The bombing of "strategic" targets in Desert Storm failed to destroy the will of the Iraqi people—here, Hussein supporters rally on the third anniversary of the initial Gulf War air strikes—and also failed to vindicate the Air Force's long-held vision of strategic all warfare.
During the battle of Midway, land-based Army Air Force heavy bombers flew 55 sorties against the Japanese fleet and dropped 184,000 pounds of bombs. In the weeks after the epic battle, the Army Air Force was quick to claim and was publicly granted an equal share of credit for the victory. The front page of the New York Times proclaimed that “Army Fliers Blasted Two Fleets Off Midway,” and the editorial page concluded that the attacks had proved “what land-based air power can do to naval and air power attacking from the open sea.” The rationale for crediting the land-based bombers was based on no more than the belief that so much ordnance surely must have hit something. Other than some minor damage to an oiler, however, the land-based aircraft had inflicted no damage at all. Not a single bomb had scored a hit. Yet for many years thereafter, the “lesson” of Midway—the danger in sending aircraft carriers to challenge land-based aircraft—was accepted wholly and uncritically.1 Perhaps inevitably, some of this same sort of cursory acceptance of “historical lessons” seems to be in evidence since the end of the Gulf War.
Victory in the Gulf War was clearly a triumph for the advocates of air power. In no other war had the effects of bombing, as well as the control of the skies, been such a predominant factor. American aviation and technology proved to be superior in all respects and seemed to usher in a new age—if not an outright revolution—in warfare. With the impressive contribution of air power, conventional strategic air power doctrine seemed to regain credibility, in essence by default, in the months following the war.2 A more perceptive analysis, however, would point to air operations other than strategic bombing as being critical to the overwhelming victory.
This important distinction leads to a fundamental question: Was the Gulf War a revolution in the application and contribution of air power, or was it merely a conflict fought with an old play book in a new cover? In retrospect, the strategic air bombing efforts of the Coalition air forces may be seen as historically consistent in their inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Moreover, the transformation of aerial warfare manifest in Desert Storm was evolutionary, occurring not at the strategic but at the operational and tactical levels of war, where it was to prove the key to victory.
The air campaign of Operation Desert Storm was conceived and created with a set of distinct phases, and—as had each previous air campaign since World War II—it included a distinct and ambitious strategic bombardment effort.3 In the days following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, officers from within the Air Force’s Air Staff formed a planning group later known as Checkmate. This group set out to create an air campaign plan to eject Iraq from Kuwait, using air power alone.4
The initial plan, conceived by Colonel John A. Warden and his Checkmate staff, came to be called Instant Thunder and involved a six-day air campaign designed to incapacitate Iraqi leadership and destroy its key military capabilities. Colonel Warden had become the keeper of the intellectual flame of strategic air power within the Air Force, and although he scattered Clausewitzian terms such as “centers of gravity” throughout his arguments for the strategic use of air power, his focus for Instant Thunder was clearly Douhetan. For instance, Clausewitz would have recognized the enemy’s leadership itself as a potential center of gravity, but the Checkmate plan did not openly advocate attacks targeted directly at the Ba’athist leadership. Instead, it proposed to separate them from the Iraqi nation and its armed forces by destroying key telecommunication sites and command centers. Other categories of targets that supposedly would contribute to the successful outcome of the campaign included electric power, oil production, railroads, and military production.5
The plan that was briefed to General Colin Powell in late August 1990, by now code named Desert Storm, consisted of a four-phase campaign that was to be initiated by a strategic air effort. The first phase was essentially a copy of the Instant Thunder plan, augmented by an additional emphasis on interdicting any resupply effort of Iraqi forces in Kuwait.6 It is significant that the intent of this strategic plan, which eventually came to be approved by General Schwarzkopf, was very different from the plan that would become Desert Storm. Moreover, it was aimed at those centers of gravity that were perceived, and perhaps contrived, by the planners of Instant Thunder—long before the strategic and operational goals of Desert Storm had been determined.
In fact, the Instant Thunder, and hence Phase I of Desert Storm, centers of gravity were significantly different from the centers of gravity that General Schwarzkopf himself eventually identified for the overall Desert Storm campaign.7 Phase 1 was, according to the Desert Storm Operations Order, supposed to focus on three centers of gravity: the Iraqi National Command Authority, Iraqi NBC capability, and the Republican Guard Forces Command. Yet additional centers of gravity were proposed by Checkmate—exemplified by Colonel Warden’s “concentric circles”—and incorporated into Phase 1. They included not only leadership but also the traditional production targets of strategic air power theory: petroleum, electricity, transportation, and the Iraqi populations.8 Thus, while the preliminary plan grew to involve more targets and aircraft, the concepts of the strategic air campaign remained remarkably consistent with not only Instant Thunder but also every other strategic campaign since World War II. In fact, “the driving force of the Black Hole (Central Command, Air Force [CentAF] planning cell), the strategic air campaign against Iraq, became the focus of CentAF as a whole.”9
Colonel Warden used his favored theory of “concentric circles,” a modern variation on themes proposed by Mitchell and Douhet, to guide the initial strategic air campaign planning. His theory prioritized targeting so that initial strikes would be against the innermost circle—those vital centers of the Iraqi national leadership, command, control, and communications, and intelligence capabilities. Only later would the outer rings be struck—those targets such as military ground forces in the field.10
In destroying the Iraqi leadership’s ability to communicate with and control the civilian population, air power would seek to separate the government from the people and the military. Yet there was another significant, yet more subtle, intent to Phase I: the Douhetan-flavored undercurrent of destroying the will of the Iraqi people. This was counterbalanced, however, by an overriding sense of moderation, instilled perhaps by the lessons of the World War II. Then-Brigadier General Buster Glosson, who was well aware of the historical precedent of strategic bombing, warned planners that there could not be “another Dresden.”11
Those who planned the strategic campaign, however, did not “attempt to avoid inconvenience to the Iraqi Population. Rather, they wished to inflict disruption and a feeling of helplessness on the Iraqi public, without bringing about severe suffering—all in the hope of weakening Hussein’s grip.”12 At a stroke, the attacks were intended to cripple production” and “complicate movement of goods and services” simultaneously, and thereby “convince the Iraqi Populace that a bright economic and political future will result Horn the replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime.”13 There was a familiar duality to these objectives: a modern blend of the economic science of the pre-World War II AWPD-I and the terror of Douhet. The planners’ belief was that aerial bombing could cripple the Iraqi economy, cause an uprising of its citizenry, and thus bring down its government. In a fitting homage to Douhet, a telling CentAF operations order of September 1990 boldly predicted that, “When taken in total, the result of Phase I will be the progressive and systematic collapse of Saddam Hussein’s entire war machine and regime.”14
One plausible explanation of how it was that the theory of strategic bombing was so quickly resurrected and given such a primary role in the overall campaign requires a perspective of the events of August 1990. In those early days after the invasion of Kuwait, there was very little that the United States could have done to protect the oil fields and production facilities of eastern Saudi Arabia. As the commander responsible for halting the potential Iraqi advance, General Schwarzkopf did not have significant military forces available that could be brought quickly to the region. The reason that Instant Thunder was so quickly accepted—and for the most part incorporated unchanged into Operation Desert Storm—may have been because of this perceived impotence of U.S. military force in the Persian Gulf in the months following the invasion. Until significant forces were brought from the other side of the world, the Iraqi army occupying Kuwait posed a serious threat to a large portion of the world’s proven oil reserves.
Retaliatory strikes by U.S. aircraft, the only significant offensive force available to quickly deploy and build up within the region, seemed to be the sole credible near-term response available to the USCinCCent commander. Strategic attacks within the heart of Iraq also held a special appeal in that they, like the Doolittle raid, would provide an emotional salve to a perceived military debility. That is not to suggest, however, that the theory of conventional strategic bombing enjoyed ideological preeminence within the Air Force in 1990. There was simply no other coherent theory of air power within the service’s doctrine that might address those strategic and operational challenges presented by the Iraqi invasion.
While the planning of the strategic campaign of Desert Storm became a repackaging of traditional concepts, the execution of the campaign represented a significant change from those strategic bombing efforts against Japan and Germany. In the interim, technology had finally provided air power with the precision that the inter-war theorists had predicted would revolutionize warfare and thereby rescue strategic air power theory from the morally tenuous precepts of the Douhetan vision. Air power could then be applied at the strategic level with “surgical” exactitude to economic targets, thereby avoiding unnecessary and widespread civilian casualties. And certainly the strategic phase of Desert Storm proved to be much more efficient than any other in history. Those sorties designated as part of the Core Strategic Air Attack accounted for nearly 15% of all the Coalition air-to-ground strikes during the conflict, yet traditional strategic targeting was a relatively small percentage of the overall number of sorties flown.15
These core strategic targets, however, did account for 30% of the precision-guided munitions delivered during the conflict, roughly double the percentage of the total strikes on these types of targets. In this sense then, the strategic targets received a disproportionate share of the precision weapons employed.16 Thus, the strategic campaign made up a relatively small percentage of the air- to-ground sortie total, yet it absorbed a disparate number of precision weapons.
Ironically, these precious weapons—the epitome of the modem technological leap—were expended on those “production” targets that historically had proved to be of the least consequence. The effort to apply air power to the strategic level of war is, by the very nature of its intent, slow to take effect; time is the unappreciated cost of strategic bombing. This points to an important dichotomy: While technology has enabled an increased efficiency of ways and means, there has been no increased efficiency of ends. The results of Desert Storm reaffirmed that the means of strategic air power, despite tremendous gains in efficiency, are of little consequence in the present day.17
The leadership [L] and command, control, and communication [CCC] targets were at the intellectual core of the “new” strategic bombing concept, as they were deemed to be the targets that would destroy the “central nervous system” of the Iraqi regime, without incurring significant civilian casualties. Yet despite a concerted effort, Saddam Hussein remained in power at the end of the conflict, and sufficient communications remained intact between Baghdad and Kuwait for the Iraqi army to be ordered home.18 As the Gulf War Air Power Survey summarized:
Thus, the results of these attacks clearly fell short of fulfilling the ambitious hope, entertained by at least some airmen, that bombing the L and CCC target categories might put enough pressure on the regime to bring about its overthrow and completely sever communications between the leaders in Baghdad and their military forces.19
Although the effect cannot be even roughly quantified based on the available evidence, it may be a fair question to ask how much disruption and dislocation these attacks caused.1" This is not, however, the criterion upon which strategic air power seeks to be judged. Strategic air power was proposed, as it had been in previous conflicts, as a decisive instrument that could “cut off the head of the snake,” bring victory independently, and obviate the need for a ground war. Colonel Warden, when briefing General Powell on the Instant Thunder plan, predicted that “this plan may win the war.” He added that, “You may not need a ground attack. ... I think the Iraqis will withdraw from Kuwait as a result of the strategic campaign.”21 This bold argument would seem to have been another impetus to the acceptance of a strategic element within the overall campaign, and yet like many other strategic bombing propositions, the effort against the L and CCC targets did not succeed.
Significant resources were also committed to electric power and oil targets, those more traditional strategic bombing targets. Attacks on the electric system quickly blacked out power throughout Iraq, forcing the Iraqi leadership to utilize backup power. Again, these attacks were unprecedented in their efficiency, but to what end the electric power target attacks were successful is unclear. If they were intended to make the Iraqi civilian populace uncomfortable, then they certainly succeeded. Some controversial estimates state that bombing of electric power systems—which caused the loss of sewage treatment and water purification plants—“contributed to” some 70,000 to 90,000 civilian deaths.” The greater point is that strategic air power, even in its modern forms, will always exact a steep price from an enemy’s civilian populace, and the attacker must bear some degree of moral responsibility for the consequences of strategic bombing.
The efforts against oil facilities were also efficient, disabling more than 90% of Iraq’s oil refinery capacity.23The effects, however, were transitory and local and were of a greater significance to the civilian population than to the Iraqi armed forces. If planners intended to cut off supplies to the Iraqi forces in Kuwait, it should have been obvious that the invaders would have access to Kuwaiti oil storage and production. Even with sustained bombing, these forces would have enough fuel for weeks, if not months, of sustained combat. Perhaps if the ground war had dragged on, the efforts against “strategic” oil targets might have been productive. In the end, however, “attacking oil refineries and storage in Iraq bore no significant military results due to the swift collapse of the Iraqi Army.”24 The attacks against Iraq’s oil refining capabilities were likely intended to punish the Iraqi citizenry as much as they were the Iraqi army.
Viewed as a whole, Phase I of Operation Desert Storm had raised the hopes of air power theorists that strategic bombing might finally be vindicated and validated. As Rear Admiral Mike McConnell of the Joint Chiefs Staff confirmed, the “overall objective” of the strategic attacks was to “degrade the war fighting infrastructure in the country, to eliminate the ability to wage war.”25 The conditions were favorable: a desert environment, a sophisticated air force and weaponry, and an opponent that had chosen a static defense at both the strategic and operational level. As in the past, “planners wished to exert pressure from the outset directly against the heart of Iraqi power, an idea consistent with other strategic bombing campaigns.”26 The results of the bombing against the core strategic targets, however, produced the same inconclusive or ineffective results as in past wars. While individual sorties of the strategic campaign were efficient and effective when viewed in relation to their targets, their intent was unfulfilled. However spectacular in execution, the strategic campaign contributed little and was largely unnecessary. Postwar analysis has failed to show that strategic bombing had any apparent effect on the outcome of the war, the wartime capabilities of the Iraqi military, the post-war government of Iraq, or Iraq’s ability to threaten neighboring countries.27 The Gulf War Air Power Survey concluded:
... if limitations to strategic air attack with strong antecedents in prior conflicts also manifested themselves in the near-ideal circumstances of Desert Storm, those limits should probably be construed as inherent features of strategic campaigns, not as aberrations or shortcomings that improved weaponry or other technical advances will overcome.28
The fact that the swift collapse of the Iraqi Army was caused primarily by air power, but not strategic air power, supports the idea that the revolution in air power that some have claimed was manifest in the Gulf War was not a revolution at all. The triumph of air power came when it was applied at the operational and tactical levels of war—where the promise that technological progress might transform the conduct of war was more completely realized.
Furthermore, the attempt to use air power in a strategic role during the Gulf War may be seen as an historically consistent attempt to vindicate a theory of warfare that has repeatedly proven to be wholly inefficient and generally ineffective. In this conflict, as in every other war this century, the indecisive and uncertain effects of strategic air power were inevitably overshadowed by the proven dynamism of air power applied within the appropriate context of war.
1 Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun (New York: Random House 1985) p. 177.
2 The terms “strategic air power," “strategic air warfare," and “strategic bombing- are used synonymously through this paper. The JCS Pub.l definition of strategic air warfare is: “air combat and supporting operations designed to effect, through systematic application of force to a selected series of vital targets, the’progres- sive destruction and disintegration of the enemy’s war-making capacity to a point where the enemy no longer retains the ability or the will to wage war."
3 Caroline F. Ziemke, “Promises Fulfilled? The Prophets of Airpower and Desert Storm,” Airpower Series, Background Paper No. 2, Washington Strategy Seminar. Washington, D.C., January 1992, p. 2.
4 Eliot Cohen and Thomas A. Keaney, Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1993), p. 35.
5 Ibid., p. 36.
6 Ibid., p. 38.
7 Ibid., p. 40
8 Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), pp. 58-9.
9 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS, Vol, II, p. 200.
10 Ziemke, p. 11.
11 GWAPS Vol. II, p. 92.
12 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS Summary, p. 43.
13 Ibid., p. 44.
14 Ibid., p. 45.
15 The relatively small percentage of strategic sorties still amounted to several thousand sorties. In future conflicts, thousands of sorties for strategic targets may be an unsupportable luxury.
16 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS Summary, p. 65.
17 The efficiency that was demonstrably improved in Desert Storm was one of means; that is, modem means of delivery had drastically reduced the numbers of aircraft and sorties required to destroy a target.
18 Ibid., p. 70.
19 Ibid.
20 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS Summary, pp. 70-1.
21 Atkinson, p. 60.
22 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS Summary, p. 75. William Arkin's study for Greenpeace was controversial but credible. Although the Iraqi leadership bears some responsibility for its decision to go to war, the United States must also bear some responsibility for its attacks, and their consequences. Also see Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Law of War, Human Rights Watch 1991
23 Ibid., p. 76.
24 Ibid., p. 77.
25 William G. Arkin. et al. On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment: A Case Study of the Gulf War (Washington, D.C.: Greenpeace, 1991), p. 106.
26 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS Summary, p. 90.
27 Tactical Bombing of Iraqi Forces Outstripped Value of Strategic Hits, Analyst Contends, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 27 January 1992, pp. 62-3.
28 Cohen and Keaney, GWAPS Vol. 11, p. 369.
Major Ganyard, an F/A-18 pilot, served as a Plans Officer for Marine Aircraft Group 11 and flew 30 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. A recent graduate of the Marine Corps’ School of Advanced Warfighting, he is currently assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 32, MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina. Major Ganyard's article “Where Air Power Fails” was published in the January 1995 Proceedings.