The war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 capped an era of USAF
modernization and enhanced readiness begun in the late 1970s and
that continued through the 1980s. The long lead-time weapons
acquisition and training programs, begun a decade or more earlier,
came to fruition against a far different opponent and in an
unforeseen locale than that envisioned by their creators. The force
designed to counter the superpower foe of the Cold War, the USSR,
never fought a direct battle against that enemy during the
existence of the Soviet Union. Instead, the USAF fought the first
war of the so-called New World Order, a war that had as much in
common with the colonial wars of the late nineteenth century as it
had with the high-technology wars of the late twentieth century.
The USAF shouldered the bulk of the fighting for the first
thirty-nine of the conflict's forty-two days. This volume covers
the air offensive against strategic military and economic targets
within the pre-August 1990 borders of Iraq. The offensive air plan
once again displayed the ability of the U.S. military to turn the
necessity of improvisation into a virtue when, in mid-August 1990,
an element of the Air Staff in the Pentagon wrote the basis of the
offensive plan in ten days. The plan was founded upon the precepts
of Col. John A. Warden III's air power theories-centers of gravity,
shock effect, and the importance of leadership-related targets.
Once the outline plan reached the arena of operations, the U.S.
Central Air Forces (CENTAF), under the able leadership of Lt. Gen.
Charles A. Horner, adopted the targeting philosophy of the plan
and, after many modifications owing to new targets and an increased
force structure, employed it with devastating effect. The author
describes not only the outstanding performance of USAF men and
machines but also the difficulties and complexities of coordinating
the many elements of air and staff operations. Among these were the
complex coordination of the fighters with their tankers, the speedy
transmission of data from the allseeing eyes of AWACS and JSTARS
aircraft, the multiple bomb runs over chemical and biological
warfare bunkers, and the shortcomings of certain types of
intelligence. All these factors impacted on mission effectiveness.
The author also diagrams how outside influences-political pressure
from neutrals, such as the Israelis, and from public news media-can
affect the direction of the bombing effort. Although this account
of the air campaign in the Persian Gulf concentrates on the
operational history of a six-week war, it also places that war into
its larger political and military context, especially in its tale
of the interplay between the U.S. military and civilian leadership.
It illustrates, with reference to actual missions, the operational
advantages of stealth fighter bombers as well as their
vulnerabilities. Davis presents the reader with a detailed account
of one of the USAF's most important air operations in the last half
of the twentieth century. In the decade after the conclusion of the
Gulf War, the pattern of strategic air operations against Iraq
became the template for USAF operations over Bosnia and during the
air war over Serbia and, most recently, in Afghanistan as well. In
planning for air operations in the Balkans, USAF officers were
strongly influenced by John A. Warden's methodology and ideology
with its emphasis on centers of gravity and strikes on leadership
targets. Stealth air combat operations, inaugurated en masse in the
Gulf War, became even more prevalent with the introduction of the
B-2 bomber. Likewise, the use of precision weapons grew. The
aversion of western democracies to both military and civilian
casualties and their effect on targeting, tactics, and strategy
first encountered over Iraq became more pronounced in subsequent
conflicts-as did the continuing challenge in matching accurate
intelligence to precision weapons.
General
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