into the Storm (1997)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  Picking the 1st CAV as theater ground reserve was a point for some discussion among planners. Normally, you choose as your reserve a unit that can influence the battle throughout the theater. In the choice of units for that role, the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) might have been a logical choice. With four AH-64 helicopter battalions, their long and lethal reach could influence the theater outcome. On the other hand, the 1st CAV was chosen because CENTCOM wanted an armored unit available to reinforce the Egyptian attack if that became bogged down. Franks had spent time with the Egyptians and seen their plan. As far as he was concerned, they had what it took to accomplish their mission on the VII Corps flank.14 If the theater had been willing to take a small risk on them, they could have given 1st CAV to VII Corps from the start, kept the 101st as theater or Third Army reserve, and effectively employed the 101st on the last two days to isolate the Kuwaiti theater of operations. Those are choices that are made early and are easy to second-guess later.

  Meanwhile, planning efforts continued, and each corps worked on its own plans and kept both Third Army and CENTCOM aware of its work. There was no mystery to what each major HQ was doing. Commanders above the corps level also were well aware of planning work, and had the opportunity on several occasions to intervene if they did not like what they heard. Thus there should have been no surprise later on about the speed and tempo of the VII Corps attack. On 14 December, in preparation for a briefing of Secretary Cheney and General Powell, Franks and the other corps commanders briefed General Schwarzkopf on their plans so far. The CINC approved what he heard. In fact, it was now, in his words, "my plan." He had taken ownership of it.

  On 20 December, during the briefing to Secretary Cheney and General Powell, Cheney made a somewhat mysterious comment to Franks, just after he had gone over his concept of attack. "Thanks," Cheney said, "I feel better now."

  Franks didn't know then that Cheney was referring to the more than two months of discussions and planning in which he had participated. He had seen the early--and unsatisfactory--one-corps plan, the early two-corps planning, and had listened to General Powell sketch out a bolder two-corps plan to the President. Now he was seeing how the two-corps offensive concept would actually be put into action in the theater. And so for the first time, for him, all the pieces were really falling in place.

  From 27 to 30 December in Riyadh, Lieutenant General Yeosock convened a MAPEX, which both Franks and Luck attended on the first day and the last. Yeosock had originally intended to use this as a war game of final Third Army plans, but couldn't, since the CENTCOM plan was not yet final. Instead, the session became a discussion of resource allocation between VII and XVIII Corps, and of air support to the ground phase of the operation. Franks continued his discussions with John Yeosock over the necessity for a coordinated two-corps attack. Yeosock was sympathetic and, with Steve Arnold, went back to Schwarzkopf beginning on 4 January with a series of options.

  On 8 January General Schwarzkopf made his final decision on Third Army positions for the attack. Instead of a wide west maneuver north by XVIII Corps, with a gap between corps, the two corps would attack abreast. It then became a matter of Third Army determining how to destroy the RGFC.

  THE THIRD ARMY PLAN

  Third Army planning intensified starting in mid-January.

  The CINC directed Lieutenant General Yeosock to plan for offensive actions beginning anytime after the start of the air campaign on 17 January. Brigadier General Arnold and his planners, with the assistance of both corps, followed up on this. Taking into consideration the status of the two corps, the combat power available, and assumptions about possible RGFC choices,15 they developed five different options for an attack.

  Though timelines for the various attack options and forces available were developed, most of the planning energy was devoted to the one that assumed Third Army would attack only after all forces were ready and that the RGFC would defend in place. This timeline had both XVIII Corps and VII Corps in place by H+74 for a coordinated two-corps attack against the RGFC (H-hour--the start of the attack on G-Day). In actuality, since the heavy forces of both corps would not begin their attack until H+26, this meant these forces would hit the RGFC forty-eight hours from that point.

  On 1 February 1991, a meeting to discuss final plans was held at King Khalid Military City, hosted by Lieutenant General Yeosock and attended by Franks and Luck and key members of their staffs.

  Since, at that late date, a coherent Third Army two-corps order had not been published, Franks continued his strong argument to Yeosock at the end of the meeting (after General Luck had had to leave) for a two-corps coordinated attack against the RGFC if they stayed in place. He proposed that VII Corps would turn ninety degrees east and XVIII Corps would attack to their north. Both Yeosock and Arnold liked the concept. After that meeting, Third Army developed its plan for the Army to attack the RGFC and published the order on 18 February, during the time that Lieutenant General Cal Waller was temporarily in command.

  The order's maneuver portion read, "ARCENT continues the attack with two corps attacking abreast to encircle enemy first-echelon forces in the JFNC zone and destroy the RGFC. On order, VII Corps conducts the Army main attack in the south to destroy the Tawalkana Mech and the Medina Armor; fixes then defeats the 17 AD and the 52 AD. On order, the XVIII Airborne Corps conducts the Army supporting attack in the north to penetrate and defeat the Nebuchadnezzar and the Al Faw Infantry Divisions and destroy the Hammurabi Armor Division."

  XVIII Corps was not pleased with this order. In a message to the ARCENT commander, they listed three objections to it. First, they did not like being assigned the mission of attacking the RGFC infantry divisions, since that could cause unacceptable casualties. Second, they needed more maneuver room. Third, they did not feel they had the combat power to attack through the RGFC infantry and to destroy the Hammurabi.

  At 2200 on 24 February--after the attack had begun--Third Army published a change to that order that allowed for the possibility that as the Third Army attack progressed, the Hammurabi Armored Division might either end up in the VII Corps zone of attack or in XVIII Corps's. It was not clear, in other words, whether the Hammurabi would stand and defend or move. If they stayed in one place, VII Corps was to be prepared to attack and destroy them, after destroying the Tawalkana and the Medina. Meanwhile, XVIII Corps would take on the RGFC light divisions and RGFC artillery, which were in their zone, and they also would take on the Hammurabi if that division moved into their zone. Third Army believed the RGFC had artillery positioned in XVIII Corps's sector that would fire south into VII Corps when VII Corps attacked the Medina. The order was for XVIII Corps to destroy that artillery.

  These discussions and subsequent planning became the basis for the Third Army's two-corps plan. This was executed following the evening of 25 February, when Franks ordered VII Corps to execute FRAGPLAN 7 and when XVIII Corps subsequently redirected their attack toward Basra.

  Even though Third Army had developed a coordinated two-corps attack, there was still no agreement on those concerns that had bothered Franks as far back as the 14 November briefing. No plans existed that laid out how the forces would be disposed (now probably in front of Basra) at the end of the war. Likewise, there was nothing like a CENTCOM airground plan to isolate and then finish the RGFC units in the Kuwait theater.

  It was not that Yeosock and Third Army planners did not try to get this done. Rather, they intended to adapt to circumstances and put out a new "frag" order every twenty-four hours (which they did anyway) in order to adjust the two-corps attack. What caught them short was the timing of the end of the war.

  Specifically, Lieutenant General Yeosock's intention was first to determine if the RGFC were staying in place. If so, then the two-corps attack plan would be executed. Then, based on the situation at that point, he planned to issue further orders to both corps for the final attack to complete the RGFC destruction in a coordinated air-ground action.

  There had very definitely been
thought within the Third Army about the war's end state, but the cease-fire preempted that final order.

  THE VII CORPS PLAN

  A military plan comes out of many minds working on a common problem, yet it is not a committee solution. The commander decides. How commanders decide, along with what they decide, largely determines the excellence of the final product and the confidence with which subordinates execute the plan.

  The VII Corps plan had to be just that--the corps plan. Fred Franks knew from the start what he wanted to do and how he wanted to develop that plan: he had to come up with a simple scheme of maneuver that would accomplish his mission at least cost, and the way he did that had to reinforce the teamwork he was building in VII Corps. In other words, he not only had to come up with a workable scheme of maneuver, he also had to teach it, and do that in such a way that all of his leaders had internalized it, were of one mind with him, and were playing on the same team.

  Someone asked Franks how much time in VII Corps he spent teaching. About 50 percent, he told them.

  One might argue that in a military organization, where everyone follows orders, all you have to do is make a decision and then tell your subordinates "This is it, go do it." That is certainly true, and Franks did that a lot. But at the same time, a commander has the benefit of a great deal of experience in his subordinates and they also have large and complex organizations of their own, which they have to direct and move. For both reasons, they will have judgments worth listening to.

  In other words, when you make military plans, you have to be aware of the human dimension. When things get tough, when opportunities and enemy actions require adjustments to the plan, and when you expect and indeed demand initiative from your subordinates, you want them to be on your wavelength and to really believe in what they are doing. Results are always better when your subordinates have been part of the plan. You form a team that way.

  One of the ways Franks built his VII Corps team was to evolve the plan in such a way that all of his leaders took part in the plan building. From the start he had a good idea about what he wanted to do, but the process by which he arrived at it was a matter both of bringing the team along and convincing them that it was also their idea, and of consulting with his commanders, all savvy mounted warriors who provided valuable input. He also knew he was going to focus all VII Corps units' attack on a common corps objective, rather than assign individual objectives to individual units.

  But in the end it had to be Fred Franks's plan. It had to come out of the will and mind of the commander, and not out of a patchwork of inputs from subordinates as an accommodation to all views.

  In encouraging input from subordinates, he was not unlike many earlier commanders that he admired: Robert E. Lee, George S. Patton, Field Marshal Slim (the British victor over the Japanese in Burma in World War II). He did not consider it weakness or indecision. It was smart command style.

  Though teaching the plan and listening to input are indispensable to the process, planning and decision making are primarily intellectual acts. They are problem solving, pure and simple--with the added dimension that the problem is two sided, and this is the tough, uncompromising arena of land war, in which the outcome is deadly and forever. In simple terms, the enemy shoots back and behaves in ways you sometimes do not want and haven't anticipated, while using the same time and the same terrain.

  At the same time, the commander operates in a military and national hierarchy of ideas and policies. No military commander is a free agent--he can't do as he wants. He operates within a framework of orders and directives in a chain of command. In the United States, that means civilian control and orders issued either by the President as commander in chief or the Secretary of Defense. Those orders are translated into action at each subordinate headquarters. In Desert Storm, the orders came from President Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, to General Schwarzkopf, the U.S. Unified Command commander for the region and the commander of Coalition forces in Saudi Arabia. That meant that General Schwarzkopf had to answer both to his chain of command and to the Coalition when he was putting together his strategic objectives and the military plans to achieve those objectives. It was not simply a matter of the United States devising a plan and then executing it. Though the United States by far had the preponderance of forces, it still had to involve the Coalition nations in the decision-making process. The United States needed their forces to accomplish the mission, wanted their ideas about the best way to do that, and wanted to conduct a campaign that would accomplish the mission in such a way that it would lay the groundwork for future cooperation in this very volatile region.

  WHEN the CINC finished his briefing on 14 November 1990, Franks was crystal clear about four things: He knew VII Corps was the main attack. He knew that if, through his fault, any details of this plan got into the media, he was history. He was convinced that XVIII Corps was way too far to the west for a mutually supporting two-corps attack. And he had heard nothing mentioned about how it would all end from a theater perspective.

  Following the CINC's briefing, he did not give any guidance to his own planners for the better part of two weeks. There were two reasons for this: First, before he could do any detailed work, he needed from Third Army a basic mission statement and the units to be assigned to VII Corps. At that point, it was not at all clear what additional troops would come from outside the corps. As far as he knew, he would be attacking with three divisions (1st AD, 1st ID, and 3rd AD, three corps artillery brigades, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and the 11th Aviation Brigade). Second, because of operations security, he simply did not want to get involved in detailed planning while they were still in Germany. With all the media outlets and the intense speculation about what they were about to do, he felt it was best to wait until they were close to going before they did any detailed work. He issued his first guidance to his planners on 27 November.

  His planners, meanwhile, had not been sitting on their hands. They had been busy in Riyadh. Heading his planning work was Lieutenant Colonel Tom Goedkoop. Goedkoop had been assigned to VII Corps after graduating from SAMS in the summer of 1989, and had arrived in VII Corps shortly before Franks. Goedkoop, a tanker, bright, focused, positive, and a hard-working officer, made several trips to Riyadh during November to better understand the planning climate there and to do what he could to help Third Army finish enough of its plan so that VII Corps could begin work.

  Franks also had dispatched John Landry, VII Corps chief of staff, to Saudi with part of the staff for coordination meetings and, more specifically, to ask CENTCOM if VII Corps could move their Tactical Assembly Areas farther west (Yeosock had told him it would have to be cleared by the CINC). After a helicopter flight on 14 November over the area where the corps was supposed to locate, Franks was convinced they were too far east. To transfer from the planned TAA to the corps's attack positions would mean an extremely long desert move. The distance from the proposed TAA to King Khalid Military City was approximately 200 kilometers, and from there to the attack position--another 160 kilometers. Doing that would cost too much time, as well as too much wear and tear on the vehicles. Franks knew initial disposition of forces on the ground was vital, remembering Molke's dictum that "an error in initial disposition might not be corrected for an entire campaign."

  Landry got permission from Cal Waller to locate west toward King Khalid Military City.

  After Third Army came up on 24 November with a revised plan and mission statement, Franks met with his planners on 27 November and gave them guidance. He focused on three battles: the initial breach of the Iraqi defense, the defeat of the Iraqi tactical reserves, and mass to destroy the RGFC. He also wanted to find a way to keep the Iraqis from knowing where the VII Corps would hit.

  At this point, intelligence indicated that the Iraqis had the capability to develop a complex obstacle system of mines, trenches, so-called fire trenches (trenches filled with oil they could ignite in th
e event of attack), and wire entanglements all across the corps's front. The big question, early on, was how far west the Iraqi barrier system would go.

  Franks and his planners knew from the beginning that they did not want to get the corps tangled up in that system. He wanted a flank or to be able to create one. If there was a way in their sector to send heavy forces (at that point 1st AD, 3rd AD, and 2nd ACR) around it, and if the terrain would support heavy forces, and if they could logistically support heavy forces, then they would send as much of the enveloping attack out there as they could. (There were always reasons for making the breach--even if a way west opened up: to keep logistical lines short, for example, and to rapidly defeat the Iraqi tactical reserves.)