During the late 1970s, the United States began revitalizing its Air Force and other military services. By the close of the 1980s, America had built a force structure that stood ready for a test that, very fortunately, it never had to meet-a major war in Europe. The United States faced this dangerous possibility for more than forty years until, in 1989, the Soviet Union abruptly collapsed. Americans were still sorting out the implications of this sudden change in world affairs in August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and precipitated a crisis that led to the military conflict in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Air Force found itself at war-although not the one it had prepared for, against the Warsaw Pact powers-but one against Saddam Hussein's heavily armed regime. This monograph is one in a series of five works dealing with various aspects of the Air Force's participation in Desert Shield and Storm. In two other volumes, William T. Y'Blood details the Air Force's deployment to the Gulf; in a third, Diane T. Putney analyzes the planning of the air campaign; and, in a fourth, Richard G. Davis discusses the air operations against targets in Iraq. As this monograph goes to press, the Air Force is passing through a dynamic period of reorganization and change. The era when a large USAF defended the United States against a single preeminent threat, Soviet aggression, has ended. During the years ahead, a smaller Air Force will support the interests of the nation, under diverse circumstances around the globe. While the U.S. Air Force continues to ensure that the United States has a global reach and can project global power, the service will greatly benefit from the lessons it learned during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

This monograph is one in a series of five works dealing with various aspects of the Air Force's participation in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Historians of the Air Force History Program built a foundation for researching any topic related to the Gulf War air campaign. Before, during, and after Desert Storm, they collected thousands of feet of documents and conducted a number of valuable oral history interviews.

Discusses the terrorist truck bombing of Khobar Towers that occurred in Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996. Nineteen American servicemen were killed and many people were injured. First published in 2008. Illustrated.

When Gen. Robert E. Lee fled from Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865, many observers did not realize that the Civil War had reached its nadir. A large number of Confederates, from Jefferson Davis down to the rank-and-file, were determined to continue fighting. Though Union successes had nearly extinguished the Confederacy's hope for an outright victory, the South still believed it could force the Union to grant a negotiated peace that would salvage some of its war aims. As evidence of the Confederacy's determination, two major Union campaigns, along with a number of smaller engagements, were required to quell the continued organized Confederate military resistance. In Spring 1865 Perry D. Jamieson juxtaposes for the first time the major campaign against Lee that ended at Appomattox and Gen. William T. Sherman's march north through the Carolinas, which culminated in Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's surrender at Bennett Place. Jamieson also addresses the efforts required to put down armed resistance in the Deep South and the Trans-Mississippi. As both sides fought for political goals following Lee's surrender, these campaigns had significant consequences for the political-military context that shaped the end of the war as well as Reconstruction.

Weapons improved rapidly after the Civil War, raising difficult questions about the battle tactics employed by the United States Army. The most fundamental problem was the dominance of the tactical defensive, when defenders protected by fieldworks could deliver deadly fire from rifles and artillery against attackers advancing in close-ordered lines. The vulnerability of these offensive forces as they crossed the so-called "deadly ground" in front of defensive positions was even greater with the improvement of armaments after the Civil War.