Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

by Tom Clancy

  “I figure two hours,” I said, “will be enough to get the word to the pilots before they take off, or drop off a tanker, en route to their targets.

  “Once there’s a cessation of hostilities,” I went on to explain, “we will still maintain fighter patrols over the country, in case the Iraqis attempt a sneak punch with their remaining fighters or bombers. We’ll also keep aircraft on the ground loaded with bombs and missiles, in case the cease-fire fails and Iraqi ground forces threaten Coalition ground forces.”

  But I knew this was just playing it safe. In reality, all that was left to do was begin the talks at Safwan that would make the end official.

  After Schwarzkopf’s call, I sat in the now very hushed TACC as the duty officers busied themselves reading books or trying to figure how to get back home. There was still flying to do over Iraq, but it was routine. There were still a few engagements on the ground as the Iraqis stumbled into our ground forces and a firefight broke out. We still shot down a few Iraqis who thought it was okay to attack their insurgents in the south and north. But in our hearts, the war was over. We knew it was time to stop the insanity.

  14

  Shock and Awe

  THE war to liberate Kuwait ended on February 28, 1991. To be sure, conflict in the region did not cease; armed revolts broke out throughout Iraq. Nonetheless, the purpose of the Coalition forces had been achieved. Kuwait was free. But what did we learn from all this? Chuck Horner continues:

  ★ As Coalition forces packed up their kits and headed home, historians began analyzing and comparing—and some comparisons are enlightening; see the accompanying charts—while military staffs began compiling studies (in militarese, these are often referred to as “Lessons Learned”). A problem quickly became apparent: This war was so different from—and in many ways so much more successful than—any other example of armed conflict, it offered advocates of practically any point of view an opening to make a favorable case. In the United States, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of the service departments published “Lessons Learned” documents that were in fact advertisements for individual programs, requirements, or services. This is not to say they were totally dishonest. Some of them actually uncovered areas that needed to be fixed.

  Still, the so-called “studies” tended to be self-supporting rather than critical of the agency that sponsored the work. And too many of the books, articles, studies, and official documents misstated the facts, with the aim of salvaging a weapon system, military doctrine, or reputation whose worth could not otherwise be supported. They were public relations documents, not clear-eyed, honest appraisals, and they were aimed at influencing the soon-to-come budget reductions and debates over each service’s roles and missions.

  Since the various conclusions tended to be contradictory, there were inevitable battles. The pie was finite.

  These battles were best summed up in the debate over whether or not the Gulf War was a “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA, as it was expressed in the acronym-happy Pentagon.

  The RMA debate divided those who wished to continue business as usual from those who believed that war had changed so fundamentally that new organizations, strategies, doctrines, and military forces were needed. The former tended to come from the land services. They took it as an article of faith that war was a matter of meeting the enemy army, navy, and/or air force on the battlefield, and inflicting such damage that he could no longer resist the will of the dominant military force. The goal was to destroy the enemy military so greatly that resistance was impossible or futile.

  The revolutionaries—often air, sea, and space advocates—tended to talk about asymmetric warfare. In asymmetric warfare, an apparently weak nation (call it nation A) will refuse to engage its stronger enemy (nation B) in the areas of its strength, and instead will attack where B is most vulnerable. Thus, if B has a large land army, A will avoid ground combat, and perhaps use computer attacks against B’s national infrastructure to weaken it, while inflicting large numbers of casualties on B’s army with weapons of mass destruction. In asymmetric warfare, A’s forces may not even engage B’s in direct battle. For example, A might try to isolate B’s economy or to debilitate its political leadership to the point where A’s will could be imposed, while B’s military forces remained relatively intact.

  In fact, both schools have missed the point of the Gulf War. Desert Storm was not about a revolution in military affairs, it was a demonstration of the revolution that had already occurred in technology. The RMA has not happened to any great extent because neither the United States military nor its counterparts around the world have been able to fully exploit the technological revolution revealed during the Gulf War.

  The Gulf War demonstrated the possibilities available to a nation that decides to revolutionize its military operations. If used effectively, precision weapons, Stealth aircraft, space reconnaissance, and rapid communications would so change military affairs that today’s military leaders would no longer recognize the military in which they served. Certainly, Schwarzkopf, Yeosock, Boomer, Arthur, and I did not fully understand how to exploit these revolutionary capabilities. Yet we perceived the clues and (within our own limitations) tried our best to use the resources available, to free Kuwait as soon as possible, while keeping the loss of life at a minimum.

  Since this book is about airpower, what is the future of air, looked at from the light of the coming revolution? The best way to get a handle on that, I think, is to examine how we dealt with the new technologies during the war, and then to use that as an entry into the coming revolution in military affairs. Parts of this story will be familiar, but not from this angle.

  U.S. Bomb Tonnage Used per Month by Conflict

  U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses/Sorties by Conflict

  ★ The Coalition strategy was simple—to gain control of the air, use airpower to isolate and debilitate the Iraqi Army, and then use ground forces to drive them from Kuwait. The war in Vietnam did not have air superiority as a pressing goal; the result was a drawn-out conflict with thousands of aircraft shot down. I could never forget that lesson. Therefore, the first step, gaining control of the air, was key.

  For this, I had advantages no other commander in history had enjoyed. For starters, a U.S. Navy analysis of Iraqi air defenses provided a system-wide understanding of the role of each element that had been designed to protect Iraq from air attack. The point to pay attention to is the system, not the elements. No longer would I have to bomb every enemy airfield, or shoot down every enemy fighter, or destroy every enemy surface-to-air missile site. If I could isolate and destroy the heart and brain of the Iraqi air defenses, then the arms and legs could not function, and attacking them would only use precious resources that would be better used in attacks on other target sets.

  The analysis of the system told the air planners what nodes should be attacked, in what sequence, and when the attacks should be repeated. These attacks would be conducted with such ferocity and accuracy that the air defenders would be shocked into a state of awe and helplessness. The tools, Stealth and precision, would exploit the opportunities revealed by the complete knowledge of the Iraqi air defense system.

  And so it happened.

  Because the planners who devised this brilliant takeover of Iraqi airspace had available to them the knowledge of Iraq’s air defense system as a living organism, they knew precisely where to inflict wounds, and they had the means to conduct the attacks at low risk and with great precision. The result was the imposition of a regime of shock and awe so great that the Iraqi military situation became hopeless soon after the opening minutes of the war.

  “Shock and Awe” (sometimes also called “Rapid Dominance”)—a relatively simple concept—is one of the foundations of an understanding of the coming revolution in military affairs.

  In war, the goal is to make the enemy accede to your will, to make him do what you want him to do. Traditionally, you accomplish this by destroying his means to resist, as we did with Germany in
World War II, but that is not the only way. For example, why not catch his attention in such a way that he is unwilling to resist you? In World War II, Japan was worn down as Germany was, but not to the point of total surrender. Then a pair of A-bombs induced such shock into the nation, causing the enemy to hold us in such awe, that they surrendered rather than conduct a bloody defense of the home islands.

  In the Gulf in February 1991, Iraqi soldiers were in a state of shock and awe, and surrendered.

  ★ Today, a B-2 carries sixteen precision bombs (the F-117 carries two) and can strike with the same impunity as the smaller Stealth aircraft. Each of these sixteen precision munitions are guided by signals from global positioning satellites; they can be programmed in the air to strike any target; and unlike the laser-guided bombs of the Gulf War, they can operate effectively in any weather, day or night.

  Imagine the impact of a flight of four unstoppable B-2s arriving over an enemy capital and releasing sixty-four 2,000-pound guided bombs on sixty-four targets the enemy deems vital. Instantly, the enemy leader could be denied control of his military forces, his people, and his own governing apparatus. A second wave of four aircraft could then inject shock into another key sector of the enemy’s controlling system.

  What is required to exploit this revolutionary technology?

  First, we must think in terms of what Admiral Bill Owens, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called “systems of systems.” That is, we must think of an enemy not as an army, navy, and/or air force, but as a system much like the human body. For example, if we wish someone to miss when they shoot at us, we could blind them temporarily with a bright flash of light. If they are chasing us, we might disable the nerves that operate their leg muscles. In other words, we must analyze the weaknesses and strengths of the adversary and apply our force quickly and precisely. The first trick is knowing what we wish to achieve, the second is knowing how to apply our forces, and the easiest trick is to apply the force.

  The kind of knowledge I’m talking about requires a break from traditional methods of evaluating our enemies. In the past, we counted ships, planes, and tanks; and then, to impose our will, we destroyed as many of them as possible. Now we must learn how to look at an enemy through his own eyes, so we can attack him where he knows he will feel pain. This will require training not only in how we fight, but more important, in how we think and plan for war. We must have new ways to conduct intelligence analysis.

  ★ We can learn from the battle for Al-Khafji.

  There, once again, the revolutionary technology available to Coalition forces was not known or appreciated by the Iraqis who planned the attack.

  On January 25, a prototype Joint STARS aircraft used its revolutionary technology to report in real time the movement of Iraqi forces massing for the attack. The Joint STARS radar discovered and identified military vehicles as they left the protection of their bunkers and moved toward their assembly areas, mistakenly thinking that night and weather made them immune to detection and air attack. They soon learned otherwise.

  Their forces were decimated long before they were able to conduct their attack. In the nights and days that followed, the Iraqis gamely attempted to continue their attack, but any movement brought an immediate Coalition air response. As one captured Iraqi said after the battle, “My division lost more vehicles in thirty minutes of air attack than we did in six years of war with the Iranians.”

  Though the Coalition response was confused, poorly coordinated, and slow to recognize the enemy plan, Coalition forces fought with great courage and dedication, and a force of about 5,000 soldiers defeated an invading heavy armor force that may have had 25,000 to 35,000 soldiers.

  There has to be a reason for this success other than the élan and excellence of the Coalition ground forces, and that reason has to be the revolutionary nature of Coalition technology, especially the technology of the Coalition air forces.

  Armies depend on movement. They use it to create surprise and to provide protection (by denying certainty of their location and strength). They move to place themselves beyond the reach of their opponent army’s weapons. They rely on vehicles for heavy firepower, armored protection, supplies, engineering support, and face-to-face meetings between command echelons.

  Yet at Khafji, the Iraqis found that to move was to be discovered, to be discovered was to be attacked, and to be attacked was to die, if you stayed in your vehicle (no matter how much armor plating protected you). They quickly found that when they saw or heard aircraft, their best course was to abandon their vehicle. “In the Iran-Iraq War,” a captured Iraqi general reported, “my tank was my friend, because I could sleep my soldiers in it and keep them safe from Iranian artillery. In this war, my tank was my enemy,” because it was constantly attacked by aircraft day and night. If his soldiers slept in their tanks, they were sure to die.

  This fact did not impact on our planning as forcefully as it should have. During the Gulf War, we had almost unrestricted information about the size and location of the enemy forces but failed to appreciate all his real strengths and weaknesses. We could count his tanks and locate them daily with overhead intelligence, Joint STARS, or Killer Scouts, but we missed the implications of the Iraqi soldiers’ terror of sleeping in their tanks. Our reconnaissance pictures showed us parked tanks with new slit trenches nearby. Those who measure effectiveness by the number of tanks destroyed fail to understand that sleeping away from your tank means that you are highly unlikely to get the first shot off if you are suddenly attacked, and are therefore likely to lose the engagement.

  ★ The aircraft and weapons of today are far more capable than those used in the Gulf War. With more modern computers and improved radar, the Joint STARS aircraft now has a far greater capacity to detect and identify moving vehicles. GPS bombs can now be dropped in any weather. The wide-area munitions, such as the sensor-fused weapon, permit aerial attack of massed armor columns, with tens to hundreds of sub-munitions homing in on individual vehicles.

  What does the denial of movement mean for battlefields of the future?

  Certainly it means that you have to control the air if you want to maneuver your forces. It also means that you should no longer prepare your ground forces to fight force-on-force against a slow-maneuvering enemy. Given that our control of the air puts severe limits on an enemy’s ability to survive the lethal battlefield of the future, expect him to feature small, fast, stealthy movement, and expect him to collapse into urban areas, jungle, or mountainous terrain and to avoid combat in the wide-open spaces.

  Meanwhile, if our own ground forces continue to follow current doctrine, our enemy army can expect to find large, massed U.S. ground forces opposing him, but with our mobility and capacity to maneuver hampered by our own ponderous logistical tail. As a result, he will attempt to employ his own form of airpower—guided missiles, ballistic and cruise—to weaken or even defeat this easy target.

  This means that the intelligent commander of the future will configure his land forces to mass and disperse quickly. He will reduce the size of his force while increasing the lethality of his firepower. He will select transportation systems that can rapidly move his forces about the battle space with minimum fuel (to reduce the logistics tail). He will be hard to find, yet able quickly to exploit the advantages his superior surveillance of the battlefield affords him.

  To bring all of this about will mean that land forces’ equipment, organizations, tactics, and strategy at the operational level of war will change drastically.

  So the question is not whether or not there has been a revolution. There has certainly been a revolution in military technology, but not in how the military fight, or plan to fight.

  ★ Let’s look at how some of these technological changes affect the individual fighting man.

  In the Gulf War, close air support relied on visual acquisition of the target by the pilot in the fighter aircraft, who was guided to his target by voice directions from a forward air controller located
on the battlefield. The procedure was cumbersome and imperfect, and too often pilots misidentified the target and attacked Coalition ground forces. Fortunately, such mistakes happened more rarely than in wars in the past; unfortunately, the mistakes were far more devastating than they were in past wars.

  Using present technology, however, we can virtually eliminate such mistakes.

  For example, our soldiers in Bosnia are now equipped with small Global Positioning Satellite receivers that are coupled with a small laser range finder and radio transmitter. When the soldier sees a target threatening him—say, a tank or a sniper—he simply points his aiming device at it and initiates laser ranging. The device knows where it is in the GPS coordinate system, knows the heading and distance to the target, and relays that information to a nearby F-16 equipped with an improved data modem. The information from the ground is received in the form of a data burst, which is not audible to the pilot but is translated into words that appear on his heads-up display which describe the target and its GPS coordinates. The fighter pilot can either slave his radar crosshairs onto the target; or, when he’s in the clear, superimpose the target on the ground with the target designation box and gunsight on his heads-up display; or insert the target’s coordinates into a GPS-guided precision weapon. In effect, we are giving the individual soldier a 2,000-pound hand grenade.

  This raises questions about how the land and air arms of our military services are developing tactical doctrine to exploit this unique capability. How are they exercising to develop procedures for the soldier to call upon air, and how are we examining command-and-control measures to make sure the weapons are used on the highest-priority targets? These questions will be increasingly important, as potential enemies study the Gulf War and conclude that the best way to avoid destruction from U.S. airpower is to hug their opposite U.S. land force member as closely as possible.