqi intelligence Service
Regional HO
35. National Air Defense
Operations Center
36. Ad Dawrah oll refinery
37. Electrical power plant

During the first twenty-four hours of the war, coalition
aircraft struck critical targets in Saddam's capital and
elsewhere. Weeks of fighting remained, but the initial
attack was so overwhelming that Iraq was unable to
mount a coherent military response thereafter. First
day targets in Baghdad are numbered on the map.



At the end of eleven days, on January 27, 1991, CENTAF de-
clared that it held air supremacy, as distinguished from the air supe-
riority it had seized in the first moments of the war. This announ-
cement confirmed the on-going shift of the three-quarters or more of
the Coalition air effort to the tactical bombing of Iraqi ground force
targets in Kuwait. With a rump effort of approximately 175 daily stra-
tegic sorties, CENTAF’s strategic planners attempted to keep up the
pressure. They could direct about 100 PGM-capable USAF aircraft,
plus some USN A-6s,? and a few RAF Buccaneers equipped with
Pave Spike target designators. The Buccaneers would “buddy lase” for
RAF Tornadoes until the Tornadoes received their own British-made
thermal imaging laser designation pods (TIALD). As the strategic air
campaign progressed, support of the ground effort and Scud diversion
siphoned off more and more of these aircraft. A squadron of F-15Es
(twenty-four aircraft) was assigned to Scud targets and Scud alert; a
second was assigned to “tank plinking.”*? By February 5, 1991, two-
thirds of the F-111Fs were committed against targets in Kuwait. By
January 25, 1991, to recoup from lost strategic sorties, CENTAF re-
quired the F-117A wing to begin flying three missions each night. Six
additional F-117A Nighthawks arrived from the United States to com-
plement their activity.

During the second week of the strategic air campaign CENTAF
began to bomb not just for effect (which initial planning had empha-
sized) but for destruction (to follow up the initial disruption). Squad-
ron-size or larger missions of precision guided munitions aircraft
struck the Tuwiatha Nuclear Center, the Latifaya Solid Propellant
Plant, chemical warfare bunkers, and hardened air shelters. Single or
paired aircraft repeatedly attacked TV and radio transmitters through-
out Iraq, while other single aircraft wrecked telephone exchanges in
the lesser cities and “deafened” the Iraqi National Security Agency.
The last scheduled attacks on electrical generating facilities against
nine smaller facilities occurred in this period.

From February 6 to February 14, 1991, Coalition air forces pum-
meled twenty-four Iraqi airfields; numerous chemical warfare bunkers;
eleven chemical research, production, and development targets: six-
teen oil targets (including ten storage facilities); and fifty-three sepa-
rate communications targets. After the F-117As smashed SAM sites,
the B-52Gs based in Diego Garcia** began to hit the Taji Logistics
Center, especially the armored fighting vehicle and missile repair fa-
cilities. The large Iraqi military industrial support complex received
numerous blows. On the night of February 11 and 12, 1991, F-117As

47


(centers) that, when attacked, would most unbalance him. Centers of
gravity might not always equate to specific target systems as several
target systems might hold certain critical vulnerabilities in common.
The Warden group designated the primary center of gravity in any
conflict as the enemy’s leadership—i:s survival, its continued resis-
tance, and its control of military forces or other elements of national
power. Many other considerations—weather, air defenses, or overall
military situation—affected an air campaign. The air planners eval-
uated them as well as the forces at an enemy’s disposal, then devised
the best means for employing USAF assets coherently and cohesively.

Warden’s planners strove to continue in the tradition of the origi-
nal Air War Plans Division of the Ai: Staff of 1941, which devised
AWPD/1, the blueprint for American strategic air operations in World
War II. They accepted the time-honored principle of securing air su-
periority ~ as the first mission of any air campaign. Next, they ac-
cepted the concept of employing force packages as a requirement in
mission planning. However, they took issue with USAF planning and
targeting orthodoxy. In the past, traditional mission planners sought to
achieve a specified level of destruction, expressed in percentages (usu-
ally, one hundred percent), for any given target. Target work sheets,
photographic imagery and interpretation, and force packaging had re-
volved around the assignment of sufficient weapons to achieve a de-
sired percentage-level of destruction. Colonel Warden insisted that
partial destruction might achieve the desired result; moreover, total de-
struction might exceed what is desired or even needed. The advent of
guided munitions with their tiny circular error probables (CEPs) rein-
forced his conviction. He argued for missions planned in combinations
and designed to produce a desired effect on the enemy. Leveling an
atomic research facility might have fewer adverse effects on the en-
emy’s will to fight than a series of more limited, but precise, attacks on
his leadership’s command and control (? ) bunkers. Emphasis on ef-
fect had wider implications. It encouraged air planners, first, to con-
centrate not just on discrete targets but to consider the tactical, oper-
ational, and strategic points within a center of gravity; next, to search
for interconnections between target systems; and, finally, to seek the
means of achieving larger political objectives through innovation. One
need not target a complex of buildings when one could target a single
office in a specific building.

In August 1988 Colonel Warden circulated a paper in the Air
Staff that graphically codified his targeting and strategic ideas. He in-
dicated the relative importance of the strategic targets contained within

10