Desert Storm: The Air Assault

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] on the 16th of January 1991 the multinational forces of the Gulf coalition unleashed a massive night air assault on Iraqi forces in both Iraq and Kuwait the attacks caught the Iraqis by surprise Allied aircraft soo roamed at will in the skies over Iraq this video ordnance program examines the first month of the Desert Storm air campaign on air raids over Baghdad to the scud missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and Israel [Music] [Music] Operation Desert Storm began with air attacks on a scale not seen since the Second World War preceding the aircraft where Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from u.s. Navy warships over 100 were launched in the first wave against heavily defended targets such as air defense headquarters key radar facilities and major communication centers [Music] [Music] [Music] eating hay they a busy evening I thought well the point is we've had a very busy evening as a matter of fact it it's not over yet this is the opening round of the war the tomahawk strikes will continue for another at least 36 hours in conjunction with the air strikes are taking place over Iraq right now I can report to you that the air right air strikes have started the tomahawks have already started the impact in the Baghdad area and there are engagements fighter engagements have happening over land at this point we are following the course of all that as we are remaining vigilant as we steamed to our next time our Lawrence bonds point [Music] Operation Desert Storm was the first time the tomahawk cruise missile was used in combat cruise missile is a thousand-pound warhead on an unmanned aircraft shot from just about all the various surface ships and submarines that the Navy's got and it's done exceptionally well in the first week I think that they were said there was proximately 500 cruise missiles in the theater on 56 ships and so far I think they were shot about a third of those and within the first week about 150 you've managed to go off the tomahawk is a terrific weapon for this kind of warfare particularly this kind of warfare it's a significant development to the Navy that may not sound that original but it is a significant development to the Navy in previous years the Navy had in a tactical sense one perhaps two ways of striking at an enemy one is the carrier based attack systems a-six a-seven in those days fa-18 now and we had big guns 16-inch guns off the battleship which proved effective in vietnam fought against a more capable or more distant enemy for useless therefore the Navy was then had but a single attack method of attacking taking the fight to the enemy the surface forces and the submarines never played in an in the conventional sense they all they were there is to defend the carrier and that wasn't not to the liking of many of the naval officers the tomahawk system particularly tomahawk with its long range gives the Navy ships and submarines a chance to participate and take the fight to the enemy it was important in this war that tomahawk work and the initial indications are that it's worked exceptionally well during the initial stage of the fight the tomahawk uses radar terrain comparison guidance codenamed tear calm in the final phase of the attack the computer switches on its digital scene mapping system which compares a digital photo of the target stowed in its memory with the actual scene below this provides pinpoint precision modern air campaigns that take place in successive phases with clear objectives in each phase one of the first aims of the operation was the suppression of Iraqi air defenses this means the elimination of anti-aircraft missile and gun sights the radars that direct them and the command and control centers that coordinate them an air defense network is like a web running from a central headquarters to local stations then to the radar posts which detect the aircraft and guide the missiles and finally to the missiles and guns themselves the air defense suppression campaign begins with the destruction of the command centers which coordinate the network the operation then continues down the line eliminating radar sites and eventually the missiles themselves the first wave of the night attack was spearheaded by the f-117 black jet since it is virtually invisible to Araki radars the noted aviation author and pilot Jeff Ethel explains the role of stealth in Desert Storm so what it is is a very highly developed pinpoint strike airplane it is never going to be a masked bomber in other words you can't hang enough on it to make it drop 20 bombs but it will drop one or two in a very tiny spot and therefore it will probably only be used to hit a pinpoint target something that's very badly needed maybe like a control bunker there was one very classic shot or an f-117 during the war last week dropped a bomb through an air shaft hole and the debris came out the front door that is exactly what the 117 does well it's another air defense sector over in the western part of Iraq it's already been struck by 117 this is a team effort the second aircraft comes through and this part of the building here provides some some structural weakness that will be exploited in this attack and the bomb will get in this area here and this is my counterparts headquarters in Baghdad this is the air headquarters the air force and keep your eye on all sides of the building as the airplane over flies the building and drops the bomb down through the center of the building [Music] on the heels of the f-117 were the air force's f-4g wild weasel which attack critical Iraqi radar sites with harm anti-radar missiles the wild weasels have one of the most dangerous assignments of the strike force its job is basically soaked up to their defense it goes in first and goes out last and the WoW reisel missions on this war four hours+ that's a long time for a fire normally it's an hour hour and a half that most guys are flying so he goes in he sees when the radar comes up he goes down there with a an anti-radiation missile that homes on radar and he gets those guys to fire it or at least to keep the radar on so he can in turn destroy the radar guided triple-a the radar guided Sam's radar sites and the air defense radar sites whatever it is it's going to be a threat to the strike force coming behind it the wild weasels were remarkably successful in their mission suffering no losses in the first wave of the attack first we were shooting the Sam's that we're trying to shoot at the guys that were doing what they were doing the Sam missile sites in town around the perimeter around the perimeter of Baghdad best breath and tell me again about the resistance that your lots of lots of ground fire lights a triple-a at Santa aircraft artillery like I say I think there was one samphire that I saw but it was so far away and up through the smoke and haze it was hard to make it out so nothing came close to you you know but that's the beauty of the system we can stay far enough away that that's not going to be a problem horse from the Sam's anyway the bullets are the ones that scare me we gotta go eat breakfast look at the next mission and getting ready for the next goal the wild weasels mission was not over after the first attack they have continued to fly missions throughout the campaign to protect the other aircraft here the f-4g wild weasel zuv the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing prepare for another mission over Iraq the sophisticated armed anti-radar missiles are carefully loaded under the wing of each aircraft taking part of the mission the air defense suppression phase of the attack proved much more successful than anyone anticipated losses among the later waves of attack aircraft were remarkably low due to the effectiveness of the wild weasels and their navy and marine counterparts this success was due to the close attention paid to this difficult mission by both the United States Air Force and Navy as a result of the Vietnam War the lessons of the air war over Vietnam as well as later air battles in the Mideast in 1973 and 1980 to convince the air force to organize a complex force of aircraft to deal with the growing threat of radar guided anti-aircraft weapons this consists not only of anti-radar wild weasels but radar jamming planes such as the Raven and the Prowler and specialized stealth aircraft such as the f-117 black jet in spite of their success in weakening the Iraqi defenses there was no sense of complacency wild weasels continued their missions throughout the air defense campaign [Music] [Music] for the air campaign to succeed in air superiority had to be won the first phase of the air superiority battle was fought by fighter aircraft like this f15 Eagle of the first Tactical Fighter Wing the fighters flew combat air patrols nicknamed caps to protect the wild weasels and attack planes from Iraqi fighters the United States Air Forces f-15s were joined in their mission by Saudi f-15s British tornados and US Navy f-14 Tomcats their potential opposition was over 400 Iraqi fighters including sophisticated soviet-built mig-29 fulcrum and French built Mirage f1 no one could predict whether the Iraqi fighters would prove much of a threat to the multinational air forces captain Steve Tate was involved in one of the first dogfights of the war in the early morning hours of the 17th of January we were in the I took a fourth ship f-15s up on the first wave that went up to Baghdad area last night took off at 1:30 we were basically supporting a CI package of a bunch of wild weasels and a bunch of f-15es and all just an assortment of other airplanes ef-111 f12 loans that were going up to the southeast portion of Baghdad basically what our job was welfare and remove all the air to air threats for them ef-111 put out a bunch of jamming it's hard to take down a bunch of early warning radars and those kind of things the wild weasels the f4 G's they go in there and they take out all that ground threats that's and threats rather that we're worried about and then the f-111s and the f-15 ease and all the other strikers put the bombs on target so it's a coordinated effort that's what we did the mission lasted about four hours took off out of here 1:13 morning like I said we had a push time of about 3:15 local went up north at about 350 we were on target and south southeast Baghdad AWACS also is a big hand in all this they were the big Triple C command and control of everything they were telling us exactly what was going on what our planes were looking at it's coming at us and the numbers it really worked out well it was an extremely good job as we go up north we hit our target area or a cap point we start captain form there was really no air to air threats up at the time just a few intermittent hits and then they were probably they're landing right back away trying to hide or trying to go to a dispersal basis if they could find them once we got into the cap area we needed to clear out an airfield in southeast Baghdad for f-111s doing a big strike on there and while the weasels were also the big important reasons to get the SAMS knocked down we get up there at about the 350 like I said we started a even I got the contact that AWACS calls out as a hostile chase in my number three men and at about the same time I'm turning back around towards the east and when I turned back around I get a contact on a on a contact that isn't squawking our ifs so when I lock this guy up I can tell that he's not a friendly airplane it comes to fine come to find out that it's an f1 he's at about 8,000 feet headed west towards Baghdad towards my number three and four men also in we Eid M is hostile about 12 miles they take a Fox one a radar missile everything's looking good thinking about taking another Fox one but the no kind of interference running like that so I just let one Fox one go and about four miles in front of me get a huge fireball when he blew up I could see a piece of the airplane blowing up obviously was at night I couldn't see if parachute or anything like that is a huge fireball I don't anticipate anybody getting out of that the only Araki fighters to appear in significant numbers where their two best types the big 29 fulcrum and the Mirage f1 the Iraqis put up very little resistance in the first weeks of the air campaign and over 20 fighters were shot down with no allied losses [Music] well so far it's been a big surprise that the Iraqi Air Force has not done anything basically they've come up to be shot down apparently most of the aircraft are underground and if the first week of the war we're hearing things from the military briefers that 80% of the aircraft are still intact in hardened shelters therefore it's been a non-player and the dogfights have been fairly straightforward go to the 6 o'clock and shoot him down the only double kill of the war has been a Saudi pilot who caught two F ones with Exocet he apparently had no trouble and downing them both this is what the Saudi f15 pilot saw through his gun sight during the dogfight [Music] the mig-29 is an exceptionally capable airplane it is right now in my opinion the finest dog fighter that the Soviets have produced in the modern generation but it's the training that drives this war so far and you can put an ill trained pilot a very capable airplane and put him up against a well-trained pilot in an old airplane and the well-trained pilot always wins it is almost always the case that training makes the difference so it tells me that they're not using the capability of here we've shot down 10 Plus apparently in 29 and they have not been big maneuvering fights they've just been classic sort of get on his rear end and he isn't doing a whole lot you shoot him down so I don't think we're seeing what the airplane could really do the other side of the air superiority battle was the destruction of the Iraqi air bases many of the Iraqi aircraft were protected inside hardened concrete bunkers rather than victoriously destroy each bunker the taxiways leading from the bunkers to the main runways were cut using anti runway weapons this dangerous mission was the specialty of the British tornados squadrons using JP 233u Nicias dispensers these brought dozens of submunitions on the runway putting them out of operation the two British tornados squadrons suffered a higher loss rate than other elements of the multinational force five tornados were lost in combat during the first two weeks of the war in no small measure due to their hazardous assignment the tornados fly these missions using a terrain-following radar the pilots and their navigators cannot see the ground below and must rely entirely on their instruments [Music] [Music] by the third week of the war with the remnants of the Iraqi Air Force fleeing to Iran the tornados shifted their tactics away from the anti runway missions to other types of strikes here one of the squadrons is loaded with conventional bombs for attacks on Iraqi ammunition and missile supplies [Music] [Music] it's a very dynamic war this one so every single day we are looking our tactics and trying to preserve the element of surprise and it's quite natural that we are changing our tactics attack headings and Heights and so on and it's not just a direct result in fact if you look at the number of sorties they've flown over all the losses are extremely small indeed much smaller than anybody actually had predicted so this is just the nature of this type of warfare this whole is a tale of a tornado is a reminder of the narrow escape of one tornado pool during a ground attack issue and as I was recovering pulling back down to the ground there was a very large explosion behind me scared me somewhat do you think that was it I thought it was getting close it was very close to the aeroplane the aeroplane certainly shuddered with the explosion which surprised me because I we weren't expecting any explosions are close to the aircraft and the type of maneuver we were doing that all of the explosions would have been well away from the aircraft and no crimes then about going out on another mission maybe some time soon no no no real bar coffee the tornado gr1 ground attack squadrons are supported by tornado f3 interceptor squadrons the f3 version is a high-performance fighter armed with air-to-air missiles rather than bombs the f3 tornados fly combat air patrols to prevent the interception of the ground attack squadrons by Iraqi fighters [Music] French attack squadrons in the Gulf used the Jaguar strike fighter the French Jaguar strike fighters in Saudi Arabia our desert veterans of the 11th Fighter Squadron French Jaguars in past years have been deployed to the Sahara Desert in North Africa to support Chad in its war with Libya top cover for their missions has come from the Mirage 2000 fighters of the 5th Fighter Squadron we see here the Jaguars are armed with a variety of weapons including the precision attack a s 30 l missile this is a laser-guided missile which strikes targets illuminated by a laser designator carried by the Jaguar fighter this gun camera footage shows an Iraqi hanger being destroyed by an a s 30 o [Music] the French Jaguars can also attack targets using conventional bombs and rockets [Music] [Music] the workhorse of the united states air force strike units in Desert Storm was the f-111 the f-111 pilots of the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing are no strangers to combat having led the attacks on Libya in 1986 the f-111 squadrons were used in night attack missions where their pinpoint accuracy was essential using their paved TAC pod the f-111 F can direct laser-guided bombs to hit precision targets such as bunkers or bridges this f-111 F is setting off on another mission over Iraq and with a pair of gbu 15 laser-guided bombs this aircraft 390 miss Liberty - is my aircraft it has my name on the door it was the first aircraft into Libya it was the first aircraft land at this location and it was led the f-111 fleet into I rock last night or this morning I was assigned to go against a large hangar on an airfield and we in fact found the target launched a precision guided munitions from the rather long standoff range and it went right through the side door of the hangar and destroyed the hangar the f-111 specialty during Desert Storm was night attack although the wild weasels and other anti radar planes blinded much of the Iraqi Air Defense Network the Iraqi still had many conventional anti-aircraft guns aimed with optical sights these guns warmers completely ineffective at night the f-111 attacked at either low or medium altitudes using its sophisticated terrain-following radar for navigation in the dark night skies this f-111 f has just returned from a mission over Iraq [Music] how'd it go oh good good just like this plan boom smooth Oh fine what happened we took off out of here lined up medium-altitude went across the border and found the airfield Dimpy target and what Obama's right through what we wanted you'll have to ask the wizard what it looked like he was off with dark out there for me that was all it was he looks at it and his stuff over there you can see it pretty soon yeah pretty funky weird phone going in we did a PFD sent drop it down to low level into it's a terrain-following radar automatic kitra system decent we it's all totally dark outside and you just descend on a raid arson so you're all on instruments just this side of the border and go across the border low-level real fast bus 600 knots they're in a decent where we were getting some some indications on our robbed here the radar search radars were picking us up so it was it was kind of intense uh you know we've been knowing that they knew that we were coming and not being able to see anything outside and just kind of going on instruments what we did was we came in low-level climb to 5,000 feet drop the bombs we turn away from the target continue to laze until the bomb impacts and then we get back down to low level for the egress it gives the wizzo a better look angle into the target and a little more energy on the bomb [Music] the pave tank pod underneath the f-111 F is the key element in pinpoint laser strikes the pod contains a laser designator the weapon systems officer or wizzo aims the laser at the target and the bomb homes in honor affecting laser light the bombs have a small sensor in their nose which can sense the laser light bouncing off the target the sensor in the nose of the bomb automatically steers the bomb into the target this is a videotape from an f1 11 F attacking an airfield in Iraq others strike units in the Gulf are equipped with the newer f-15e strike eagle the strike eagle is a two-seat version of the single-seat f-15 Eagle interceptor the wizzo in the rear seat operates the terrain-following radar and target senses like his counterpart in the f-111 M this permitted the strike eagle squadrons to carry out their dangerous low altitude missions under the protective cover of darkness during the opening stages of the air campaign the wizzo can see the target using a high-resolution radar imaging system we see here in this case is examining an airfield and selecting targets there and the f-15e is also fitted with a lantern night attack system this provides the pilot and Rizzo with thermal images of the terrain in front of them the WIZO can use the thermal imaging night vision system to pick out pinpoint targets first identified by the coarser radar system f-111s and f-15es took part in the anti runway campaign using the French designed of Matra Durand doll bomb it is propelled by a rocket and penetrates deep below the runway exploding moments later [Music] besides the specialized attack aircraft fighter bombers were extensively used in Operation Desert Storm in daylight interdiction raids to pound a rocky army formations the f-16 fighter bomber has borne the brunt of these missions for the US Air Force many of the squadrons taking part in these missions are flown by Air National Guard pilots their tails are emblazoned with the insignia of their home stations Syracuse New York South Carolina months ago before Desert Shield these pilots were flying commercial airliners and the ground crews were back in the States that their regular civilian jobs looks good target areas supposed to be good and we got good results this morning we expect the same staff ternoon and if I was staying good for hours it helped us out quite a bit so we're looking forward to it the a-10 popularly called the warthogs by its pilots has a special mission in the desert storm air war its specialty is tank attack it is designed for close air support attacking tank columns and artillery emplacements with gun fire bombs and guided missiles in its nose is a massive 30 millimeter multi barrel cannon able to penetrate the side armor and tops of tanks although the new high-tech weapons such as laser-guided bombs have attracted most of the public attention many of the air attacks have used more conventional weaponry one of the most common munitions for close air support missions has been the cluster bomb the ground crew of this a-10 squadron are preparing a load of cluster bombs for an a-10 mission against Iraqi armed forces in occupied Kuwait [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a cluster bomb consists of an outer shell filled with dozens of smaller bomblets after it is dropped the outer container peels away and the target area is blanketed with a deadly carpeted explosions the Kuwaiti air force has also participated in raids against Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait a single squadron of Kuwaiti Skyhawks has taken part [Music] [Applause] the US Navy has supported the air campaign from six of its carrier's stationed in the Red Sea and in the Persian Gulf the f-14 Tomcat provides combat air patrols for Navy strike missions much as its land-based counterparts the f-15 and the tornado the a7 is a veteran of the Vietnam air war and two squadrons were still in service during Operation Desert Storm the a7 was used for daytime interdiction missions as well as attacks on airfields and other vital tires Naval Aviation offers the element of surprise the mobility of the carriers allowed them to attack Iraq from unpredictable direction [Music] [Music] like yeah well it was good the video on the second wall I wasn't so good it was when I locked it up and ran off the top of the hangar hit on window it glanced off the top the hangar went on the back side of it so I missed it about a hundred feet the other one hit the side it was pretty wild to drop for ten years I never seen one go off the surface-to-air threat as far as missiles appear to be quite minimal the triple a fire was excessive to say incredible would be an understatement there was an overwhelming amount of small arms as well as a triple a fire that was in the general area and it spread over an enormous area in the western part of Iraq it looks it looks like if you can imagine the fireworks display at Disneyworld and if you multiply Disneyworld about a hundred times it's just just a continual sparkling effect of white flashes that range in height that are well below us but nonetheless from the surface upwards of three and four thousand feet it looks like and it's continuous from the period of time we were in there I would estimate that it was well over 15 minutes of continual barrage fire the workhorse of the Navy attack squadrons in Operation Desert Storm was the a-6 intruder flown from carriers such as the USS Ranger seen here steaming in the Persian Gulf the a 6e intruder has more advanced a night attack systems than earlier versions used we were on the strike that went into the airfield just south and west of Baghdad a terrific light show as everybody else you just talked he said there was a lot of triple-a out there it really odd me having to dive into it our attack delivery meant that we had to go had to dive into that stuff and I just is really hard keep my eyes and my concentration on what I was doing in the airplane it was really just spectacular I can't there's not enough wiles and galleys and all that kind of good stuff to tell you just what the light show looked like our airplane has two guys in it in the BN has a what's called a FLIR forward-looking infrared radar and he said that there was smoke and and fire and just sand and dust blowing everywhere from all the guys hitting it there was we were actually the eighth a six across the target for from the guys off to Saratoga and then for from our squadron here on the Kennedy so there was quite a lot of airplanes and quite a lot of ordnance had just gone off and we're the last guys coming through so if you can imagine it was a lot of dust and a lot of explosions going off we're going in this combat camera footage comes from an a 6e intruder on the night attack mission against a facility in Iraq the a6c has a night vision sensor called the trap which enables it to attack targets day or night [Music] another weapon that saw its combat debut in Desert Storm was the slam missile the slam is a version of the harpoon anti-ship missile modified for use against Lander targets it has a sensor in the nose which allows the weapons officer to see what the missile is seeing and fly it right into the target the United States Marine Corps has its own aviation squadrons flying many of the same types of aircraft as the Navy in the fighting one of its most versatile aircraft was the fa-18 Hornet the Hornet is a fighter bomber capable of dogfighting Iraqi fighters or attacking ground targets during the initial phase of the Desert Storm air campaign the marine f-18 squadrons were used in anti-radar missions firing harm missiles much like their wild weasel counterparts in the Air Force the Marine Hornets fly from land bases situated around the Gulf these Marine squadrons are preparing for anti-radar strikes against Iraqi position [Music] to permit aircraft to carry the maximum amount of weapons they often take off with their fuel tanks only partially filled once airborne they hook up with aerial refueling aircraft such as these marine kc-130 tankers aerial refuelling allows them to carry out their missions deep into the center of Iraq the tanker squadrons are one of a host of specialized support units is central to the conduct of air combat in these marine tankers are filling the tanks of marine and Navy strike aircraft Dingle the av-8b harrier to jump jet formed the backbone of marine ground attack squadrons during Operation Desert Storm these jump Jets operated from improvised runways near the front lines providing close air support the nearby Marine ground units during the first weeks of the air campaign attack sorties were often frustrated by poor weather conditions targets are hard to find I mean if and if they're not there sometimes it's better to bring it back reload it and reconstitute for another mission rather than just wasting it a normal mission for us lasts about an hour from takeoff to landing but of course with the briefing and debriefing that goes on sometimes it takes maybe four to five hours and starts to finish while marine intruders and Hornets attacked deep into Iraq barriers through schools admissions into Kuwait providing an essential stop ending up of Iraqi ground units with its air force decimated and the multinational air forces dominating the skies the Iraqis were forced to resort to their Scud missiles to attack Saudi Arabia attacks were also launched at Israel in an attempt to widen the war Scud attacks against Tel Aviv and Riyadh became a nightly occurrence Scud is a NATO codename for the Soviet r17 Zemlya ballistic missile the Iraqis have modified the missiles into a longer ranged version called Al Hussein the original missile the original Scud as the Russians would call it r17 is a relatively short range system it's a ranges around 300 kilometers meaning about 200 miles that's not far enough to fire from Iraq and to some of the targets that it wanted to hit originally what was happening this was back in the time of the iran-iraq war the Iraqis wanted to target a Iran which is quite a ways from the Iraqi border so what they did is they would take three scuds and chop them up and take the fuel cells out of them and lengthen the missile to put more fuel in it and at the same time cut down in the warhead weight and this combination of features cutting down on the warhead weight and expanding the amount of fuel and it gave them greater range it doubled the effective range from around 225 miles to somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 miles to enable them to hit a Iran well it also enabled them in this context to be fired from within Iraq and hit targets such as Dharan or Riyadh in Saudi Arabia or for that matter to hit targets in Israel - or Tel Aviv the large number of mobile Scud launchers proved to be a greater problem than was originally anticipated at the outset of the war there were two main groupings of scuds there was a group of mobile scuds and a group of fixed site scuds the mobile scuds are vessels that are mounted on a large eight wheel truck on the military acronym is usually tell which stands for transporter erector launcher means that the vehicle carries the muscle and also can erect the muscle put it vertical and fire it it's quite a big vehicle the Russians who designed the vehicle call it kasha lot which means sperm whale so that gives you some idea the relative size of the vehicle that was one group that was about 36 launchers and they were divided into at least two launched brigades perhaps more one of the groups was located north of the Kuwaiti border in the eastern section of Iraq there was another group of these who were located further out in the West more towards the Israeli direction in the western desert of Iraq now these the second grouping was a fixed site grouping what it was is that the Iraqi started building the Scud missiles themselves their own local derivative of the Scud they couldn't build these elaborate mobile launchers and so they simply took simple base plates to wreck the missile and then they set up concrete bunkers in the first wave of attacks these bunker sites were the first ones that were targeted the reason for this was that the bunker sites were out in the western section of Iraq near H 2 and H 3 airfield in western Iraq they were clearly targeted at the Israelis there so there was a fear right from the outside of the war that what the Iraqis were trying to do was drag in the Israelis into the war and so those were the first targets at first the mobile scud missile launchers were not a major target they're hard to find even though they're a very large vehicle even though they're called sperm whales on a scale of things they're hard to find they're not much different from a big truck that you might find on a city street in Baghdad or Basra but then once the Iraqi started firing these targets in Israel and at Saudi Arabia a great deal of attention was paid into hunting them out and trying to destroy them but why won't the scuds used against military targets the reason that they're not terribly accurate is that they were designed originally to to deliver thermonuclear warheads these these weapons were developed in the 1950s by the Soviet Army to to fire tactical nuclear warheads so with their export to countries like Iraq or Libya they have to be used in a different role because these countries don't have small thermonuclear weapons instead they're used with high explosive weapons and here they can't really be used effectively against military targets their inaccuracy is so great they have an accuracy roughly on the order of a kilometer to bottom mile on either side of the target and if the missile is erected in great haste as appears to have been the case with many of these missile launches the accuracy was even worse it could be five miles off six miles off seven miles off so it's really more a terror weapon it can be used for the bombardment of very large military targets such as airfields we've seen a lot of attacks against Tehran for example when you come right down to it it's mainly a terror weapon to be used against civilian targets that aren't protected anticipating an Iraqi missile attack American forces had deployed the Patriot system their cities and bases in Saudi Arabia the Patriot is a new medium to high altitude anti-aircraft missile developed by the US Army in the mid-1980s it was modified to enable it to shoot down ballistic missiles as shown in this 1986 test firing against an army lands missile [Music] at the heart of the patriot fire unit is a sophisticated phased array radar the radar locates and tracks the incoming Scud missile and then guides the patriot missile on an intercept course that's made about 20 145 or 945 in the evening we received word that there was possible spread alert incoming scuds with the mission we have were always on alert 24 hours a day so it was just a matter of fine-tuning some things and surely there after we received the first volley of Scud missiles headed towards this area and successfully knocked them out of the sky this footage shows the patriot in action against Scud missiles never before as an air defense missile proved so consistently successful these encounters marked the first time in military history that one missile has been shot down by another in wartime the streaks of light falling to earth are the debris of the Scud missiles intercepted above the clouds by the Patriot missiles [Music] although the Patriot has proved very successful in intercepting the scuds the Iraqi missiles have still managed to do some damage in some cases the Patriots truck near the scuffed breaking it into three large pieces falling to earth at high speed this debris caused extensive damage to apartment buildings in Tel Aviv and Riyadh [Music] by the third week of the campaign the squadron's of the multinational air forces had flown over 40,000 sorties the high tempo of air operations was made possible not only by the determination of the pilots but by the dedication and skill of the ground crew at the same time we need to remember that our young maintenance kids around here they're the real heroes in this thought let's go fly the good jets and everything but they're the ones that keep going and those are my heroes he's 21 22 year old kids that are out here turning these aircraft right now around the relentless pace of the air missions continued into the second month of the fighting by the third week of the campaign air superiority over Iraq have been decisively won nearly 30 Iraqi fighters had been shot down in dogfights and no Allied aircraft were lost in air-to-air battles encounters with Iraqi aircraft became a rare event is over a hundred fled to neighboring Iran the focus of Desert Storm switched from the strategic targets in central Iraq to Iraqi Truth concentrations in and near Kuwait the war was far from over anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad proved just as fierce as in the first weeks of the war it was now the turn at the elite Republican Guard to taste the wrath of allied airpower [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Phil Cipher

Views: 2,087,805

Rating: 4.5903249 out of 5

Keywords: Desert Storm: The Air Assault, !991 Gulf War, Desert Storm, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Naval Aviation, Iraqi Air Force, Air Assault, Air Campaign, SCUD Missiles, Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Wild Weasel, F-111 Aardvark, F-117 Nighthawk, Combat Air Patrol, F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Hornet, Panavia Tornado, Roysl Air Force, Royal Saudi Air Force, French Air Force, Video Ordnance, Firepower

Id: 7tboKj6ndnc

Length: 63min 31sec (3811 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2017