Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

by Tom Clancy

  The nation was energized on September 11, 2001. It was a shocked nation that quickly became united in grim determination that we had not seen since December 7, 1941.

  At that time this was a nation whose military was in the midst of significant reforms, which in some ways made it superbly ready to face the challenges thrown at it by this new war, “a war on terror.” But there was still a long way to go to reshape a military organized, trained, and equipped to fight the Soviet Union into the force needed to counter those who now threatened our national security and the security of our allies around the world.

  RAPID DOMINANCE

  In January of 1991, Desert Storm unveiled military capabilities that the general public had not previously appreciated. Precision-guided bombs, aircraft that could see moving targets in the air and on the ground, and infrared sights that allowed both pilots in the air and soldiers on the ground to target the enemy in the dead of night all became popular fare on evening television during that dramatic month. Modern warfare had evolved in ways that many considered revolutionary. In the years between Desert Storm and our later wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military leaders searched for concepts that might explain what was revolutionary in Desert Storm and what was needed and possible in future wars.

  In 2001 incoming Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used the word “transformation” to describe his plans to adapt new ways of operating our military forces, based on exploiting new capabilities and combining these systems with legacy systems, while fighting as a joint land, sea, air, and space team.

  Another concept phrase that has been used to describe future warfare is “Rapid Dominance.” The Rapid Dominance approach to defeating the enemy relies heavily on achieving effects against an enemy’s vital systems and institutions—sometimes instead of, sometimes in addition to, destroying his military might. Effects-based operations may include destroying an adversary’s military force, but they may also choose more radical means to influence the enemy to conform to our desired outcome.

  In Kosovo, for example, our goal was to remove Serbian forces conducting ethnic cleansing. After fifty-five days of air strikes against Serbian armor had failed to deter the Serbs, NATO forces changed to an effects-based operations strategy that attacked the Serbian leaders’ economic power base. Within three weeks the Serbian forces surrendered Kosovo to the United Nations peacekeepers. The Serbs left the province undefeated in battle, yet NATO had achieved its desired outcome.

  ★ In order to be effective, Rapid Dominance requires four major elements:

  First: Effects-based operations require that their implementers have thorough knowledge of their enemy and of themselves. This goes well beyond the traditional counting of ships, planes, and troops. It requires that the strategists have awareness of what makes the enemy tick—its leadership, populace, economy, and so on. It requires that planners understand how to influence both the enemy leadership and the general populace, and then how to judge the effects of the measures taken to achieve that influence. It requires that new strategies be undertaken as the enemy moves toward the end state desired and also what unintended consequences may result from the military force applied to achieve those goals. Lastly, war impacts both sides. An understanding of how the conflict will affect your own side is needed to avoid undesirable effects to you, even while achieving success over an enemy.

  In Vietnam, the enemy was defeated on the battlefield, but the war was lost because of the effects visited on the American public by inept strategies and shoddy execution of military force.

  In Operation Iraqi Freedom, we had excellent knowledge of how to defeat the Iraqi forces, but we lacked understanding of the best postconflict strategy. We were aware, for example, that the Iraqi Army was often indifferent, even hostile, to Saddam Hussein’s leadership—and if given alternatives, would not fight. Yet instead of taking this reality into account and acting on it, Coalition forces followed traditional procedures after Iraqi soldiers surrendered. They disarmed them, vetted them for possible war crimes, and then returned them to their homes, if they proved to be guilt-free.

  Several Iraq experts are convinced that many Iraqi soldiers felt so shamed by the deprivation of their professional identities and livelihoods that they were driven either to join the armed resistance or to suicide. If these soldiers had been allowed to retain their uniforms and arms, the experts believe, and had been given proper leadership, they would have been useful in combating the postconflict resistance. Without the support of this large contingent of recruits, the former regime members and foreign terrorists who form the core of the resistance would have had a far harder time generating an insurgency. True or not, this analysis demonstrates the kind of intellectual understanding needed to approach the many dimensions of modern warfare.

  Second: Once the required knowledge is gained, operations must be undertaken in a rapid manner.

  The time dimension has always been an important factor in military operations. But today, due to virtually instant communications, time has become critical. Compare the speed and volume of communication of mail packets between England and the American colonies. Or look at today’s airmail compared to the speed and volume of communications possible using global cell phones or E-mail. An image of an enemy sniper hiding in an enemy stronghold can be transmitted around the world for analysis and identification. Within seconds the sniper can be targeted and killed with a precision weapon.

  It is vital that modern military forces learn how to exploit this time factor.

  In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 3rd Infantry Division (ID) closed on Baghdad with astonishing speed. In so doing they broke with traditional doctrine on movement of ground forces, which emphasizes the maintenance of orderly boundaries with allied forces and the importance of logistical supply. In Iraq, as the 3rd ID moved toward Baghdad, they did none of that. They isolated pockets of enemy forces in their rear, lost contact with adjacent friendly forces, and hurtled forward, even when their lines of logistics support became vulnerable to enemy attack or were unable to keep up. The swiftness of their advance was so great that it preempted the enemy’s ability to create defensive rings around Baghdad. By ignoring the traditional doctrine, the 3rd ID and adjacent Marine Corps units imposed their own time-lines on the enemy; and the enemy was unable to keep up with the pace of the battle. The ponderous command-and-control system of the Iraqis, their inability to move freely (due to Coalition airpower), and the speed of our Abrams tanks overwhelmed an Iraqi defense that was never able to establish itself. Even as the Iraqi propaganda spokesman, dubbed “Baghdad Bob,” claimed that Coalition forces were being defeated, Coalition tanks were rumbling up the streets of Baghdad a few blocks away.

  Third: To exploit knowledge and act quickly one needs to control the environment.

  The environments associated with combat come in many forms. These could include weather, public opinion, electronics, communications, cultures, and peoples, as well as geography and the many other environments associated with war.

  In Operation Iraqi Freedom a very harsh sandstorm threatened to mask the movement of Iraqi tanks from Coalition airpower. This would have allowed Iraqi forces to directly engage Coalition ground forces closing on Baghdad and disrupt our uniquely rapid pace of attack. In Operation Desert Storm, an aircraft called Joint STARS made its debut—a Boeing 707 with a large radar system mounted under the fuselage. This radar system can see through sandstorms and observe the movement of ground forces en route to attack our forces. In Iraq, bomber aircraft equipped with bombs guided by Global Positioning Satellite navigation signals were able to take the Joint STARS target coordinates and guide these weapons to the Iraqi tank columns, even though the pilots were unable to see their targets. The combination of the Joint STARS radar and the GPS-guided bombs defeated the effects of the sandstorm; and we were able to control the weather environment.

  Meanwhile, we were able to influence our own American media environment by embedding print, TV, and radio reporters in troop formatio
ns. The reporters provided firsthand objective reporting of events, without censorship. In spite of the ugliness of war, this worked in the favor of the Coalition because of the courageous and honorable way Coalition forces conducted themselves in combat.

  Fourth: The individual constitutes the fourth dimension of Rapid Dominance.

  The successful military is a well-disciplined team. Individual heroics, while prized, do not provide the foundation for success in battle. Rigorous training, iron discipline, dedicated reliance on one another, and strict adherence to orders are the attributes that make a team prevail during combat. The team—whether it is a flight of bombers, a flotilla of ships, or a squad of riflemen—must also have leadership . . . leadership that resides at many levels. The best leaders understand the doctrines and history of their military art and have the judgment and initiative to direct their team(s) when the killing starts. The rigidity of command must not conflict with informed judgment and initiative to change plans once our forces are engaged with the enemy. This is true both for commanders in their headquarters and for subordinates locked in the fight.

  The single biggest impediment to such initiative is the rapid growth in information grids, the communications nets that pass the information, and the computers that correlate and display the information. While the ability of the national leader to see into the gun sights of an individual rifle or into the bomb sight of bomb-laden aircraft is undeniably impressive, this ability can also elevate decision making to levels that deny the on-scene leader the freedom to use his own judgment and initiative. Wise leaders at increasing senior levels therefore provide appropriate guidance and authority that empower subordinate leaders to make decisions while engaged in the struggle.

  TRANSFORMATION

  This kind of enlightened leadership lies at the heart of the so-called Rumsfeld “Transformation” of our military.

  But transformation has also—predictably—become the fashionable Pentagon buzz word. The word means many things to many people, according to their agendas. A plan to acquire a new ship, plane, or tank was labeled transformational by the program’s advocates. Individual service leaders seeking to protect their budgets from being trimmed recast outmoded doctrines, force structures, and strategies as transformational.

  Yet a few truly brilliant individuals understood that transformation was not about money, programs, or forces; it was about the nature of the threats and challenges to our national security in the future and how we should train, configure, and plan to best protect our vital interests. It meant that military Services were going to change if only to better integrate their individual strengths. It meant that the components of battle would not be Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, but land, maritime, air, and space. It meant that capabilities would not be capital “A” as in Army but small “a” as in armies, and that the great and useful pride each Service has in its history, uniforms, and ways of doing business would have to be subordinated to what makes best sense when fighting a particular enemy. Transformation was about comparing the Service weapons needed to conduct a mission or do a task—eliminating duplication. It meant training as one, with members from all the Services, in order to build the trust and confidence of a team. It meant that we had to think about war in new ways.

  In the operations to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the forces were joint (meaning elements of two or more U.S. Services operated as one force), and combined (meaning forces of two or more nations operated as one). Because of the nature of the enemy force, the terrain, and the constraints placed on the use of force by the political leadership, the primary combat tasks were most often conducted from the air. Once the military leadership gained an understanding of how to transition the conflict from an attrition-based strategy to an effects-based strategy that put unbearable pressure on the Serbian leadership, the conflict was terminated.

  One may then ask why this need to transform has been emphasized only recently? Surely our military forces have been fighting jointly since World War II, so what is the big deal?

  The big deal has been the emergence of airpower as the dominant force in war fighting. Though this statement was true in 1941-1945, it was not then recognized as such, since the massive scope of the conflict gave opportunities for all forms of military power to claim dominance. In Desert Storm, airpower was only one form of military power used to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait, but it was clearly the dominant force. Airmen from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force understand how to employ airpower efficiently. All too often nonairmen misuse its capabilities. They tend to think they understand how to employ airpower, but more often, they think solely in terms of their own domain. A soldier normally sees airpower as a means to provide fire support to his engaged troops. A sailor will often have a better understanding of airpower, because he thinks in terms that are theater wide and involve maneuver as an essential element. But the simple truth that too many soldiers and sailors ignore is that they cannot maneuver, prevail in battle, or even survive if they are subject to attack from powerful air elements. Likewise, their success in battle is facilitated increasingly by airpower; and in some instances, such as the Kosovo campaign, airpower is the only element required. This a bitter pill for some land and sea advocates to swallow; they work hard at belittling airpower and at marginalizing those who seek to understand better how we should fight in the future.

  If airmen have a problem, it is that too often they fail to understand the needs and doctrines of their land and sea counterparts.

  It is incumbent on airmen to understand and appreciate how land, sea, and now space warriors see their respective worlds and how they believe they should employ military power. This is because airpower has become the enabling force for all forms of military power, whether it is providing air cover for ships, close air support for embattled troops, or platforms that carry sensors to detect the enemy moving to battle or hiding in urban areas, or simply by providing the means for rapid movement of men and equipment. Before airpower came of age, armies and navies were created to fight their counterparts. After the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, it is apparent that the employment of military force has become much more complex, and must be thoroughly integrated. Most importantly, this integration must come with a view that exceeds the narrow visions solely of land, sea, air, or space advocates. Transformation is about breaking away from outmoded doctrines and challenging the intellectual capabilities of those who plan and execute military operations.

  We have made some advances in transforming military capabilities and operations. In Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, close coordination between air and land forces allowed the defeat of a large, well-equipped force by a smaller less heavily armed coalition made up of U.S. Special Forces supporting the forces of local warlords. This new model was successfully expanded in Operation Iraqi Freedom, when an airman, Lieutenant General Buzz Mosley, commanded air and land elements used to keep the Iraqi Army off balance in the desert expanses of western Iraq. This broke the tradition—or perhaps myth—that only leaders with experience as soldiers could command land forces.

  Elsewhere in Iraq, land commanders with far less experience employing airpower sent a large force of Apache gunships against Iraqi divisions defending the southern approach to Baghdad. Because they did not understand how to employ these elements, the raid was unsuccessful, and all the gun-ships were hit with ground-to-air fire, while inflicting little or no damage on the Iraqi tanks and artillery. Most airmen would have known that the helicopters needed fixed-wing support to suppress the enemy antiaircraft fire and to gain the air superiority needed for the slow-moving helicopters to survive.

  This lack of appreciation and understanding underscores the reasons behind the Goldwater-Nichols legislation in the 1980s, and the Rumsfeld Transformation efforts after the turn of the millennium. Transformation took the joint team approach inherent in the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reform Act to new levels of intensity.

  COMMAND AND CONTROL

>   In every major military operation since the Vietnam War, U.S. forces have operated as a joint force. Yet problems remained, primarily in the areas referred to as command and control. In military terms, “command” often translates to mean ownership; “control” tracks what a force is doing and how commands are relayed. The underlying basis for debates about who has command is that previously noted failure of land, sea, air, or space elements to trust one another.

  If I am a land commander and I have command of airpower, then I know it will be there when my land forces need support. Unfortunately, this attitude may actually be shortsighted, for the airpower may be used to destroy the enemy attackers even before they can start to engage the friendly land forces. In Desert Storm the land forces’ surface-to-air radar-guided Patriot missiles were placed under my command as the air-component commander. My job was to make sure no Iraqi aircraft could drop bombs on our Coalition ground forces.

  But in the second war in Iraq, owing in large measure to the cruise missile threat posed by Iraq, the land commander retained control of these weapons. In the event, the cruise missile launch sites were quickly overrun in the opening days of the war, and the Iraqi Air Force, having learned its lesson in 1991, did not challenge our air superiority team of radars and fighter aircraft. Many have concluded—given the nature of the threat and the tragic mistakes resulting from the kind of control in place—that the air-component commander, General Mosley, should have been given command of the Patriots. If that had been the case, it is doubtful that the Patriots would have shot down two allied aircraft by mistake, killing their crews. Another time, because of confusion over the rules of engagement and faulty operations by Patriot crews, a defense-suppression F-16 armed with radar homing missiles destroyed a Patriot radar when it illuminated the aircraft. Fortunately, no one on the ground was injured.