Full Description
An expertly written, illustrated new analysis of the Desert Storm air campaign fought against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which shattered the world's fourth-largest army and sixth-largest air force in just 39 days, and revolutionized the world's ideas about modern air power.
Operation Desert Storm took just over six weeks to destroy Saddam Hussein's war machine: a 39-day air campaign followed by a four-day ground assault. It shattered what had been the world's fourth-largest army and sixth-largest air force, and overturned conventional military assumptions about the effectiveness and value of air power.
In this book, Richard P. Hallion, one of the world's foremost experts on air warfare, explains why Desert Storm was a revolutionary victory, a war won with no single climatic battle. Instead, victory came thanks largely to a rigorously planned air campaign. It began with an opening night that smashed Iraq's advanced air defense system, and allowed systematic follow-on strikes to savage its military infrastructure and field capabilities. When the Coalition tanks finally rolled into Iraq, it was less an assault than an occupation.
The rapid victory in Desert Storm, which surprised many observers, led to widespread military reform as the world saw the new capabilities of precision air power, and it ushered in today's era of high-tech air warfare.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGY
ATTACKER'S CAPABILITIES
-The airpower of a global coalition
-Ordnance
-Training
DEFENDER'S CAPABILITIES
-Iraq's military machine
-The invading armed forces
-Saddam's air power
-Organization
-Air defenses
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES
-Resolution and resolve
THE CAMPAIGN
-42 days to Kuwait City
-Final countdown
-Opening night: an assessment
-Grappling in the Central Blue
-Preventing resurgence: the shelter-busting campaign
-Per Ardua: Tornado at war
-The Iraqi SAM threat: suppressed but not eliminated
-Targeting Iraq's power infrastructure and forces
-Weather
-The battle against the Scuds
-Clash of arms at al-Khafji: Saddam's calculated lashing-out
-Victory at sea: securing the northern Persian Gulf
-Phase III: "preparing the battlefield" or "destroying the
battlefield?"
-The intelligence debate
-The al-Firdos bunker bombing
-Phase IV: to G-Day and afterwards
-Endgame
AFTERMATH AND ANALYSIS
FURTHER READING
INDEX
