Operation Desert Storm

Saddam Hussein's rejection of diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis led to the decision to restore Kuwait's sovereignty by military force. The ensuing air war and the effects of the economic embargo decimated Iraq's military infrastructure, severed communication and supply lines, smashed weapons arsenals, and destroyed morale. Overall, the coalition air campaign accumulated a total of 109,876 sorties over the 43-day war, an average of 2,555 sorties per day. Of these, over 27,000 targeted Scuds, airfields, air defenses, electrical power, biological and chemical weapons, headquarters, intelligence assets, communications, the Iraqi army, and oil refining.

One can get some perspective on the scope of the Gulf air war by comparing it to some predecessors. The following table presents U.S. Army Air Forces, and U. S. Air Force bomb tonnage statistics extracted from various wars, compared with Air Force tonnage dropped in the Gulf War:

War Tonnage Length Tonnage/Month
WW II 2,150,000 45 months 47,777.78
Korea 454,000 37 months 12,270.27
Vietnam/SEA 6,162,000 140 months 44,014.29
Gulf War 60,624 1.5 months 40,416.00
The Gulf War was not an exercise in massive bombing unparalleled in previous air war history; neither the sortie rates nor the bomb tonnage statistics made it so. The Air Force's tonnage expenditure in the Gulf War was only 11% of that expended against Japan (537,000 tons), less than 4% of that expended against Nazi Germany (1,613,000 tons), and less than one percent of the tonnage which the Air Force dropped in Southeast Asia. In measures of tonnage dropped per month, the Gulf air war ranked significantly below Vietnam, and was only 85% of that in the Second World War. Yet it was more decisive overall in what it achieved than any of these previous wars.

During DESERT STORM, 10th ADA Brigade from Germany commanded a task force which included Dutch, US and Israeli Patriot batteries in defense of Tel Aviv and Haifa. ADA lieutenants were debriefed at the Israeli Defense Forces "Pentagon" after each Scud attack. Within twenty nine hours of "wheels up" for the first aircraft, the TF 4-43 ADA was operational in Israel in two locations.

TF 4-7 ADA (Patriot) deployed from Germany to Incirlik Turkey where they provided ADA protection to critical assets poised at Iraq's "back door".
TF 2-43 ADA (Patriot) deployed from Germany & was attached to 11th ADA Brigade, providing Scud defense of King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia.
TF 8-43 ADA (Patriot) deployed from Germany and provided general support to VII Corps.
After a 38-day air campaign, the DESERT SABRE ground offensive began with allied forces sweeping through Iraqi defenses. The Iraqi army was crushed after a mere 100 hours. Iraqi troops--tired, hungry and war-weary from six months of economic blockade and more than a month of relentless allied bombing--surrendered by the thousands.

Desert Storm is also known as the Mother of all Battles (Umm Al-Ma'arik -- the Arabic "mother of" is a figure of speech for "major" or "best"). Saddam Hussein's biography notes that he: "Led his country in confrontation the aggression launched by 33 countries led by US. which waged war against Iraq, the Iraqis' confrontation of which is called by Arabs and Iraqis as the Battle of Battles (Um Al-Ma'arik), where Iraq stood fast against the invasion, maintaining its sovereignty and political system."

From:www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/desert_storm.htm

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The 1991 Gulf War
Between the 17th January and 28th February 1991, a US led coalition destroyed a defending Iraqi army of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, thousands of armored vehicles and tens of thousands of artillery pieces, for the loss of only 240 attackers. This represented less than one fatality in 3000 soldiers, an incredibly low coalition casualty rate.

In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. Over the next five months a US-led coalition gathered forces in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Persian Gulf. On the 17th January they launched a six week air campaign, rapidly gaining control of the air and destroying the air defense and large parts of Iraq’s command and control network. This gave them uncontested air supremacy for almost a month of bombing attacks. On the 24th February two divisions of US marines attacking from the center and left, and two corps on the extreme right flank, rapidly defeated the Iraqi ground forces. The war was halted on 28th February, just 42 days after it started, and only four days after the start of the ground offensive.

This unprecedented success is attributable to a combination of superior coalition technology and flawed Iraqi tactics. New information gathering, precision guidance and air defense suppression technologies were all used by the coalition for the first time or in a newly mature form, and not used by the opposition. The Iraqis tactical flaws were the usual combination of poor combined arms co-ordination, inability to integrate manoeuvre and suppressive fire, and poor exploitation of cover and concealment.

The Iraqi conscript infantry was neither skilled nor motivated and even the Republican Guard were remarkably unskilled. Fighting positions for tanks and troops were haphazardly prepared. For example many Republican Guard armored vehicles were left perched on the desert surface behind loose sand berms which offered neither concealment (they were the only prominent feature on the flat desert landscape) nor cover (piled sand cannot stop 120mm depleted uranium shells). US tanks crews, by constrast, dug fighting positions as ramps which conceal the entire vehicle below ground until the weapon is to be fired. This way they cannot be seen by thermal sights and are not vulnerable to enemy fire (even 120mm DU).

Further Iraqi tactical mistakes include counterattacks launched by armoured vehicles advancing in the open without accompanying fire support; poor marksmanship; and little regard to equipment maintenance. The were not the first to make such mistakes. The technical demands of modern war are exacting, but as technology becomes more sophisticated the consequences of such errors become greater.

The coalition attackers had all-weather, day/night thermal tank sights, stabilized 120mm guns effective on the first shot at 3 kilometres, attack helicopters with 5 kilometre range missiles, and aircraft armed with precision guided missiles and complete command of the sky. Against such weapons tactical slip-ups became very lethal very quickly to a very large number of defenders.

Since 1900 there has been a continuous, rapid growth in the reach, lethality, speed and information-gathering potential of armies. Military strategy has developed and repeatedly proved a key set of tactics: combined arms, tight integration of movement and suppressive fire, aggressive use of cover and concealment, and defensive depth and reserves. Technology punishes tactical mistakes with increasing severity. Technological change in land warfare can thus be thought of as a wedge, driving apart the real military capability of armies that can, from those that cannot, implement the complex canon of orthodox modern tactics and doctrine.

From: http://www.darkcoding.net/strategy/land-warfare