Airpower: The First Gulf War

The First Gulf War was a turning point for the role of airpower by helping move airpower from a supporting role to a stand alone role. The war proved air power's effectiveness on its own by showing it can decimate an enemy of vast numbers enough to allow a small invasion force to quickly conquer them. In doing this, airpower moved from its role as a great tool in the toolbox for the Army and Navy and into its current role of as an integral part of the three pronged approach of air, land, and sea warfare.

Background and Facts

"It's estimated that during the Air Campaign, coalition forces destroyed over 400 Iraqi aircraft, including 122 that flew to Iran, without a single loss in air-to-air combat".²

"The mission capable rate for US Air Force aircraft was

92 % --- higher than than the peacetime rate".³

The Coalition had “1,959 helicopters to 160; and some 2,700 aircraft to 770” ⁴

“During the course of Desert Storm, the TACC planned, coordinated, and executed 116,818 sorties over a forty-three-day period. With the exception of the last day of the war, there were never fewer than 2286 sorties scheduled for any day”.⁵

Background

The First Gulf War was a war of reactions. Saddam Hussein initaiated the war by reacted to what he perceived as "Kuwait stealing Iraq’s oil and conspiring with Saudi Arabia to keep prices low inorder to hurt the Iraqi economy" by invading Kuwait. When Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of neighboring Kuwait, the US had to start reacting, pressure from key Arab allies was mounting and UN Security Council resolutions had been ignored. When Kuwait’s leader, King Fahd, personally asked Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney for US military assistance, the pressure on the US to intervene had become too great bear. The US quickly mobilized its Air Force, sending squadrons of fighters to Saudi Arabia, in a military buildup to prepare for a seemingly inevitable war. After a UN Security council resolution authorizing “all force necessary” to force Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, the US prepared to strike. The US Quickly initiated an all out air war, hoping to destroy the Iraqi army and any infrastructure “necessary for the war effort”. The Air War was a huge success, bring the Iraqi army to near collapse before the ground war even started. The ground effort, with the help of close air support and air superiority from above, was a massive success, won a decisive victory against the Iraqi Army. Though the Air and Ground war were “limited”, not removing Saddam Hussein from power and focusing more on minimizing allied losses then “Complete Victory”, they still showed the lasting effects and power of Airpower on a “Traditional Enemy”.

"By the time the ground war began at 0400 hours on 24 February 1991, Iraqi ground forces had been hit by more than 40,000 attack sorties.”⁶

"It's estimated that during the Air Campaign, coalition forces destroyed over 400 Iraqi aircraft, including 122 that flew to Iran, without a single loss in air-to-air combat".⁷

“All told...some 7,000 RAF personnel were directly involved in operations in the Gulf. Overall, we flew over 6,100 sorties in the conflict, the largest number mounted by any nation except the United States and more than two and a half times that flown by our French friends”.⁸

"Coalition air forces had also destroyed 54 bridges or made them inoperable--playing a major role in cutting off Iraqi land forces from their final route of escape along the Tigris north of Basra during the last days of the war".⁹

Background

Useful Definitions:

Airpower: "The ability to project power from the air and space to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events"¹
Air Superiority: the ability to operate air forces anywhere, at anytime, without effective opposition.

Personal Stories

An except from an interview with a shot down and captured US F16 pilot, Colonel Jeff Tice:

“So I ... told them that I was in the ... 614th fighter squadron, and they kept asking, well where were you from, where were you flying, what was your target ... It was pretty obvious what my target was; it was burning still. And so ... we went around about that for a little while, and they continued, intermittently, to beat me in the lower extremities, getting kicks, punches, whatever...We went further and further through this, they became more and more intent on finding out some pertinent information. But the majority of the questions they were asking could have been found in any publication that deals with aviation, like what does the F16 weigh, is it the a model, was it the b model, was it a c model. They wanted very, very specific details that really had no bearing on anything ... else.”¹⁰

An except from an interview with a shot down and captured US F15 pilot, Colonel David W Eberly, about being in a maximum security prision bombed by US aircraft.

“And then I hear the front end of a low altitude fighter coming in. And it's very easy to determine when a fighter's pointed at you; it's a very distinct sound, and hearing a crackling sound and then a concussion from the building ...is one of those that ...is very hard to describe. But the building seems to, I mean you become almost floating in air, and the feeling of being hit or the building that you're inis being hit is, again, an awesome feeling" ¹¹

“Back to the EPW's—they knew exactly how to surrender, thanks to the leaflets that our air force dropped on them.”¹²

Iraq

“How hard it is to be killed by someone you don't know, you've never seen, and can't confront. He is in the sky and you're on the ground”.¹³

And Many More...

Key Players

Early

Early Analysis

The Washington Post:

“Gaining air superiority was a major goal of the coalition war planners. An underlying objective of attacks on the capital was the strategic political goal of destabilizing Saddam Hussein's regime (and at least among war planners the hope that bombing would actually succeed in killing the Iraqi leader), according to officials involved in the planning."¹⁴

“According to the Gulf War Air Power Survey, a U.S. military assessment of Desert Storm published after the war, "The aim was not destruction of one particular target set ... but rather a synergistic degradation of the whole, in which friction, confusion, and uncertainty would combine to make the defenses generally ineffective."¹⁵

Early Encyclopedia Entries:

“The Iraqis could only offer a token defense, and the coalition would lose only seventy-five aircraft over the entire course of the conflict.” ¹⁶

“On February 23, 1991, the ground battles began, as forces crossed into Kuwait from Saudi Arabia. The coalition enjoyed several major advantages over the Iraqis, including technically superior machinery, global positioning satellites that allowed navigation without landmarks, and air superiority. Iraqi forces offered only light resistance before surrendering, and on February 27." ¹⁷

Early Historians interpretations:

“Development and execution of an integrated air campaign that centralized the targeting and scheduling of aircraft and helicopters of allied air force, army, and navy forces" allowed the war to progess the way it did.¹⁸

The coaltion acomplished a “virtual destruction and demoralization of a large, well-equipped enemy air force and a massive, seasoned, well-equipped army prior to ground combat.” ¹⁹

The “denial to Iraq of virtually all strategic and tactical intelligence because of the allied airpower threat” severely hindered the resistance. ²⁰

The war was “the demonstration that airpower could achieve all the above if based upon reliable and sophisticated equipment, highly qualified and trained personnel, excellent leadership, and allied cooperation."²¹

“Analysts will also study what airpower did not achieve: finding and destroying the leader of Iraq; being able to destroy all mobile Scud missiles; locating and attacking all sites where weapons of mass destruction were made or stored; and successfully enforcing the embargo of materials.” ²²

“Ten aircraft were lost during the final 10 days of the war (19 to 28 February), all in the KTO. During this period, Coalition aircraft often operated at lower altitudes, where the Iraqi defensive threat was still potent, to get below the prevalent bad weather and to support the ground forces better. This not only exposed the aircrews to battlefield defenses, such as hand-held IR SAMs that were not a threat at the middle altitudes, but also reduced aircrew reaction time and ability to evade SAMs.”²³

GOV

Government Reports

US Military Reports

“One limit on the operational success of the air campaign was the distraction caused by an urgent diversion of air assets to a campaign against Iraqi Scud missiles. Although the Iraqis launched only eighty-six Scuds, these relatively primitive missiles had an impact well beyond their number. Their range enabled them to reach, albeit inaccurately, soft and unprepared targets.”²⁴

“The coalition readily achieved air supremacy, and Iraqi command and control does in fact seem to have been virtually paralyzed by the time the ground war began.”²⁵

“Overall, the coalition air campaign was a great success; but it did far less well against dug-in equipment than against command and control nodes and logistical assets. This situation changed radically when ground fighting forced theretofore hidden Iraqi equipment into movement. Then the synergy achieved by employing ground and air assets in concert demonstrated itself with devastating effect."²⁶

Pentagon press briefings during the war

“As you know, very early on we took out the Iraqi air force. We knew that he [the enemy] had very, very limited reconnaissance means. And therefore we took out his air force, for all intents and purposes we took out his ability to see what we were doing down here in Saudi Arabia.”²⁷

“We also conducted a very heavy bombing campaign, and many people questioned why. The reason is that it was necessary to reduce these forces down to strength that made them weaker, particularly along the front-line barrier that we had to go through.”²⁸

“We were outnumbered, and ... we had to come up with some way to make the difference.... What we did, of course, was start an extensive air campaign.”²⁹

Conclusions

The First Gulf War Air proved the destruction Power Airpower can impart against a Traditional Enemy. The First Gulf war was one of the first times we saw a dedicated Air Campaign and a dedicated Ground Campaign. In war since World War Two,(the first major time airpower played any significant role in combat), Airpower was used as an extension of land and sea power. It was like a better longer ranged, gun for ships and better, longer ranged artillery for ground forces. Besides its use with nuclear weapons, acting more as a delivery method than anything else, airpower had never accomplished any major military objectives on its own. It was always a tool for either ground commanders, naval commanders, or the delivery of nuclear weapons. In fact, the US Air Force started out as the Army Air Corps and was not made its own separate branch until 1947. Airpower was never thought of as anything even rivaling naval forces, ground forces, or “the nuclear option”. It was always, “just another tool in the tool box”. The First Gulf War was a turning point for the role of airpower by helping move airpower from a supporting role to a stand alone role. The war proved air power's effectiveness on its own by showing it can decimate an enemy of vast numbers enough to allow a small invasion force to quickly conquer them. In doing this, airpower moved from its role as a great tool in the toolbox for the army and navy and into its current role of as an integral part of the three pronged approach of air, land, and sea warfare.

Footnotes

______________________________

1. Dupuy, Trevor N. "Airpower, History of." International Military and Defense Encyclopedia. Macmillan Reference USA, 1993.

2. "Air Force Performance in Operation Desert Storm." PBS: Frontline. 2014.

3."Air Force Performance in Operation Desert Storm." 2014.

4. "Gulf War, 1991." International Military and Defense Encyclopedia. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 1993. U.S. History in Context.

5. Lewis, Michael W. “The Law of Aerial Bombardment in the 1991 Gulf War”. The American Journal of International Law 97 (3). American Society of International Law: 481–509. 2003.

6. " International Military and Defense Encyclopedia. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 1993.

7. "Air Force Performance in Operation Desert Storm." 2014.

8. Vallance, Andrew. "RAF - Air Power in the Gulf War." Royal Air Force.

9. "Gulf War, 1991." 1993

10. Tice, Jeff. "War Story: Jeff Tice."PBS Frontline. 1995.

11. Eberly, David. "War Story: David Eberly." PBS Frontline. 1995.

12. Putnam III, Samuel G. "Putnam III, Samuel G." War in the Persian Gulf Reference Library. Detroit: UXL, 2004. 75-83. U.S. History in Context.

13. “Anonymous Iraqi Army Lieutenant.” War in the Persian Gulf Reference Library. Vol. Detroit: UXL, 2004. 55-64. U.S. History in Context. 18 Jan. 2016.

14. Arkin, William M. "Baghdad Bombing: Plan Spared Saddam From Pain." Washington Post: Fog of War. July 30, 1998.

15. "Baghdad Bombing: Plan Spared Saddam From Pain." July 30, 1998.

16. Stock, Jennifer, ed. "The Persian Gulf War Begins: August 2, 1990." Global Events: Milestone Events Throughout History. Middle East ed. Vol. 5. Farmington Hills: Gale. 2014.

17. "The Persian Gulf War Begins: August 2, 1990." 2014.

18. Dupuy, Trevor N. "Airpower, History of." 1993.

19. Dupuy. "Airpower, History of." 1993.

20. Dupuy. "Airpower, History of." 1993.

21. Dupuy. "Airpower, History of." 1993.

22. Dupuy. "Airpower, History of." 1993.

23. Buhler, Jeremy, and Jorge Kamine. "CHAPTER VI - THE AIR CAMPAIGN." Poli 378 - American National Security Policy. 1996.

24. War in The Persian Gulf. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2010.

25. War in The Persian Gulf. 2010.

26.War in The Persian Gulf. 2010.

27. Schwarzkopf, Norman H. "Schwarzkopf, H. Norman." US History in Context. 1993.

28. Schwarzkopf. "Schwarzkopf, H. Norman." 1993.