Operation Desert Storm was an enormous Coalition victory—in no small part because of the participation of naval aviation—yet the operation has somehow left a sour taste. There remains a lingering perception that naval aviation was somehow outsmarted and outmaneuvered by a more savvy, better prepared, and more sophisticated sister service. Fiercely proud and intensely aware of 75 years of glorious tradition, naval aviation found itself playing the role of junior partner in the most significant military action since Vietnam.
The U.S. Air Force played the dominant role. Air Force personnel planned and directed the air war; its combat systems, weapons, and training proved superior in many cases to those of any air partner; and—most important—its vision of the way modem air warfare had to be conducted proved to be dominant. Adding to the Navy’s unease, Air Force officials—below, General Merrill A. McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff, briefs the press on 15 March 1991— were less than gracious in the aftermath of the war, emphasizing their strong points and highlighting unfavorable comparisons with naval aviation with regard to sortie rates, air-to-air kill ratios, and precision-guided-weapons capability.1
From an Air Force perspective, Desert Storm was the perfect operation to highlight service capabilities. It was the optimum war, ideally suited by geography and circumstances for U.S. Air Force doctrine and capabilities. It turned out to mirror the European and Korean wars that the Air Force had planned, trained, and equipped itself to fight for almost 50 years—transplanted to the Iraqi desert.
The Air Force was aided by a fortunate combination of circumstances that gave it unique advantages over other air-service partners. U.S. policy during the 1980s had built up Saudi infrastructure, prepositioning equipment and munitions in an area deemed critical to U.S. interests. Consequently, U.S. Air Force units deployed to some of the finest military facilities in the world. More than $1 billion had been spent during that decade for upgrading 21 Saudi airfields. Of course, the Air Force exhibited skill and foresight in preparing this area for possible deployment. To quote Vice Admiral Robert Dunn, former head of naval aviation: “There are scenarios where. . .the Navy will come off looking far better. But the Air Force had the opportunity to build up its forces. . .and we ought to give the Air Force the credit for doing a fine job.”2
Throughout Desert Storm, the U.S. Air Force was simply in an excellent position to conduct offensive air operations. The most unique of its many advantages was one of capability: the Air Force was the only organization that possessed a coherent vision for fighting a theater-wide air war. Its vision involved a single commander (the joint forces air component commander or JFACC) with centralized planning and direction authority for the air campaign. This particular viewpoint had been the source of enormous contention among the services for 50 years. The Air Force—and before it the Army Air Corps—had been attempting since World War II to impose its conception of a unified air effort on the Navy and Marine Corps.
This doctrine was anathema to the Navy, which had its own painfully developed procedures for waging air war. It successfully resisted this doctrine during Korea, Vietnam, and through the 1980s. The Navy only reluctantly bought into the Air Force vision in Desert Storm because it was offered Hobson’s choice: either play by these rules, or don’t play.
Only a European-style, massive air campaign, using multiple and far-flung air assets across a thousand mile front could defeat the Iraqis so rapidly. The U.S. Air Force was no better prepared for joint operations than the Navy, but its training, equipment, and doctrine came closest to meeting the operational necessities of the impending war. Only the Air Force possessed the tools to plan and execute an air war on this scale. Desert Storm was to be its acid test.
The Navy had developed a strikingly different view of air power, and it did not include controlling a theater air campaign. Navy thinking embraced two basic paradigms: sea battles with the Soviets, and small-scale, short-duration contingency operations against Third World adversaries.3 This very different perception of roles drove the Navy’s training, tactics, and equipment between the Vietnam War and Desert Storm and was responsible for shortcomings in its joint capabilities—the Navy simply did not have “training, equipment, or doctrine for a prolonged campaign.”4
Air Force operations—favoring centralized command, planning, and direction—stood in direct contrast to Navy tradition. Since World War II, naval aviation favored mission-type orders and decentralized control, with minimum communications and external interference. Navy doctrine, particularly since Vietnam, favored small strikes from single carriers and short-duration, hit-and- run type raids. Ironically, Navy policy officially and sincerely embraced interservice cooperation, but naval aviation’s experience with contingency operations caused it to reject implicitly such togetherness.
Contingency operations proved very successful for the Navy and were repeatedly validated throughout the 1980s in a variety of locales: Grenada (1983), Lebanon/Syria (1983-84), the Achille Lauro (1985), Libyan Navy operations (1986), El Dorado Canyon (1986), and Earnest Will/Preying Mantis (1988). Unfortunately, this paradigm was a dead end in terms of joint capability, and it did not prepare naval aviation for the joint environment of Gulf operations. Accordingly, the naval aviation units that fought in Desert Storm were “not configured for extended air operations with other services. ... A strategic air operation was not the focus of its planning, training, or its command and control system.”5
The most visible indication of the Air Force’s air warfare vision was the air tasking order (ATO), the JFACC’s direction tool. This document was the manifestation of a much larger campaign development process, which was central to the Air Force’s vision of theater air warfare. Properly implemented, this process provided a cookbook for air campaign planning and a methodology for planning war that no other service possessed.
By doctrine, Air Force war planning is a sequential process, following logical procedures to produce a coherent plan for the entire war. Ideally, broad strategic goals are handed down by the National Command Authorities to the joint forces commander (JFC). The JFC then issues his campaign guidance and appoints a JFACC, who develops an air campaign plan using all available theater forces (Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and allies) to accomplish the objectives established by the JFC. The plans prepared by the JFACC translate his guidance into a coherent plan for execution.6
With minor changes, this vision of the planning and execution of the war was fully realized in the Gulf War. Having learned from its experiences in Vietnam and Korea, the Air Force was able to capture the process from the beginning and impose its doctrine and procedures on all participants. This subordination was distasteful to the other participants, but the process proved to be elastic enough to serve as the Coalition’s air-war framework and was a key element in bringing the war to a successful conclusion. No other air service had a competing strategic vision to offer as an alternative; the Air Force’s doctrine filled a vacuum and was adopted for joint use by default.
There were several areas in which Air Force advantages were greatly pronounced, aiding its efforts in manipulating the planning process and prosecuting the war. It is apparent that ignorance of this newly adopted Air Force doctrine was a major factor in the Navy’s subsequent showing. A brief summary of the most significant events follows:
► Equipment and Doctrine: The Air Force’s European war vision better prepared it for joint warfare. The Air Force brought the only fleet of air-to-air tankers, the only penetrating warhead, the only stealth aircraft, the only battlefield surveillance system, and the only coherent doctrine and organization to make it all work.7 Although superbly prepared for specialized contingency operations, the Navy was less prepared for joint operations. Naval aviation quickly adapted to the demands of this new and unfamiliar partnership, but it never caught up: the nature of its joint participation was reactive, lacking a leading or even a major contributory flavor.8
► Planning: The Air Force captured the planning and direction processes of the air war. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf designated the 9th Air Force commander, Lieutenant General Charles Horner, as his JFACC. He also requested a campaign plan—which was developed by the Air Force’s Washington staff into Operation Instant Thunder. This plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs and forwarded to Riyadh as the road map for the [ air war. From the start and throughout the war, planning and direction of the air campaign was an Air Force show, with very limited assistance from the allies and other services.
Unfamiliar with the process, the Navy clearly misunderstood the ground rules for participation. In this centralized organization scheme, proximity to the top leadership at the Tactical Air Command Center in Riyadh was critical—a point the Navy grasped only late in the war. For example, in a JFACC staff of more than 1,000 people, the Navy contingent was about 40; and of the several hundred members of the JFACC strike planning cell, only seven were naval officers and only one was a Marine.9
The Navy also misread the issue of rank and personality. In the Air Force planning process, both mattered. Three of the four component commanders—Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps—had three-star representation in Riyadh. The Navy component commander (who also was the afloat commander) remained on his flagship, which was Navy procedure in earlier wars. Accordingly, the only Navy flag representative (in addition to the flag officer permanently assigned to the commander-in-chief’s staff) at headquarters in Riyadh was the junior battle-group commander in theater, a surface warfare officer. Of ten Navy flag officers in theater, only one—a one-star nonaviator— represented naval air’s interests to the JFACC.10
The Air Force enjoyed more institutional advantages, as well. Each Air Force wing had a representative in Riyadh who provided theater-level planners with the wing’s perspectives on the war. These representatives also provided their units with early “heads up” on ATO assignments, so units’ mission planning could begin before the publication of the ATO. Such personal contact was an important part of the campaign and mission-planning process.
► Weapons: The Navy’s contingency operations vision did not provide the best weapons for the Desert Storm environment. Even though proved useful for contingency operations, the Navy’s inventory of bombs did not meet the demands of the desert war, which placed a premium on precision-guided munitions (PGMs). Both services brought their Cold War-era weapons inventories to the battle. Naval aviation had expected to fight Soviet ships or attack Third World targets. Consequently, it did not need the numbers or types of PGMs that the Air Force required for its European targets. Based on its European war planning, the Air Force was superbly prepared, and of the 7,400 tons of PGMs dropped in the war. Air Force pilots dropped about 90%.11
This lack of smart munitions meant that Navy air wings forfeited many potential targets, including about half of the approved list of 12 generic target types.12 This was further exacerbated by the inability of Navy platforms to deliver PGMS. One of the three Navy bombers in the war, the F/A-18 (the most numerous airframe), did not have laser designators and so could not deliver laser-guided bombs.13 The following quote is illustrative of the Navy’s dilemma during the war:
The job of blowing up the bridges originally was assigned to Navy attack planes because the spans were in the Basra area, within range of the three U.S. attack carriers.
But after scores of misses by the unguided “dumb,” gravity bombs, the bridge busting mission was reassigned to Air Force F-l 17 and F-l 11 fighter bombers equipped with television-guided “smart bombs.”
Last week theater commander General H. Norman Schwarzkopf showed several videotapes of guided bombs scoring direct hits on Iraqi bridges. None of the tapes of bombs exploding harmlessly in the water were released, an official noted.14
► Communications: The Navy’s inability to communicate severely reduced its effectiveness in a joint environment. An enormous Navy disadvantage was the inability of aircraft carriers to tap into the planning process for the air tasking order or interact in real time with the satellite communication system that disseminated the ATO. The system used to transmit the ATO was the Ninth Air Force’s computer-assisted force management system (CAFMS). For a variety of reasons, the Navy could not access CAFMS, and this required hand-delivery of the ATO to the forces afloat—an unsatisfactory process. Naval units had to confront an unhappy reality: because there was no way to affect the planning or targeting process, carrier air wings were forced to execute the air tasking order as assigned, with minimal Navy input and no feedback. “After the ATO was written, planners rarely changed Navy sorties because of planning and communications concerns.”15
Summary
Naval aviation’s shortcomings during Desert Storm were largely the result of choices in doctrine, training, equipment, and munitions made during the Cold War. The Navy’s performance suffered in comparison to the Air Force’s, whose Cold War vision was easily and successfully adapted to the Desert Storm campaign. The Navy’s vision was not wrong, just incomplete. It failed to establish a serious joint operations capability. The Gulf War was a needed wake-up call, and it forced the Navy into the realization that the planning and execution of joint operations was the wave of the future.
Navy leadership learned three important lessons from the Gulf War:
► It no longer could pay lip service to joint operations. Expertise in single-service contingency operations was not adequate in itself to justify the naval air arm. “Operation Desert Storm drove a stake through the heart of Navy resistance to joint operations.”16
► Naval aviation had to do a better job of overcoming its institutional mistrust of the Air Force and look to its sister service as more of a partner and less of an enemy.
► It realized that the Navy must develop the equipment and doctrine necessary to assume a leading role in the planning, direction, and execution of future joint operations. Never again could the Navy take a back seat in a crisis because of a too-narrow view of its doctrine and capabilities.
The Navy clearly has learned from its mistakes, and in the three years since the end of the Gulf War, naval aviation’s scorecard has been impressive. In terms of weapons, it has equipped the F/A-18—now its premier attack aircraft—with a laser designator, giving it a true PGM capability. It has made a major effort to review its requirements for PGMs and to acquire the correct mix of weapons for expeditionary warfare. It has purchased a penetrating warhead and is evaluating it for shipboard use. In the field of communications, the Navy is developing systems that will allow real-time participation in the joint planning process—and it probably leads all services in this area. The Navy now can host an afloat JFC and/or his JFACC on board fleet flagships, and it is following an aggressive plan that eventually may include the same capability on carriers and large-deck amphibious ships. Finally, after recognizing shortcomings in naval doctrine, the Navy and Marine Corps have created the Naval Doctrine Command, which is in the advanced stages of developing a coherent vision of naval aviation’s role in future joint operations.
Ironically, the shortcomings of the Gulf War may prove to be a watershed in the history of naval aviation, serving as a catalyst for joint thought and doctrine. This bodes well for U.S. military capability and for the nation as a whole.
1.David A. Perin and Cdr. M. Brigette Maynard, USN, The Air Force Contribution to Desert Storm and Implications for the Future: A View From the Press and Official Statements (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1991), p. 2.
2. Ibid.
3. RAdm. James A. Winnefeld, USN (Ret.), and Dana J. Johnson, Joint Air Operations: Pursuing Unity In Command and Control 1942-1991 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), p. 101.
4. Gregory M. Swider, The Navy’s Experience With Joint Air Operations: Lessons Learned from Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Alexandria, VA: Center For Naval Analyses, 1993), p. 44.
5. Winnefeld and Johnson, op cit., p. 110.
6. Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations, JFACC Primer (Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 12.
7. Winnefeld and Johnson, p. 111.
8. Swider, p. 45.
9. David A. Perin, Naval Forces in the Gulf War, Successes and Shortcomings: Themes for the Future (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1992), p. 12.
10. Winnefeld and Johnson, p. 114.
11. Air Force Performance in Desert Storm,” Air Force white paper, April 1991.
12. Swider, p. 49.
13. There were 174 F/A-18s operating from carriers during Desert Storm, also 90 A-6Es and 24 A-7Es.
14. Gulf News, 4 February 1991.
15. Conduct of the Gulf War, Final Report to Congress, vol. viii, (Washington: Government Printing Office, April 1992), p. 139.
16. Winnefeld and Johnson, p. 134.