In June 1990, Admiral Frank B. Kelso II became the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO); little did he know that in a matter of months, he would be overseeing the fleet in wartime. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990, the CNO’s job suddenly became a bit more intricate. In this excerpt from his U.S. Naval Institute oral history, Admiral Kelso recalls the buildup during Operation Desert Shield—the prelude to war.
I don’t think anybody dreamed that Saddam Hussein was dumb enough to do what he did. And we certainly did not know his intentions. But we certainly knew he had moved his military into position where he could go into Kuwait. I remember a day or so before it happened, and we were all watching where he was. And we thought, “Well, Saddam is in position. He can move, but will he?” And of course, he moved.
There was enormous concern that he was going to move on Saudi Arabia, which was a pretty strong ally to this country, and of course, they sat on top of the world’s largest oil reserves. And frankly we didn’t have much military force in a position to prevent him. We had one carrier in the region, but it was not in position to strike immediately. We certainly didn’t have any ground troops that were going to do much to prevent him. Anything we could have done probably would not have stopped him from coming south into Saudi Arabia.
It was very clear almost from the beginning where President George H. W. Bush stood. He made it clear that we were not going to put up with this kind of outlaw operation in the world. And he never wavered the entire time. He was willing to call up reserves and put what I consider a pretty enormous force in the area. We had a standing army of almost half a million people in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by the time we went to war.
The mission was defined early. We were to throw the Iraqis out of Kuwait. From a naval perspective, it was pretty clear we were going to have to place a lot of ships in operation that were available for hire and were available for use from the reserve fleet. And it was really an amazing feat in my judgment. We had 70- and 80-year-old men who were willing to go back to sea to operate these old fleet reserve steamships.
Many of these old merchant ships in the reserve fleet hadn’t been operated in a long time. To put them back to sea and have them operate as well as they did was remarkable. Of course, we took a lot of criticism because we could not deliver them yesterday. And we had one or two break down on the way to the war zone. I obviously would have liked to deliver the goods sooner, but in truth, the goods weren’t ready to deliver much faster than we got them there anyway.
Meanwhile, the maritime prepositioning ships that had come on line in the ’80s all came out and operated beautifully, and they delivered the Marines the equipment they needed ASAP. And the issue became whether there was enough airlift to deliver the Marines and the Air Force what they wanted at the same time. Even though this country has by far the most significant airlift capability, its use must be carefully prioritized in times of crisis. Of course, almost all of your beans and bullets, tanks, heavy equipment, all those sorts of things, are going to go by sea.
Fortunately, we were in one of the most advantageous places in the world to fight a war based on the need for fuel. We were sitting on top of it. And we had enormous vulnerabilities that never materialized. The airfields were essentially unprotected, and we were very vulnerable to being hit in areas like that, which never happened. The Iraqis tried with Scud missiles, but they are so inaccurate this effort was unsuccessful, so they became terror weapons more than anything else.
But I’d have to say that in a future conflict, the missiles will be a lot more accurate and something we have to deal with. It is why I believe so strongly that the Navy needs an antiballistic missile system to protect the fleet and areas ashore. Our approach during that war was to take the Patriot missile system and put it everywhere. Of course, they’re still arguing about how well it worked, but it did function reasonably well during that conflict.
And so it took roughly six months to put everything in place, to get the strategy down—and to be ready to move in January 1991.