Author: Richard Hallion
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 158834519X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485
Get Book Here
Book Description
An incisive account of the Persian Gulf War, Storm Over Iraq shows how the success of Operation Desert Storm was the product of two decades of profound changes in the American approach to defense, military doctrine, and combat operations. The first detailed analysis of why the Gulf War could be fought the way it was, the book examines the planning and preparation for war. Richard P. Hallion argues that the ascendancy of precision air power in warfare—which fulfilled the promise that air power had held for more than seventy-five years—reflects the revolutionary adaptation of a war strategy that targets things rather than people, allowing one to control an opposing nation without destroying it.
Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428978739
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Benjamin S Lambeth
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612513123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Get Book Here
Book Description
America’s second war against Iraq differed notably from its first. Operation Desert Storm was a limited effort by coalition forces to drive out those Iraqi troops who had seized Kuwait six months before. In contrast, the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was a more ambitious undertaking aimed at decisively ending Saddam Hussein’s rule. After several days of intense air strikes against fixed enemy targets, allied air operations began concentrating on Iraqi ground troops. The intended effect was to destroy Iraqi resistance and allow coalition land forces to maneuver without pausing in response to enemy actions. Iraqi tank concentrations were struck with consistently lethal effect, paving the way for an allied entrance into Baghdad that was largely unopposed. Hussein’s regime finally collapsed on April 9. Viewed in hindsight, it was the combination of allied air power as an indispensable enabler and the unexpected rapidity of the allied ground advance that allowed coalition forces to overrun Baghdad before Iraq could mount a coherent defense. In achieving this unprecedented level of performance, allied air power was indispensable in setting the conditions for the campaign’s end. Freedom from attack and freedom to attack prevailed for allied ground forces. The intended effect of allied air operations was to facilitate the quickest capture of Baghdad without the occurrence of any major head-to-head battles on the ground. This impressive short-term achievement, however, was soon overshadowed by the ensuing insurgency that continued for four years thereafter in Iraq. The mounting costs of that turmoil tended, for a time, to render the campaign’s initial successes all but forgotten. Only more recently did the war begin showing signs of reaching an agreeable end when the coalition’s commander put into effect a new counterinsurgency strategy in 2007 aimed at providing genuine security for Iraqi citizens. The toppling of Hussein’s regime ended the iron rule of an odious dictator who had brutalized his people for more than 30 years. Yet the inadequate resourcing with which that goal was pursued showed that any effective plan for a regime takedown must include due hedging against the campaign’s likely aftermath in addition to simply seeing to the needs of major combat. That said, despite the failure of the campaign’s planners to underwrite the first need adequately, those who conducted the three-week offensive in pursuit of regime change performed all but flawlessly, thanks in considerable part to the mostly unobserved but crucial enabling contributions of allied air power.
Author: Robert L. Pfaltzgraff
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428992812
Category : Air power
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collection of essays reflects the proceedings of a 1991 conference on "The United States Air Force: Aerospace Challenges and Missions in the 1990s," sponsored by the USAF and Tufts University. The 20 contributors comment on the pivotal role of airpower in the war with Iraq and address issues and choices facing the USAF, such as the factors that are reshaping strategies and missions, the future role and structure of airpower as an element of US power projection, and the aerospace industry's views on what the Air Force of the future will set as its acquisition priorities and strategies. The authors agree that aerospace forces will be an essential and formidable tool in US security policies into the next century. The contributors include academics, high-level military leaders, government officials, journalists, and top executives from aerospace and defense contractors.
Author: Eliot A. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Jim Corrigan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 081176589X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
The air campaign that opened the Gulf War in January 1991 was one of the most stunning in history. For five weeks, American and other Coalition aircraft pounded enemy targets with 88,000 tons of bombs. Sorties—more than 100,000 of them—were launched from bases in Saudi Arabia, from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and even from bases in the United States. The skies over Iraq and Kuwait were filled with a dizzying array of new and improved weapons—Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles, stealth aircraft, and laser-guided smart bombs—and the results were impressive. The Coalition swiftly established air superiority and laid the foundation for the successful five-day ground campaign that followed. The results were also highly visible as the American people watched the bombings unfold in grainy green video-game-like footage broadcast on CNN and the nightly news. The overwhelming success of the Desert Storm air campaign has made it influential ever since, from the “shock and awe” bombing during the Iraq War in 2003 to more recent drone operations, but the apparent ease with which the campaign was won has masked the difficulty—and the true achievement—of executing such a vast and complex operation. Using government reports, scholarly studies, and original interviews, Jim Corrigan reconstructs events through the eyes of not only the strategists who planned it, but also the pilots who flew the missions.
Author: Becca Wasser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781977406057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510
Get Book Here
Book Description
Airpower played a pivotal role in the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State from 2014 to 2019 and contributed to the success of Operation Inherent Resolve, but airpower alone would not have been likely to defeat the militant organization.
Author: Diane T. Putney
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781507814796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494
Get Book Here
Book Description
American air power is a dominant force in today's world. Its ascendancy, evolving in the half century since the end of World War II, became evident during the first Gulf War. Although a great deal has been written about military operations in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, this deeply researched volume by Dr. Diane Putney probes the little-known story of how the Gulf War air campaign plan came to fruition. Based on archival documentation and interviews with USAF planners, this work takes the reader into the planning cells where the difficult work of building an air campaign plan was accomplished on an around-the-clock basis. The tension among air planners is palpable as Dr. Putney traces the incremental progress and friction along the way. The author places the complexities of the planning process within the con- text of coalition objectives. All the major players are here: President George H. W. Bush, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, General Colin Powell, General Chuck Horner, and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. The air planning process generated much debate and friction, but resulted in great success - a 43-day conflict with minimum casualties. Dr. Putney's rendering of this behind-the-scenes evolution of the planning process, in its complexity and even suspense, provides a fascinating window into how wars are planned and fought today and what might be the implications for the future.
Author: James A. Winnefeld
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780833016652
Category : Persian Gulf War, 1991
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
This report examines the contributions and limitations of air power in the Persian Gulf War. The authors conclude that, for the first time in modern combat, air power was the equal partner of land and sea power, performing the "critical enabling function" that led to victory. The authors seek to moderate, however, certain claims made by airpower advocates after the war: they maintain that the war did not demonstrate that a strategic air campaign guarantees victory, but rather that air power, skillfully employed under the right conditions, can neutralize, if not completely destroy, a modern army in the field. Nor did the war display breakthroughs in weapon technology, but rather the prowess of well-trained and motivated airmen and their support crews in using maturing technology. Moreover, the authors maintain, the air war was not fought as "jointly" as many supposed. The sheer mass of available air power allowed it to be used inefficiently at times to cater to doctrinal preferences of the various services.
Author: William F. Andrews
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428912568
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 143
Get Book Here
Book Description
For nearly two decades the United States Air Force (USAF) oriented the bulk of its thinking, acquisition, planning, and training on the threat of a Soviet blitzkrieg across the inter German border. The Air Force fielded a powerful conventional arm well rehearsed in the tactics required to operate over a central European battlefield. Then, in a matter of days, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait altered key assumptions that had been developed over the previous decade and a half. The USAF faced a different foe employing a different military doctrine in an unexpected environment. Instead of disrupting a fast paced land offensive, the combat wings of the United States Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) were ordered to attack a large, well fortified, and dispersed Iraqi ground force. The heart of that ground force was the Republican Guard Forces Command (RGFC). CENTAF's mission dictated the need to develop an unfamiliar repertoire of tactics and procedures to meet theater objectives. How effectively did CENTAF adjust air operations against the Republican Guard to the changing realities of combat? Answering that question is central to this study, and the answer resides in evaluation of the innovations developed by CENTAF to improve its operational and tactical performance against the Republican Guard. Effectiveness and timeliness are the primary criteria used for evaluating innovations.
