For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  Under General Schwarzkopf’s direct prodding, ground war planning produced a scheme of maneuver for the liberation of Kuwait and the ruination of the Iraqi armies deployed south of the Euphrates River. The key to the plan appeared obvious. Most of the main effort would come through Iraq itself. A fast envelopment by the armored VII Corps would sweep into the area between the Iraqi city of Basra and Kuwait from the desert and oil fields to the west. The VII Corps would deploy one armored cavalry regiment, one mechanized infantry division that would breach the border defenses, and four armored divisions (one British). To protect the VII Corps’ western flank, the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps would conduct air-mobile and mechanized operations all the way to the Euphrates River, where it would interdict the highway-and-bridge complex that led to Baghdad. This corps was composed of the French 6th Light Armored Division, the 101st Air Assault Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), and a second armored cavalry regiment. To fix the forward-deployed regular divisions of the Iraqi army, which would let VII Corps destroy the Republican Guard unmolested, two offensives would cross the Kuwaiti border and drive directly for the capital. The first was an all-Arab corps directed by General Khalid, the second (and nearest to the coast) the I MEF of two divisions (plus an Army armored brigade) and aircraft wing. Two Marine amphibious brigades remained at sea to provide at least a diversion, perhaps a seaborne assault. In place without refinements in November, Schwarzkopf’s plan required tactical surprise, plenty of air support, and logistical labors worthy of Hercules.

  Schwarzkopf and his subordinates prudently remained cautious about the prospects of the ground campaign, stressing the formidable nature of the Iraqi defenses in Kuwait. In fact, they remained concerned about gas attacks, but their private appreciation of the Iraqi army changed with accumulated intelligence evidence collected by technical means and human sources. Such terms as “veteran” shifted to “war-weary” and “crack” to “ill-trained.” About two weeks into the air war, three Iraqi mechanized brigades attacked screening Marine and Arab reconnaissance forces at Khafji. All three spoiling attacks collapsed in flaming destruction under Allied ground and air counterattacks; Iraqi performance and POW interviews painted a picture of an Iraqi army fading under air bombardment and the prospect of an Allied offensive. On the other hand, Schwarzkopf worried about the uncertain levels of air destruction being meted out to the Republican Guard and the possibility that the Iraqis would curl back into Basra and Kuwait City and conduct a protracted urban defense, some sort of Arab Stalingrad in which his armored forces would be checkmated and his infantry exposed to heavy casualties.

  When the last flurry of peacemaking faded, President Bush ordered the implementation of DESERT STORM on January 15, which brought the beginning of air operations two days later. The ground offensive started on February 24, and the war ended with a coalition victory and ceasefire on February 28. The Kuwaitis regained their ruined country under a blanket of black smoke, the product of hundreds of flaming oil wells sabotaged by the fleeing Iraqis. Some American troopers washed their Bradley fighting vehicles with the water of the Euphrates, and all looked in wonder at fields of destroyed and abandoned Iraqi tanks and mechanized vehicles. Variously predicted at between 1,000 and 5,000, American deaths were so light that they became individual tragedies, not organizational traumas. The Air Force lost 20 dead in battle, 6 in other deaths in prewar training and in thirty-nine days of fighting. The Army and the Marine Corps suffered 122 battle deaths (35 to friendly fire) and 131 noncombat fatalities. The Navy lost 6 sailors in action, 8 to other causes. And 15 American servicewomen died in the war, twice the number killed in seven years in Vietnam. The Allied forces of 254,000 suffered 92 combat deaths and 318 wounded. The damage to the Iraqi armed forces in terms of effectiveness was decisive. Only one-quarter to one-third of its ground, air, and naval forces survived the war, but this force proved adequate to keep Saddam Hussein in power in the face of Kurdish and Shi’a rebellions in 1991. Despite disturbing television pictures of charred vehicles, Iraqi casualties did not represent a slaughter of the innocents. Saddam’s government gave one estimate of around 20,000 dead, of whom 1,000 were civilians. Careful counting placed Iraqi losses at around 10,000 military dead and perhaps 2,000 civilians, 300 of them killed by a single bomb in a command-and-control bunker. The coalition forces accepted the surrender of perhaps 86,000 Iraqi soldiers, which proved to be almost half of the effectives in the KTO in February 1991. The survivors had retreated or deserted, not perished in the “mother of all battles.”

  Although the air campaign did not fulfill all its expectations, it ruined the organizational and technical foundations of Iraqi strategic military power, for the bombing of Iraq’s air-defense system and military infrastructure came close to meeting General Horner’s objectives. The Iraqi air force perished in the air (42 planes and helicopters), burned on the ground (81), or fled to Iran (137); the rest sat out the war in their bunkers. Varied attacks by night and day at different altitudes and different directions by B-52s, F-117As, F -111Fs, strike versions of the F-15 and F-16, and Navy and Marine A-6s and F/A-18s gave the Iraqi air defenses unsolvable dilemmas, compounded by the secret use of pilotless drone decoys and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Coalition aircraft flew more than 116,000 sorties, 41,000 of which dropped ordnance, at a cost of only 52 fixed-wing aircraft from combat (37) and operational mishaps (15). Of the actual strike sorties, 23,000 fell on the Iraqi army in the KTO; the remaining 18,000 hit targets in Iraq that might be called “strategic.” The combination of high pilot experience, sophisticated planning, electronic warfare, advanced technology aircraft, state-of-the-art avionics, and precision-guided munitions gave tactical air warfare a new dimension of effectiveness.

  The air war did not proceed as planned or with predictable results, and the distractions annoyed Schwarzkopf. CENTCOM wanted more sorties flown against the Iraqi army in the KTO, not against hard targets around Baghdad that had little bearing on the ground war to come. The Iraqis posed a strategic challenge by launching almost 400 SS-1 Scud B ground-launched ballistic missiles at targets in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel, January 15–17, 1991. An advanced missile developed by the Soviets on the technology of the German V-2, the Scud B had a range of 400 miles, traveled at hypersonic (Mach 2) speed, and carried a one-ton explosive warhead. It could also carry chemical weapons, as it had against the Iranians (50,000–100,000 estimated casualties from all kinds of chemical weapons), and Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” fell to the control of General Ali Hassan al-Majid, notorious comrade of Saddam Hussein and known as “Chemical Ali,” the scourge of Iranians, Kurds, and dissident Shi’a. The Iraqi Scud B was mobile, on a truck-like transporter-erector-launcher (TEL), but it still took at least thirty minutes or more to take on its liquid fuel. Nevertheless, the Scud B attacks threatened to draw Israel into the war and unnerve the Arab allies, both potential calamities for the coalition. Air defense suddenly took priority over the air offensive and continued throughout the war.

  The defense against the Scuds fell to a U.S. Army brigade armed with the MIM-104 (GE) Patriot, a ground-launched air-defense missile first deployed in 1985 and thus untested in combat. The Patriot, also supersonic, could reach targets 100 miles away and as high as 74,000 feet. Guided by radar, it carried a high-explosive fragmentation warhead designed to kill Soviet aircraft and tactical missiles. Because it flew at twice the speed of the Patriot’s intended targets, Scud B (or al-Hussein) presented problems for Patriot’s computer software, guidance systems, and warhead. The Scud’s flight speed made a late intercept explosion an uncertain method of destruction. The Patriot’s pattern of deployment also focused on critical military facilities in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies.

  In the first week of the Gulf War the Iraqis fired eighty-eight Scud Bs at targets in Israel (42), Saudi Arabia (43), and Bahrain (3). Twelve Scuds fell on Israel before a Patriot battalion deployed there in the emergency. Patriot radars identified and tracke
d the other seventy-six Scuds and calculated their flights to the likely targets. Forty-seven Scuds seemed bound for critical targets, and Patriots streaked off for the intercept, forty-five of which may have been successful. Nevertheless, forty-two people died from Scud attacks, six in Israel. Twenty-eight Army personnel died and ninety-eight fell wounded in one Scud explosion in a warehouse billet-workplace in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on February 25. In this one (and dramatic) incident, the Patriot’s target acquisition software had eroded from extended use, an unanticipated effect. This episode enhanced the impression that the Patriot could not be judged a leak-proof defensive weapon. The growing analysis showed that of the 158 Patriots launched, the “hits” had not necessarily destroyed the Scuds. Half the Scuds had destroyed themselves within flight because of poor engineering. While the Army overcame the Patriot’s warhead and software problems, CENTCOM used fifty tactical aircraft and U.S. and British special forces to conduct the “Great Scud Hunt” in Iraq’s desert wastelands. In the desert the spotter teams searched for Scud TELs, and the allied air forces sent 2,400 sorties against potential sites with limited success, but the strikes kept the TELs on the run or hidden in caves. General Schwarzkopf understood why General Horner had to divert strikes from Iraqi armor and artillery, but he did not like the distraction. Fixing the Patriot became a postwar priority.

  Another air war problem was the question of targeting and civilian casualties. Although Washington did not alter the air plans much, it did intervene to stop missions in the Baghdad area for fear of bad publicity (from the American media inside Iraq) about civilian bombing deaths. Although the armed forces had developed criteria they believed met moral and legal tests of “innocence” for civilians, military commanders could not always persuade civilian leaders that Iraqi politicians, police, technocrats, and weapons engineers had forfeited noncombatant status. When in doubt, the air planners lost political and psychological targets. The war ended, however, before the problem reached Vietnam-era levels of dissent.

  With confidence born of hard training and immense fire support, Schwarzkopf’s four-corps army (with two corps designated as U.S. 3rd Army) rolled into action in the early hours of February 24 and halted in victory 100 hours later. On paper the Iraqi army facing them numbered fifty-one divisions (eight of them Republican Guard), but only seventeen of them were truly mobile. The rest were committed to the belt of defenses between the border and Kuwait City and across the mouth and eastern edge of the Wadi al-Batin, a broad depression that the Iraqis believed the Americans would use for a short envelopment just north of Kuwait City. Seven divisions guarded the coast from the embarked Marines. Intelligence analysts now suspected that the Iraqi divisions totaled much less than their nominal strength of between 400,000 and 500,000, and that their equipment had been hard hit by Allied air attacks and a lack of maintenance; nevertheless, the defensive barriers, surviving artillery, and a decently handled force of 200,000–250,000 Iraqis could still inflict worrisome casualties, especially with chemicals. The Allies did not enjoy numerical superiority.

  The first attacks, however, dramatized American military prowess, as most of the breaching operations progressed ahead of schedule with few casualties. Suppressing artillery fire and engineering vehicles allowed the troops to destroy the ditches, fortifications, walls, and tank traps; mines proved, as always, the real problem. Since I MEF and the 1st Infantry Division had both started the mobile phase of the operation—accompanied by the western sweep of XVIII Corps—Schwarzkopf ordered VII Corps and the Arab divisions to start the envelopment eighteen hours ahead of schedule. Despite some serious but small battles with elements of four Republican Guard divisions, the coalition armies swept forward amid cold, rain, oil smoke, and inhospitable terrain. Close air-support aircraft, mainly Air Force A-10s, Marine AV-8s, and Army helicopters, cleared the way, but much of the margin of victory came from Allied heavy artillery and mobile rocket batteries. The U.S. VII Corps, however, did not close the trap on the Republican Guard, being slowed by tank refueling (every three hours), fear of friendly-fire casualties (e.g., seventeen of twenty destroyed Bradleys), and an inordinate concern for an orderly advance. What should have been a speedy pursuit remained a careful attack. When the shooting stopped Saddam Hussein had salvaged enough of his army—most of four Republican Guard divisions and the refuse of the regular forces—to remain in power.

  Some Americans, military and civilian, soon wondered if the Bush administration had not started its celebration too soon. Although Iraq accepted the draconian terms of disarmament, reparations, and compensation imposed by UN Resolutions 687 and 688 (April 1991), Saddam Hussein blocked international inspection of his remaining facilities (especially those with nuclear and chemical-weapons potential) and searched for ways to escape the still-binding economic sanctions while he rebuilt his security forces, at least for suppressing internal rebellion. During the war the American public would have supported a campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but a wider war and a partitioned Iraq did not appeal to the European and Arab Allies. One consideration was that a destroyed Iraq could play no future role in containing Iran. Such realpolitik also exposed thousands of Kurds and Shi’as in Iraq to death and exile. The best the Allies would do was to provide them with relief, and Operation PROVIDE COMFORT in 1991 protected and fed nearly 60,000 Kurds. Iran welcomed Shi’a refugees.

  The Persian Gulf War demonstrated that the United States armed forces could fight and win one type of conventional war far from its own shores—as long as the enemy chose to fight like a Soviet surrogate and allowed itself to be isolated from meaningful external aid. In a strategic sense, the war showed that Russia could not help its protégés, even those close to its own borders. One analyst remarked that the war proved that the United States could win where there were no trees. In an operational sense the Americans showed that they had the skill, leadership, training, equipment and doctrine to prevail—if allowed to execute their own plans within predetermined strategic goals. George Bush asserted that the Gulf War showed that America had put the ghost of Vietnam behind it. Two years later the more general judgment was that the United States should put the ghost of the Gulf War behind it too.

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  TWENTY

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  World Disorder New and Old, 1993–2001

  The afterglow of the Gulf War victory carried the armed forces through the end of the Reagan-Bush years, 1991–1993. The era closed with decreased defense spending and low-risk military interventions. The collapse of the Soviet Union, brought on by its own internal contradictions as well as NATO vigilance, cast an aura of success around the Republicans’ management of national security. The administrations’ fumbles appeared to be small stumbles on the road to Cold War victory. For the public, American defense had three issues. Did we win? How much did it cost? How many people died? The lives lost meant only American military personnel. Even with the surge of defense spending in the first Reagan term, the cost of defense remained in the 6 percent range of Gross Domestic Product. Even with the spike in defense spending for the Gulf War, an additional $50 billion, defense spending declined during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. In the election campaign of 1992, all the presidential candidates promised a “peace dividend” that could be justified by the reduced Soviet nuclear threat. A drawdown of NATO forces became possible because the Red Army had left Eastern Europe. Relative peace prevailed in the Middle East and South Asia, tied to the Russian defeat in Afghanistan, an acceptable Israeli level of security, and the exhaustion of Iraq and Iran. President Bush pledged a 30 percent cut in defense budgets over the next five years if reelected, drawing defense spending down to nearly $250 billion. His rival, Governor William J. Clinton of Arkansas, said he could do even better by squeezing an additional $60 billion out of the defense budget over the same period.

  American military relations abroad and industrial health at home put finite limits on slashing defense procurement. By 1990 the United States had replaced the Soviet Union
as the principal arms merchant in the world. Measured in dollars, Middle Eastern nations were the best customers. At an all-time peak of $20 billion in 1990, foreign arms sales climbed to $32 billion in 1992. The purchasers were Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Lesser sums might provide greater leverage in poorer countries, at least in theory, but foreign investment in aircraft, ships, electronics, and missiles reduced unit costs for the Pentagon, a real incentive for salesmanship.

  Military intervention in the Reagan-Bush years placed American troops in harm’s way throughout the world, but at a limited cost in military deaths. Between 1981 and 1993, including operations in Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Panama, American KIAs numbered only 555. To put this number in perspective, the armed forces lost an average of 1,200 lives a year in training accidents and lost an average of around 300 members to suicide a year during this twelve-year period. In addition to military operations that produced combat deaths, American service personnel were at risk in peacekeeping missions in Honduras, Chad, Bolivia, Colombia, the Philippines, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zaire, and Somalia. Despite Reagan’s preference for unilateralism and Bush’s tempered multilateralism, the United States sent money, observers, and logistical support to twelve United Nations peacekeeping missions, between 1988 and 1992, seven of which remained active in 1993. Despite its unhappiness with State Department humanitarianism and the UN’s assessment plan, Congress still paid one-third of the UN’s annual peacekeeping bill of nearly $2.5 billion. The armed services sent humanitarian missions to cope with floods in Bangladesh and volcanic eruptions in the Philippines and Italy. After the Gulf War, the armed forces looked more like an armed Peace Corps mission than the world’s unchallenged military power.