The Air War

The United Nations (UN) deadline of January 15, 1991, passed with no indication that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (1937–) would withdraw his forces from Kuwait. By this time Iraq had occupied its smaller neighbor for nearly six months. The United States and its allies had sent hundreds of thousands of troops to the Persian Gulf region during this period. Their immediate goal was to prevent Iraqi troops from moving into Saudi Arabia and to enforce economic sanctions (trade restrictions intended to punish a country for breaking international law) against Iraq. This massive military buildup received the code name Operation Desert Shield.

In the early morning hours of January 17, the U.S.-led coalition launched an offensive attack aimed at pushing the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Coalition leaders named the offensive Operation Desert Storm. The first phase of the operation involved a series of coordinated air strikes against military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The idea behind these strikes was to reduce Hussein's military strength and make it impossible to continue his occupation of Kuwait. The air war continued for six weeks and achieved nearly all of the allies' objectives.

The allied attack begins

At around 2:00 AM local time on January 17, eight Apache helicopters from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division left secret air bases in Saudi Arabia and flew across Iraq's western border. They flew close to the ground to avoid being detected by Iraqi radar. They also flew without lights and avoided the remote camps of Arab goat herders so that no one would see or hear them. The Apaches were on an important mission to destroy Iraqi radar stations that provided Hussein's air force with early warnings when enemy aircraft entered the country. The U.S. helicopters managed to knock out two radar stations in a line that stretched across the Iraqi desert, opening a hole in Iraq's radar defenses where coalition aircraft could fly through undetected.

A short time later, hundreds of coalition planes began taking off from air bases in Saudi Arabia and aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. The air war had three main goals. The goal of the first wave of air strikes was to destroy Iraq's airdefense capabilities. Toward this end, the coalition attacked Iraqi air bases, destroying many warplanes on the ground and dropping bombs on runways to prevent others from taking off. They also went after Iraq's antiaircraft guns and missiles. Some of the more dangerous targets were hit with cruise missiles and Tomahawk missiles fired from allied warships in the Persian Gulf.

The second wave of allied air strikes was intended to disrupt Iraq's military command and control functions. Some of these targets were located in cities like Baghdad (Iraq's capital) and were surrounded by civilian areas. (Civilians are people who are not involved in fighting a war, including women and children.) American forces used F-117A Stealth fighters—sleek, triangular planes that are almost invisible to radar—equipped with laser-guided "smart" bombs to hit some targets in Baghdad. They knocked out the Iraqi capital's electricity, water, and communication systems in an attempt to paralyze the Iraqi military command. They also destroyed a number of roads and bridges leading to the city.

The goal of the third wave of air strikes was to weaken the Iraqi ground forces in and around Kuwait. The coalition bombed Iraqi defensive positions, destroying hundreds of enemy tanks and other equipment and lowering the morale of Iraqi troops. The six-week air war eventually involved 2,000 planes from seven countries (the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait). Coalition aircraft flew 110,000 sorties (a sortie is one plane flying one mission) over the course of the war.

The world watches the war unfold

The first allied air strikes against Baghdad were reported live on television by Western journalists who remained in the Iraqi capital on January 17. The news-gathering network CNN showed footage of the bombing even before the U.S. government officially announced that the war had begun. Some journalists who were staying at the Al Rasheed Hotel in downtown Baghdad told viewers about seeing flashes of light in the sky and hearing explosions. One British reporter stood on his hotel balcony and watched an American missile fly past and smash into the nearby headquarters of the Iraqi air force. This marked the first time in history that the opening strikes of a war were seen live on television.

The official U.S. government announcement regarding the start of the war came at 7:00 PM Eastern time on January 16 (Washington, D.C., is eight hours behind Baghdad). White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater gave a press briefing in which he stated, "The liberation of Kuwait has begun." Two hours later President George H. W. Bush (1924–; served 1989–93) made a prepared speech on national television. Bush told the American people that negotiations and sanctions had failed to persuade Hussein to withdraw his forces from Kuwait. He then outlined the U.S. strategy of using massive air strikes to destroy Iraq's military capability so that it could no longer threaten its neighbors. Finally, the president stressed: "Our goal is not the conquest of Iraq—it is the liberation of Kuwait."

Iraq fights back with Scud missiles

The day after coalition aircraft and missiles began bombing Baghdad, Hussein followed through on his threat to attack Israel. Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948 as a homeland for all Jewish people. Its location in the Middle East was also the ancient home of an Arab people called the Palestinians, many of whom were displaced by the creation of the Jewish state. This created feelings of resentment and hatred toward Israel throughout the Arab world and led to several bitter wars. Hussein wanted to draw Israel into the war because he thought this might break apart the U.S.-led coalition. The Iraqi leader believed that some Arab nations would leave the coalition or even switch their support to Iraq rather than ally themselves with the Jewish state.

Iraqi forces launched several Scud missiles at targets in Israel on January 18, the day after the air war began. Although the Scud was not a very advanced or accurate missile, it succeeded in frightening the people of Israel. "The Scud was a clumsy, obsolete [out-of-date] Soviet missile, a weapon that could fly 300 miles [480 kilometers] and miss the target by a couple of miles," allied commander General Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–) explained, as quoted in The Persian Gulf War by Zachary Kent. "However, the Scud was effective as a terror weapon against civilian populations." Residents of Israel were concerned that the Iraqi missiles might contain chemical weapons. They carried gas masks everywhere they went and hurried into specially prepared sealed rooms whenever air-raid sirens sounded.

Iraq also launched a Scud missile at a U.S. air base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on the second day of the war. This missile was intercepted and destroyed in midair by an American Patriot missile, marking the first time in history that an attacking missile was destroyed by a defensive missile in combat. The Patriot system used radar to detect and track incoming Scuds, and then programmed course instructions into a defensive missile and launched it. The Patriot missile zeroed in on the Scud and then exploded when it got within range, destroying both missiles.

Following this first success in the skies over Dhahran, the U.S. military installed Patriot missile defense systems in Israel. This was the first time the United States had acted directly in Israel's defense. Although Israeli leaders made threatening speeches against Iraq, the Israeli government bowed to U.S. political pressure and stayed out of the war, partly because Iraq never used chemical weapons against them. Some experts claimed that Hussein did not possess the technology to deliver deadly chemicals on missiles. Others thought that he probably decided against using chemical weapons against Israel because he was worried that Israel would retaliate with nuclear weapons. (Israel has had atomic bombs since the 1960s.)

Iraq fired a total of eighty-six Scud missiles during the conflict. Forty were aimed at Israel and the rest at Saudi Arabia. The majority of the Scuds were destroyed by Patriot missiles. In Israel, 1 person was killed and 239 wounded by the Iraqi missile attacks on the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, while about nine thousand apartments and homes were damaged or destroyed. The deadliest Scud attack hit a U.S. Army Reserve camp in Dhahran, killing twenty-eight American soldiers and wounding eighty more.

An environmental disaster

In addition to launching Scud missiles, Iraqi forces retaliated against the coalition by destroying Kuwaiti oil facilities. On January 22 Iraqi troops began setting Kuwaiti oil wells on fire, creating thick clouds of toxic smoke. On January 25 millions of gallons of oil began spilling into the waters of the Persian Gulf from a terminal used to fill oil tankers. Thick crude oil covered the surface of the gulf with the largest oil slick the world had ever seen, 50 miles (80 kilometers) long and 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide, before the leak was stopped.

Hussein claimed that allied bombing campaigns had caused the oil leak. But coalition leaders accused Iraqi troops of releasing the oil to prevent allied ships from approaching the shore. Some people also believed that the Iraqis released the oil with the hope of damaging the desalinization plants that changed salty seawater into drinking water for Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. However, special booms (long floating barriers) were used to contain the spill and prevent it from reaching the desalinization plants. But the oil killed thousands of fish, birds, and marine animals in the Persian Gulf.

Allies achieve air superiority

At the start of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq had the sixth-largest air force in the world. Hussein had 950 planes under his command, located at 54 air bases across the country. To the surprise of many coalition leaders, however, Iraq's air force did not provide organized resistance to the massive allied air assaults. Some of the lack of response was due to the successful allied strikes against Iraqi airports, which destroyed many enemy warplanes on the ground and damaged runways so that others could not take off. But a number of Iraqi pilots chose not to fight the coalition forces and instead flew their planes to neutral Iran. As many as 150 Iraqi aircraft fled to Iran in the early days of the air war, where they were impounded (held) for the rest of the war. Some experts wondered whether this was planned because Hussein had realized that he had little chance of defeating the allies and decided to save some of his planes for use after the war. Of the Iraqi planes that did fight the coalition, 40 were destroyed in air-to-air combat.

As the air war progressed, Iraqi forces shot down a number of coalition planes with their antiaircraft defenses. A total of forty-one coalition aircraft were shot down during the war, thirty-two American planes and nine from other countries. Some of the pilots of these planes were killed. But others parachuted safely to the ground and were either picked up by U.S. search-and-rescue helicopters or captured by Iraqi troops. The American people learned about some of these incidents when Hussein forced the captured airmen to answer questions and make antiwar statements on Iraqi television. Hussein's actions were a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions (a set of international laws that guarantee the humane treatment of enemy soldiers and prisoners and the protection of civilians during wartime), which outlaw the public display of prisoners of war. President Bush condemned Iraq's mistreatment of its allied prisoners. "If Saddam thinks this brutal treatment of pilots is a way to muster world support, he is dead wrong," Bush said, as quoted in Understanding the Crisis in the Persian Gulf by Peter Cipkowski.

On January 23, General Colin Powell (1937–) announced that the coalition forces had achieved air superiority in the Persian Gulf. Powell was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (a group of top military advisors to the president of the United States, consisting of a chairman and the chief of each branch of the armed services). His statement meant that the allied air strikes had destroyed all of Iraq's warplanes and antiaircraft guns, so that future air strikes could be launched without any fear of counterattacks from Iraqi forces. By this time, one week into the air war, allied planes had already flown twelve thousand sorties.

Air war takes a toll on Iraq

Once the coalition forces achieved air superiority, they began targeting the Iraqi troops in Kuwait with air strikes. The main goal of these attacks was to weaken the Republican Guard, an elite Iraqi military unit consisting of one hundred thousand men. Republican Guard troops were the best trained, best equipped, and most highly motivated of all of Hussein's forces. Coalition leaders knew that they would eventually face Iraq's Republican Guard in a ground war. "That we will have to take on the Republican Guard in ground-to-ground combat is, in my estimation, guaranteed," said U.S. General Schwarzkopf in Understanding the Crisis in the Persian Gulf. The allies used air attacks to "shape the battlefield" in their favor by weakening the Republican Guard before the ground war began.

Over the next few weeks, coalition bombs continuously hit Iraqi defensive positions in Kuwait. These attacks destroyed more than half of Iraq's tanks and artillery in Kuwait. The allies also managed to cut off supplies of food, water, and fuel to the Iraqi forces in Kuwait. Finally, they dropped millions of leaflets written in Arabic over the Iraqi front lines that urged enemy soldiers to surrender, hoping this would weaken the Iraqis' will to fight.

As the air war continued into February, more people began to express concern about civilian casualties (people who are killed or wounded) and damage to civilian buildings in Iraq. Some critics argued that it was not necessary to destroy Iraq to force Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. But coalition leaders argued that they needed to destroy resources that could be used to support Iraqi troops in Kuwait. They also claimed that the continued air strikes would help minimize allied casualties once the ground war began.

Iraq offers to withdraw

The first indication that the air war was taking a toll on Hussein's army came on February 15, when Iraq's military leaders announced that they were willing to withdraw from Kuwait in accordance with UN resolutions. This was the first time that the Iraqi government had offered to leave Kuwait. Up until this time, Hussein had vowed that he would never give up Kuwait. In fact, according to Understanding the Crisis in the Persian Gulf, he once said that it would be "comparable to the United States giving up Hawaii." The offer to withdraw was met with celebration in the streets of Baghdad, a sign that the Iraqi people were growing weary of the war.

However, President Bush rejected the offer because it had unacceptable conditions attached. Hussein offered to leave Kuwait only if Israel withdrew from the Arab territories it had occupied since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, and if Kuwait formed a new government that did not include the Sabah family, which had ruled the country for many years. Despite this failure of this offer, some world leaders saw it as a positive sign that Iraq was willing to negotiate an end to the war. Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–), president of the Soviet Union, came up with a peace proposal of his own on February

America's Advantage in Weapons Technology

During the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. military introduced a new class of advanced weapons systems that gave the coalition a huge technological advantage over Iraq. These systems increased the effectiveness of traditional weapons and led to vast improvements in the allied military's capabilities.

Much of the coalition's success in the air war could be traced to its ability to locate important targets. The allies used satellites orbiting the Earth to generate data for maps, locate Iraqi military units, and pinpoint locations of air defense and command centers. They also used special planes equipped with powerful radar systems, like AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) and JSTARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System), to detect and locate aircraft flying over Kuwait as well as tanks and supply vehicles on the ground.

Once the coalition forces located their targets, they used advanced bombs to destroy them. The U.S. Air Force released several videotapes to the media showing laser-guided "smart" bombs hitting targets with pinpoint accuracy. One video showed bombs sailing through the open doors of a bunker where an Iraqi Scud missile was stored. Another showed a bomb going down the rooftop air shaft of the building that served as headquarters for the Iraqi air force. Many of these bombing runs were made at night, with pilots using night-vision goggles to allow them to see their targets. Nighttime bombing runs,—along with electronic jamming to confuse or disable Iraqi radar, helped protect the coalition pilots from antiaircraft fire.

The technologically advanced weapons used by the United States and its allies during the Persian Gulf War helped reduce the number of civilian casualties in Iraq and Kuwait. For example, smart bombs destroyed several military targets in downtown Baghdad while leaving nearby buildings intact. After the first week of the air war, some observers noted, many residents of Baghdad went back to their normal routines, since it was clear that the coalition was only targeting military sites.

Yet the Iraqis did suffer civilian casualties during the air war. The allies made some mistakes in selecting targets, and some bombs missed their intended targets. One of the most controversial attacks took place on February 13, when coalition forces used laser-guided bombs to destroy a bunker in downtown Baghdad, killing one hundred Iraqi women and children who were hiding inside. American officials believed that the bunker was an Iraqi military command center. They pointed out that its roof was painted in camouflage, that it had a barbed-wire fence around it, and that there were computer cables in the wreckage. But Iraqi officials claimed that the bunker was a civilian air-raid shelter. Another controversial attack took place when U.S. planes bombed a factory that was believed to produce chemical weapons. Iraqi officials later presented reporters with evidence that the factory actually produced infant formula.

18, and Iraq agreed to it a few days later. But once again Bush rejected it, saying it did not meet all of the demands of the UN resolutions.

On February 22 Bush set a new deadline of noon on February 23 for the Iraqi troops to withdraw from Kuwait. He warned that the coalition would launch a ground war if Hussein failed to meet the deadline. By this time, coalition planes had flown 94,000 sorties against the Iraqi forces and dropped more than 140,000 tons (127,000 metric tons) of bombs. The air war had achieved its goal of causing severe damage to Iraq's armed forces and their resources. By the end of the war, estimates of the damage to Iraq from allied bombing reached $110 billion, or around $1 million for every allied sortie.