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By Norman Friedman, author, Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems
From a naval point of view, the two major developments of 1990 were the continuing collapse of Soviet power in Europe and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The first called for a re-evaluation of Western strategy, to the point that many suggested deep cuts in forces. It also made it possible to shift some of the forces that helped win the war against Iraq—namely, the heavy U.S. VII Corps, normally stationed in Germany.
The Iraqi invasion proved that there are serious threats outside NATO Europe, and that maintaining strong naval forces can be justified even if the Cold War is indeed over. Events early in 1991 suggest that the latter assumption may well be premature.
The events in the Gulf demonstrated the utility—and the inherent limitations— of naval power, to an extent not yet reflected in the ongoing debate about future U.S. and allied forces. The single overwhelming advantage of naval forces is their mobility. The less predictable the events, the more that mobility is needed. Ground-based forces can build to enormous strength, far greater than what can easily be moved at sea, but the buildup takes time. Without naval forces to contain an aggressor, such time often will not be available.
The events of 1990 are an excellent demonstration. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. There was no strategic warning, in the sense that the Western powers interested in events in the Gulf did not interpret Saddam’s prewar concentration of forces as a military threat to Kuwait. It was generally assumed that he was moving troops to put pressure on Kuwait into granting concessions, and there was no expectation that he would suddenly seize the country.
The United States clearly believed that Western support for Iraq during the Iran- Iraq war had moderated Saddam Hussein’s earlier extreme positions, and that Iraq could be expected to behave normally. Thus the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad failed to recognize what, in retrospect, were clear hints of coming action. The U.S. statement that it did not wish to interfere in inter-Arab negotiations was apparently taken by Hussein to mean that the United States would not oppose an invasion.
The net lesson is not that the United States should be able to deter any Third World aggression; the United States cannot possibly array sufficient forces throughout the world. It is, rather, the unhappy one that the Third World is fundamentally unpredictable. Wars cannot often be foreseen and the cost of reacting inappropriately or prematurely may be as high as the cost of not reacting preemptively in the rare cases when military action actually is required.
Kuwait is so small that, despite the efforts of its own army and air force, it could not hold out for long. In theory, the United States could have intervened within hours by bombing targets in Iraq, but that would have been ineffective at best. There was insufficient intelligence for efficient attacks, and the weight of any attack launched at transcontinental range is quite limited. The net effect of such an option would have been to grant Saddam Hussein a victory not only over Kuwait but also over the United States, at least in the eyes of his Arab neighbors. To the extent that he was aiming beyond Kuwait to Saudi Arabia, any obvious failure of U.S. arms would have had disastrous consequences. It should be emphasized that failure would have included the failure to damage or stop Iraqi forces.
Two explanations have been advanced for Hussein’s decision not to exploit his victory over Kuwait and invade Saudi Arabia: that his troops were delayed and disorganized by the resistance of the Kuwaitis, or that they disorganized themselves by looting Kuwait. In either case, the week following the seizure of Kuwait was crucial, because the United States used the time to move naval forces into the area and provide initial cover for the Saudis.
The carriers provided a potential different from that offered by long-range bombers based either in the United States or abroad. In the case of Kuwait, the bomber deterrent was distant and Saddam Hussein did not appear to take it very seriously. Perhaps it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Once the carriers were visible, and were visibly ready to attack his troops, he was on much clearer notice. Even so, he did not heed the warning entirely, and for that reason hostilities began about five months later. The important fact, however, is that he did heed it sufficiently—and did not invade Saudi Arabia.
Sea power offered something else, too—a means of replying immediately and acceptably to the Iraqi aggression. The United Nations adopted a resolution calling for an immediate Iraqi withdrawal, and quickly approved a maritime embargo. The embargo was enforced by several navies, some of which had not operated out of area for many years, and most of them part of NATO (the main exceptions were Argentina and the Soviet Union). The political effect of the embargo was that Saddam Hussein was confronted with an instant show of force, eliminating even the appearance of acquiescence in the seizure of Kuwait.1
Compared to land-based forces, carriers and Marine Corps air-ground task forces have the enormous advantage of being self-contained. They carry much of their logistical train with them, although of course they require periodic replenishment. The carriers are also wholly U.S.- controlled, and the U.S. government routinely deploys them unilaterally.
Ground units, be they Marine Corps or Army, and land-based air forces must have the consent of the local power. In the case of Saudi Arabia, there seems to have been considerable reluctance at the outset to welcome large numbers of foreign troops. The Saudi decision to accept such forces indicates just how real they thought the Iraqi threat to be, and points to skillful diplomatic moves on the part of the United States.
The limitation on any self-contained mobile force is that it must be replenished from time to time. An aircraft carrier typically can sustain intense air operations for about a week before replenishing; under some circumstances, a carrier in combat must be replenished every three or four days. The carriers deployed to the Persian Gulf in August and September, then, could not have conducted a sustained war.
At the time, however, their aircraft represented the only effective deep strike capability in the area, and thus were probably the chief military deterrent to Hussein’s further advance. Once deployed, the carriers were forced to reduce their operating tempo to maintain their
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ability to sustain several days of combat.
The most mobile U.S. ground force with staying power was the Marine Corps, with three brigades’-worth of heavy armor, artillery, ammunition and supplies preloaded and standing by on the ships of the three Maritime Preposition- lrig Squadrons. Marines from the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade were airlifted to Saudi Arabia, and the first ship from the Diego Garcia-based MPS began Unloading on 15 August. Through much °f September and October 1990, the Marines were the best-supplied and most combat-capable U.S. ground forces in the theater.
To be sure, airlifted elements from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were urttong the first on the scene, but their high mobility came at a price in sustainable combat power—in terms of their e<)uipment and supplies, which also came by air.
The pattern of Operation Desert Shield—the defense of Saudi Arabia— followed in outline much of the maritime strategy developed during the 1980s. Then, as now, the threat was a land Power, seeking to invade a friendly area. Then, as now, significant land forces "'ere required to halt or reverse the inva- S'on’s momentum.
In the case of Europe, planners calculated that much of the large allied ground lorce initially present in the theater might be overrun during the early battle. Several U.S. Army divisions had heavy cquipment—tanks, artillery, armored Personnel carriers—prepositioned in theater, along with several days ammunition ar>d supplies. Despite that, if the allies held and a protracted conventional devel- °Ped, the bulk of the resupply would have come by sea.
In Saudi Arabia there was no large land force in place—with its logistical base of 'Munitions, fuel, and spares. Soldiers, Marines, and airplanes could be flown in, but the mountain of ammunition and other necessities, needed to make those men into a fighting force could not. The maritime strategy claimed that U.S. and allied maritime forces could provide essential assistance to ground operations in several ways. They could force an enemy to spread out his defenses, because he could not predict where a naval air strike or amphibious blow might fall. That would reduce the load on the ground forces themselves. Because naval forces could maneuver freely, they might also be well-placed to interdict enemy forces heading toward the battle zone, beyond the range of friendly land-based aircraft. They could provide essential cover for the ground forces. Finally, they could cover the seaborne movement of essential materiel, without which the ground war could not be fought.
In the Saudi case, initial cover—first provided by the carriers and then by the land-based Marines—made a buildup on the ground possible. Without that cover, the U.S. Army and Air Force units flown into Saudi Arabia would initially have been vulnerable to any determined Iraqi attack. That vulnerability probably lasted through the late fall of 1990. Such forces are quite large, and their logistical support base is necessarily more ponderous than that of the Marines or the seaborne Navy.
Like its enemies, Iraq had to depend on the sea for many of its military supplies. Soon after the invasion, the United Nations condemned the Iraqi action and ordered an embargo, which was enforced by warships in the Persian Gulf and in the Red Sea. There was some hope that the embargo might in itself have convinced Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait, but it was probably more significant in reducing the flow of spare parts and replacement equipment. Much of the Iraqi MiG- 21 force was in Yugoslavia, awaiting repair, when the embargo was announced.
U.S. carriers arrived in the Middle East within days after Iraq invaded Kuwait, backing up the U.S. commitment to defend Saudi Arabia. Here, in the Gulf of Oman, the Independence (CV-62) launches an A-6E in August 1990.
It stayed there.2
The Marines in Saudi Arabia eventually built up to two-division-strength (I Marine Expeditionary Force, which also included a large Marine Aircraft Wing, and extensive combat service support capability.) At sea, the equivalent of another Marine Expeditionary Force was embarked in amphibious shipping. This presented the Iraqis with the classic maritime threat of amphibious assault— anywhere along the coast of Kuwait or, just to the north, the short Iraqi coastline near Basra.
With almost no sources of intelligence, the Iraqis were unable to predict where the blow would fall. Though heavily outnumbered, the Marines could always plan to land with local superiority, because the dug-in Iraqis could not usefully concentrate their defenses. This was a focused version of the more general maritime use of mobility. One effect of the amphibious threat was to pull many Iraqis into a secondary defense line, along the coast, and out of positions along Kuwait’s land border with Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi Army, however large, was finite.
U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf, overall commander of Operation Desert Storm, credited the Navy and Marine Corps amphibious forces with accomplishing just this mission. With Iraq’s attention split between the forces afloat, and those along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. Coalition forces executed a deep turning movement through the desert, enveloped the Iraqi forces, got astride their lines of communication, and cut them off from all hope of retreat.
As the build-up proceeded, the carriers no longer had to husband their resources. Carrier aircraft complicated the Iraqi air defense problem. Once Desert Storm commenced, surface combatants and submarines launched Tomahawk missiles, which appear to have been the precursors of the opening strikes of the air campaign. The great advantage of seaborne launchers is that they are effectively covert. The Coalition forces, led by the United States, enjoyed tremendous success. There were surprises, not least that the array of modern electronic equipment placed in service during the 1980s worked so well. Another was the complete absence of self-inflicted aircraft losses. It is tempting to ascribe the latter
Iraq was opposed by an overwhelming array of Coalition forces. HMS Gloucester, a Type 42 destroyer,
Fired Sea Dart missiles (inset) that destroyed an incoming Iraqi Silkworm missile, aimed at ships of a U.S. Navy gunfire support group.
to a superior command-and-control system that is capable of disentangling a complex air picture. It seems more realistic to assume, however, that in fighting a relatively immobile opponent, aircraft were assigned relatively rigid lists of targets and were centrally controlled, so that bogies were relatively easy to detect. By the time the war had entered a more fluid phase, when blue-on-blue might have been a real problem, the Iraqi Air Force was essentially gone, either knocked out or seeking asylum in Iran. From then on, friendly forces could generally assume that anything airborne was also friendly.
Yet another surprise was that the weapons were less lethal than many had imagined. The reliable electronics made them remarkably accurate, but accuracy did not always assure that a given target had been destroyed completely. This should have been no great surprise: a modem 2,000-pound bomb is not inherently much more lethal than a 2,000-pound bomb dropped in 1943.3 One reason for limited lethality is that U.S. and NATO forces (and, by extension, allied forces equipped with our weapons) are largely designed to fight a particular sort of war, against a Soviet or Warsaw Pact army pushing across Europe. In such a war, the main targets are vehicles and temporary fortifications. The main dug-in targets have been concrete aircraft hangarettes. To the extent that there were strategic targets, they were secondary and might well have been attacked in a later nuclear phase.
Iraq, however, was quite different. After the buildup, the Coalition went on the attack. Parts of the air campaign softened up Iraqi forces for the projected ground offensive, and were directed against numerous bunkers, many of them built during the lengthy Iran-Iraq War. Finding bunkers must have been difficult enough; evaluating damage to them was nearly impossible. Matters were certainly not improved by the absence of recently- retired reconnaissance systems, particularly the SR-71. Thus the lesson of the importance of bomb damage assessment (BDA), which is taught by every air war, has been reinforced in this one.4
The most significant bunkers of all, the reported deeply-buried command bunkers built to house Saddam Hussein himself, were symbolic of the problem. Whatever the rationale for attacking or not attacking Hussein himself, a direct and credible physical threat to him was the only realistic deterrent. It might be argued further that only by denying Hussein his deeply- buried command bunker, could the Coalition expose him to the likely fury of Iraqis unwilling to share defeat with him.
Thus, the ability to destroy such bunkers would have offered very important advantages. It was most unlikely that any single 2,000-pound weapon would penetrate to their depth, let alone destroy them. Ironically, the deep-bunker problem had been solved as early as 1944, in the form of very heavy, thick-cased bombs capable of accelerating to supersonic speed as they fell and then of surviving a trip down through 80 feet of earth, to detonate beneath their targets. These bombs could be carried by the heavy bombers of the day and by their early nuclear successors. In the West, the B-52 is the only survivor of this generation.5
The brief naval war provided another example of limited lethality. Several Iraqi craft, including ex-Kuwaiti fast attack boats, were engaged and hit by British helicopters carrying Sea Skua missiles. There was no question that they had been put out of action, but it also appears that they were not sunk, which illustrates a general problem of modem antiship missiles: they hit and often disable their targets—but rarely sink them. That is enough at present, since the ships generally have very centralized command/ control systems, and cannot continue to function after taking hits on the superstructure, particularly the bridge. The next generation of patrol boats and ships, however, will probably have more distributed and more survivable systems. Hits may fail even to disable them, let alone sink them.
The great surprise of the war was the extent to which the vast investment in Iraqi hardware had been wasted. The impotence of Iraqi forces, both in air defense and later on the ground, seems to have stemmed from grossly inferior com- mand-and-control capability. We are accustomed to rating weapons in terms of their individual performances. The quality of command and control determines how close actual performance can come to that performance potential. It also determines how well a large system, like an air defense net or an infantry division, can react to the stress of combat. Com- mand-and-control systems connect their sensors to their commanders, and then to their weapons. The better the system, the more complete the commander’s understanding of the battle, and the better his ability to order his units to react appropriately.
In the case of Iraq, the difference between Coalition and Iraqi weapons was often not too significant, although the Coalition’s night-vision devices were obviously superior. The difference in command and control at every level, however, was stark. Good command and control made it practical for Coalition air attacks to be coordinated over large areas, and to overwhelm an air defense system that was very poorly tied together. On land, the mobility exhibited by the Coalition forces would have been of little value without effective command and control.
Some years ago, Colonel John Boyd, then on active duty with the U.S. Air Force, developed a very useful description of the effect of command and control on the evolution of a battle. He saw the battle as a series of steps, each characterized by observation of the situation, followed by a decision, followed by action. If one side moves so fast that the enemy finds itself always responding to action several steps behind, then the command structure of the slow side falls into the equivalent of a nervous breakdown. It just cannot keep fighting. Boyd considered this the explanation for the French defeat in 1940, with its overtones of moral and mental collapse. Much the
same thing happened in Kuwait and Southern Iraq in February 1991.
Modern command-and-control systems require a high degree of technical skill and sophistication among their operators. It may be that Third World countries such as Iraq simply lack the human resources, indeed that they cannot hope to solve the Problem until they modernize their societies. It may also be precisely the antithesis of a modern social system that enthrones rulers like Saddam Hussein and supports his sort of aggressive behavior. In that case, it may be that no investment can ever provide such nations with much Protection against modem U.S. forces. One other interesting lesson emerges. Before the war began, the Western press was much impressed not only with Iraqi materiel, but also with a battle-hardened Iraqi army. The “elite” Republican Guards divisions received considerable publicity. Few if any noticed that most of the “new” Iraqi missiles so proudly displayed in Baghdad in 1989 were fakes (made by removing key parts from standard Soviet models so that they would be less recognizable), or that battle-hardened often really means battle-weary.6
Much publicity was also given to supposed clandestine Iraqi arms purchases, such as the Bull super-range howitzer, fuel-air explosives, and cluster bomb technology. No one stepped forward to burst these bubbles, either.7
Before the war began, many unofficial estimates of Iraqi military capability, often based on published reports, had important effects on Western decision makers, including the U.S. Congress. During the debate on whether to go to War to force Iraq out of Kuwait, opponents concentrated on describing the heavy casualties that would ensue. It now turns out that Iraqi capability was ludicrously poor.
To what extent were we victims of an inability to understand how limits on human performance and on command and control affected likely Iraqi military Performance? To what extent, too, were We victims of Saddam’s own propaganda, disguised as technical news? These questions are, of course, more widely applicable in other circumstances.
As for Iraqi air defenses: Given more than five months to monitor and observe the Iraqi system—and, probably, given full particulars by its Western and Soviet suppliers—the Coalition air arm found it relatively easy to jam and disable. In addition, some key radars were reportedly disabled by Special Forces units on the night of the initial attack.
This explanation suggests that any Third World country relying heavily on outside suppliers for its air defense should avoid conflicts with those suppliers. It also suggests that the failure of the Iraqis does not automatically translate into vulnerability elsewhere.
Another possibility is that the current combination of electronic reconnaissance, jamming, and physical suppression—in this case, by Tomahawks, FI 17 stealth fighters, and antiradar missiles— represents a technology so advanced over that available to the Iraqis (and, by extension, to other Third World countries) that they cannot really expect to defend themselves from future U.S. air attack.
This is interesting because Iraq had been cited specifically—prior to the outbreak of the war—as an example of the sort of integrated air defense that U.S. forces would have to face in the future. The capability of such air defenses seemed to justify heavy investments in stealth technology, e.g., in the recently cancelled Navy A-12 and the Air Force’s advanced tactical fighter (ATF). If instead current weapon and command systems provide such overwhelming advantages, then stealth may not be such an urgent requirement. The demonstrated limited lethality of the weapons, however, seems to suggest a continued need for non-stealthy, high-payload attack aircraft, such as the A-6E.
The Soviets, of course, nervously watched events in Iraq unfold. Iraq had been a major Soviet client, and was armed largely with Soviet weapons. Failure of the Iraqis to mount a credible defense will inevitably reflect, at least in part, on Soviet weapons, tactics, and training. The country’s complete humiliation may be seen by other Soviet clients partly as a demonstration of impotence in the face of an aggressive United States.
In 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s government continued its policy of accommodation toward the West, the fruits of which (it hoped) would be Western funds and technology, as well as a justification for military reductions deep enough to fund economic revival. President Gorbachev seems to have miscalculated badly in several ways, and the consequences are becoming evident in 1991.
First, as a lifelong and dedicated Communist, he apparently did not realize the depth of hatred toward the Communist party, either in Eastern Europe or in the Soviet Union itself. As soon as the political process was unlocked, the Soviet Union found itself ejected from much of Eastern Europe. The Soviet army was forced into retreat, abandoning the fruits of the victory of 1945—the Soviet system must now deal with the social and political consequences of this defeat.
The army and the party were forced into retreat because they failed to match the West during the 1980s. In retrospect, it appears that the U.S. military build-up, including the strategic defense initiative, constituted a form of economic warfare. Probably to most observers’ great surprise, the battle had real consequences. When the Soviet economic system failed to produce competitive equipment, even President Gorbachev was forced to take notice.
Failure was evident in Afghanistan— where U.S. Stinger shoulder-fired
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (seated, right) seems preoccupied during the signing of the conventional force reduction treaty. (General Dmitri Yazov, the Soviet Minister of Defense, stands behind Gorbachev.)
ground-to-air missiles were so effective against Soviet helicopters—and also in Soviet efforts to match the strategic defense initiative.
The allied victory in the Middle East is further proof of the failure of Soviet industry and technology. Even though defeat occurred in the abstract realms of economics and technology, its consequences included the Soviet retreat from Eastern Europe. The army, however, which is suffering the most concrete of those consequences, has no sense of having been defeated in combat. It has a very real sense of having been betrayed by the politicians, and this sort of sullenness is likely to have real and very unfortunate consequences. The opening of the Soviet system has also brought out very articulate spokesmen for the army’s point of view; spokesmen who are outraged at close cooperation with the West and also at the deep arms cuts envisaged in current treaties, particularly the one involving conventional forces in Europe (CFE).
The military sullenness is combined with a new freedom of action caused by a
serious weakening of central government power. One consequence is that the Soviet military is not only cheating at the new treaties, but also boasting of such cheating in the Soviet press, apparently without realizing that such remarks have external effects. Naval forces, for example, are not covered by the CFE agreement and the Soviets have tried to preserve large ground units and tactical air units by transferring them to nominal naval control.
For some years it has been suggested that Gorbachev has secured the military’s acquiescence by arguing that social and economic reform must be in place before attempt at military modernization can succeed. His programs now seem to have failed, mainly because he is unwilling to relinquish real political power, the one move that might actually unleash Soviet economic forces. He has also proved himself unable to break the party bureaucracy, which is a major brake on Soviet economic progress.
These failures at halfhearted reform make it difficult for the Soviet military to support him. Cuts already made have been painful. The accommodation with the West has yet to bring any tangible rewards, while it has already brought humiliation and what may be a permanent U.S. military presence near the sensitive Soviet Moslem republics. At the same time, President Gorbachev’s approach to political liberalization has brought forth demands for independence that he cannot meet. Thus far, the army has been the only way of dealing with the problem, and he will probably find it almost impossible to continue to impose military cuts. That may be the message his prime minister was sending when he announced that economic effort would be redirected from consumer goods to heavy industry.
As for political openness, Soviet citizens have already learned that their government is closing up. Soviet television, which had become remarkably free, is now being brought into line. The opposition press is finding paper harder to obtain, and some organizations are being shut down. The new economic investigation powers granted to the KGB make it that much more effective against nongovernmental media, which can always be accused of economic irregularities.
In retrospect, then, it may seem that 1990 was a remarkable window of opportunity for the United States and its allies to deal with Saddam Hussein, and that Saddam’s true genius was in choosing the only year in a very long time during which he could energize an alliance capable of destroying him. If, despite the gloomy comments above, the Soviets continue on a friendly course, the forces that destroyed Saddam Hussein will be reduced, and the capability used so effectively will dwindle. If the Soviets become more belligerent, as seems likely, remaining forces will be tied down in places like Central Europe, and the United States may well find itself deterred by Soviet support of the rogue states it faces.
'The political problem faced by the alliance, which could never be resolved entirely satisfactorily, was that the forces needed to drive Saddam out of Kuwait took several months to assemble and it was necessary to avoid the appearance of acquiescence or truce while they were built up. Had nothing been done, the eventual assault on Iraq could have been presented as an entirely separate event (some observers, particularly in the Arab world, acted that way anyway). This is not a new problem in war. The British, for example, after being ejected from the Continent in 1940, had to keep up offensive operations (e.g., the bomber offensive against Germany) while building up the forces for a return. In the Middle East, there was always some hope that the embargo in itself would force Iraq out of Kuwait, but that seems largely to have been dissipated by early November, when the United States doubled its troop commitment and assigned six carriers to the theater.
2The embargo could not, of course, be complete. Even if all the states of the region had wished to enforce it fully, the long land borders with Iran and Jordan are ideal for smuggling. Libya and probably others were quite willing to break the U.N embargo by air. Neither the long land borders nor an air bridge, however, could have provided very large quantities of materiel. Before the war, Iraq had been notorious for ordering spare parts by overnight air courier as they were needed. It did not help that by 1990 Iraq was hardly able to pay large bills. The likely effect of the embargo would have been to reduce sharply the supply of spares for many Iraqi weapons. To avoid losing all effectiveness, the Iraqis probably were forced to cut their operating tempo, which in this case meant their training tempo—five months of inactivity cannot have helped. These factors may help explain the nearly total failure of Iraqi air defenses after 16 January. None of this should be taken to suggest that continued economic sanctions would likely have ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Rather, it seems that the effect of the embargo was twofold. First, it was a way to take action before coalition forces could be built up to combat capability. It was probably the only such action worth taking, and as such it maintained momentum against Sadaam. Second, it probably did help reduce the Iraqi combat capability that the Coalition forces ultimately faced.
3Modem bomb fillings are more powerful, but the difference is unlikely to be anything like an order of magnitude. Even if modem explosives have twice the effect of their World War II predecessors, it is well to keep in mind that the largest standard modem tactical bombs are 2,000-pounders, while 4,000-pounders were common in the past. The difference is largely because most modem weapons must be carried externally, by fighter-bombers or attack aircraft, whereas the really heavy World War II bombs were carried internally.
Tor example, just before the beginning of the ground offensive, the U.S. Central Command claimed that its aircraft had knocked out 1,685 Iraqi tanks, about 40% of the total force in the theater. Newspaper reports suggested that this figure had been greatly exaggerated, perhaps by a ratio as great as 3:1. World War II experience, as reported in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, suggests that aerial photos (and, presumably, satellite photos as well) tend to make for a relatively optimistic view of the extent of damage done, while inspection on the ground can make for considerable pessimism. It is possible that, knowing as much, Central Command was deliberately conservative in its estimates.
5The bombs used at the time were 12,000-pound Tall Boys and 22,000-pound Grand Slams, both conceived by Barnes Wallis. There is apparently some interest in a supersonic (Mach 1.6) earth penetrator, the design of which would be based on earth-penetrating nuclear missile warheads designed in the 1970s to destroy Soviet command centers. There is little question that such a device can be designed to survive after passing through many feet of hardened concrete and earth, but it might not have sufficient explosive content actually to destroy a substantial bunker of the sort reportedly built for Saddam Hussein.
To see just how bizarre the appellation is, consider a real historical example. In 1915 the U.S. Navy’s General Board, seeking authority to build a larger navy, argued that whoever won World War I would emerge with a combination of large debts and a battle-hardened army. At that point the United States would be the only attractive source of money, and of course the victor would use his battle-hardened army to cancel his debts. Given the bloody disasters of 1915, that idea must soon have seemed ludicrous: no one would volunteer for a new war after experiencing World War I. It is striking that in August 1990 Sadaam Hussein did exactly what the General Board feared in 1915. He was able to do so because, even though his army lived through the war with Iran—its own version of World War I—the assault on Kuwait did not involve much further effort. The general conclusion, however, that living through a gruesome war makes one war-weary rather than hard, seems to have been proved by events in January and February 1991 • The long-range howitzers achieve much of their performance by using base-bleed shells, which are apparently less accurate than conventional ones. Fuel- air explosives are notoriously tricky to use. It is difficult to understand just how cluster bombs could be described as radically new or particularly secret; virtually all bomb manufacturers make them in one version or another.
8One interesting lesson is that stealthy or not airplanes are still vulnerable to gun and missile fire at low altitude, alerted not by search radar but by visual sightings and the sound of the bombs. Before the Iraq War, Britain and Germany had generally assumed that it would be impossible to blind enemy long- range radar, and that attackers could survive only by flying at very low level. The Tornado low-level attack aircraft was the symbol of that belief and the British developed a pod, mounted under the airplane’s belly, to spread runway-busting submunitions. To deliver the pod, the Tornado had to fly directly over the target airfield. It therefore became vulnerable in two ways. First, it flew directly into a possible mass of undirected ground fire (and short- range missiles). Second, because it flew at very low altitude but very high speed—at night—it was a very difficult mission for the aircrews and there was almost no margin for error if the aircraft was hit. The operational force of 60 British Tornadoes sustained 10% losses, by far the highest of any of the air arms in the theater, before switching to medium-altitude attacks using laser-guided bombs. The U.S. view was always that a combination of jammers and physical attackers (e.g., EA-6Bs or Wild Weasels) would permit the bombers to penetrate at medium altitude, above the weapons that could not be jammed. The United States did not, however, develop a runway- busting munition equivalent either to the British weapon or to the French Durandal bomb.
Dr. Friedman, the author of numerous books on weapon technology, writes the monthly “World Naval Developments” column for Proceedings. He earned his PhD in physics at Columbia University.