Desert Storm: The Air Assault

[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 an allied aircraft soon roamed at will in the skies over iraq this video ordinance program examines the first month of the desert storm air campaign from air raids over baghdad to the scud missile attacks on saudi arabia and israel [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 [Music] [Music] centers [Music] [Music] we've had a very busy evening uh as a matter of fact it's not over yet this is the opening round of the war uh the tomahawk strikes will continue for another uh 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 airstrikes have started the tomahawks have already started impacting the baghdad area and there are engagements uh fighter engagements have happening over land at this point uh we are following the course of all that as we are remaining vigilant as we steam to our next tomahawk launch point 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 we i think that they were said there was approximately 500 cruise missiles in the theater on 56 ships and so far i think they would have shot about a third of those and within in the first week about 150 have managed to go off the tomahawk is a is a terrific weapon for this kind of warfare particularly this kind of warfare it's a significant development to the navy it may not sound an 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 a6 a7 in those days fa18 now and we had big guns 16-inch guns off the battleship which proved effective in vietnam but against a more capable or more distant enemy were 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 in the conventional sense that all they were there is to defend the carrier and that was 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 worked and the initial indications are that it's worked exceptionally well during the initial stage of the flight the tomahawk uses radar terrain comparison guidance codename terkong 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 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 sites 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 sights and eventually the missiles themselves [Music] the first wave of the night attack was spearheaded by the f-117 black jet since it is virtually invisible to iraqi radars the noted aviation author and pilot jeff ethel explains the role of stealth in desert storm so what it is is a a very highly developed pinpoint strike airplane it is never going to be a mass 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 there's another air defense sector over in the western part of iraq it's already been struck by a 117 this is a team effort the second aircraft comes through and this part of the building here provides some construction weakness that will be exploited in this attack and the bomb will hit in this area here and this is my counterparts headquarters in baghdad this is the air uh headquarters the air force and keep your eye on all sides of the building as the airplane overflies the building and drops the bomb down through the center of the building [Music] on the heels of the f-117s were the air force's f4g wild weasels which attacked 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 soak up the air defense it goes in first and goes out last and the the wow weasel missions on this war four hours plus that's a long time for a fighter 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 the radar guided aaa the radar-guided sams uh radar sites and the air defense radar sites uh 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 we were we were shooting the sams who were trying to shoot at the guys who were doing what they were doing downtown the sam missile sites in town around the perimeter around the perimeter of baghdad that's correct and tell me again about the resistance that you ran into lots of lots of ground fire lots of triple a at santa aircraft artillery and like i say i think there was one sand pirate 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 no but that's the beauty of the system we can stay far enough away that that's not going to be a problem for us from the sams anyway the bullets are the ones that scare me now you're going back after breakfast we've got to go eat breakfast look at the next mission and get ready for the next go 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 f4g wild weasels of the 35th tactical fighter wing prepare for another mission over iraq the sophisticated harm anti-radar missiles are carefully loaded under the wing of each aircraft taking part in 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 1982 convinced 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 blackjack so 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 air superiority had to be won the first phase of the air superiority battle was fought by fighter aircraft like this f-15 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 force's f-15s were joined in their mission by saudi f-15s british tornadoes and u.s navy f-14 tomcats their potential opposition was over 400 iraqi fighters including sophisticated soviet-built mig-29 fulcrums and french-built mirage f1s no one could predict whether the iraqi fighters would prove much of a threat to the multinational air forces 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 four ship f-15s up on the first wave that went up to baghdad area last night took off at 130. we were basically supporting a seahad package of a bunch of wild weasels and a bunch of f-15es and all just an assortment of other airplanes ef-111s and f-111s that we're going up to the southeast portion of baghdad basically what our job was go up there and remove all the air-to-air threats for them ef-111s put out a bunch of jamming to try to take down a bunch of early warning radars and those kind of things the uh wild weasels the f4 g's they go in there and they take out all the ground threats the same threats rather that we're worried about and then the f-111s and the f-15es 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 at 1 30 in the morning like i said we had a push time of about 315 local went up north at about 350 we were on target in south southeast baghdad [Music] a wax 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 airplanes were looking at us 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 our cap point we started capping for them there was really no air threats up at the time just a few uh intermittent hits and then they were probably they're landing right back away trying to hide or trying to go to dispersal bases if they could find them once we got into the cap area we needed to clear out an airfield in southeast baghdad for uh f-111 is doing a big strike on there and wild weasel tour also the big important reasons to get the sams knockdown we get up there at about 350 like i said we started a engagement i got the contact that aywax calls out as a hostel chasing my number three man and at about the same time i'm turning back around towards the east and when i turn 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 [Music] it comes to find 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 and we eidm is hostile about 12 miles i take a fox 1 or radar missile everything's looking good thinking about taking another fox 1 but no kind of interference or anything like that so i just let the one fox one go and about the four miles in front of me uh get a huge fireball when he blew up i could see a piece of the airplane blowing up um obviously it was at night i couldn't see if a parachute or anything like that is a huge fireball i don't anticipate anybody getting out of that the only iraqi fighters to appear in significant numbers were their two best types the mig-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 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 uh apparently most of the aircraft are underground and at the first week of the war we're hearing things from the military briefers that 80 percent of the aircraft are still intact uh in hardened shelters therefore it's been a non-player and the dog fights have been fairly straightforward go to the six 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 in downing them both this is what the saudi f-15 pilot saw through his gun sight during the dogfight [Music] foreign the mig-29 is an exceptionally capable airplane it is uh 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 in 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 the airplane we've shot down 10 plus apparently big 29s and they have not been big maneuvering fights they've just been classic uh sort of get on his rear end and he isn't doing a whole lot and 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 laboriously 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 tornado squadrons using jp 233 munitions dispensers these dropped dozens of sub-munitions on the runway putting them out of operation the two british tornado squadrons suffered a higher loss rate than other elements of the multinational force five tornadoes were lost in combat during the first two weeks of the war in no small measure due to their hazardous assignment the tornadoes 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] by the third week of the war with the remnants of the iraqi air force fleeing to iran the tornadoes 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 okay [Music] it's a very dynamic war this one so every single day we are looking at 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 we've flown overall 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 hole in the tail of a tornado is a reminder of the narrow escape of one tornado crew during a ground attack mission and as i was recovering pulling back down to the ground there was a very large explosion behind me uh scared me somewhat do you think that was it i thought it was getting close it was very close to the airplane the airplane certainly shuddered with the explosion which surprised me because i we weren't expecting any explosions that close to the aircraft and the type of maneuver we were doing all of the explosions would have been well away from the aircraft and no qualms then about uh going out on another mission maybe sometime soon er no no no real problems 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 f-3 tornadoes fly combat air patrols to prevent the interception of the ground attack squadrons by iraqi fighters french attack squadrons in the gulf use the jaguar strike fighter the french jaguar strike fighters in saudi arabia are 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 fifth fighter squadron we see here the jaguars are armed with a variety of weapons including the precision attack as30l 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 hangar being destroyed by an as30l [Music] the french jaguars can also attack targets using conventional bombs and [Music] rockets [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-111f can direct laser-guided bombs to hit precision targets such as bunkers or bridges this f-111f is setting off on another mission over iraq armed with a pair of gbu-15 laser-guided bombs this aircraft 390 miss liberty 2 is my aircraft it has my name on the door it was the first aircraft into libya it was the first aircraft to land at this location and it was led the f-111 fleet into iraq last night earlier this morning i was assigned to go against a large hangar on an airfield and we in fact found the target launched precision guided munitions from a rather long standoff range and it went right through the side door of the hangar and destroyed the hangar the f-111 specialty enduring desert storm was night attack although the wild weasels and other anti-radar planes blinded much of the iraqi air defense network the iraqis still had many conventional anti-aircraft guns aimed with optical sights these guns were almost 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-111f has just returned from a mission over iraq [Music] let it go oh good feel good just like this plan goes smooth tell us about it what happened uh we took off out of here climbed up uh medium altitude went uh across the border and uh found the airfield the diffie target and uh put our bombs right through what we wanted to put him through what it looked like uh you'll have to ask the wizard what it looked like it was awful dark out there for me that was all it was uh he looks at it and uh his stuff over there and you can see it pretty pumped i can see yeah it's pretty fun dirty phone going in uh we did a tf descent dropping down to uh low level into uh it's a terrain falling radar automatic uh system decent uh where you it's all totally dark outside and you just descend on radars and so you're all on instruments [Music] this is just this side of the border we go across the border low level real fast about 600 knots during the decent we were getting some uh some indications on our rob here the radar search radars were picking us up so uh it was it was kind of intense uh you know knowing that they knew that we were coming and then 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 5000 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 whizzo a better look angle into the target and a little more energy on the bomb [Music] the paved pod underneath the f-111f 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 on reflecting 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 f-111f attacking an airfield in iraq [Music] other strike units in the gulf are equipped with the newer f-15e strike evil the strike eagle is a two-seat version of the single-seat f-15 eagle interceptor the whizzo in the rear seat operates the terrain following radar and target sensors like his counterpart in the f-111m 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 radar imaging system as we see here in this case he's examining an airfield and selecting targets there the f-15e is also fitted with a lantern night attack system this provides the pilot and whizzo with thermal images of the terrain in front of them the whizzo can use the thermal imaging night vision system to pick out pinpoint targets first identified by the corsair radar system [Music] f-111s and f-15es took part in the anti-runway campaign using the french designed matra durandal bomb it is propelled by a rocket and penetrates deep below the runway exploding moments later besides the specialized attack aircraft fighter bombers were extensively used in operation desert storm in daylight interdiction raids to pound iraqi army formations the f-16 fighter bomber has borne the brunt of these missions for the u.s 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 at their regular civilian jobs uh looks good target air is supposed to be good and we got good results this morning we expect the same this afternoon and as long as weather's staying good for us it helps us out quite a bit so we're looking forward to it we'll get the job back we'll be home soon the a10 popularly called the warthog 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 gunfire 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 weapons 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 the deadly carpet of 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 carriers 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 so so 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 targets naval aviation offers the element of surprise the mobility of the carriers allowed them to attack iraq from unpredictable directions [Music] so [Music] good yeah walleyes were good the video on the second walleye wasn't so good it was when i locked it up it ran off the top of the hanger and it hit off when it glanced off the top of the hangar went on the back side of it so i missed it about 100 feet the other one hit the side it was uh pretty wild to drop it for uh 10 years and not ever see one go out like that the surface-to-air threat as far as missiles appeared to be quite minimal the aaa fire was excessive to say incredible would be an understatement it was an overwhelming amount of small arms as well as a aaa 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 disney world and you multiply disney world about 100 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 a6 intruder flown from carriers such as the uss ranger seen here steaming in the persian gulf the a6e intruder has more advanced night attack systems than earlier versions used in the vietnam war we were on the strike that went into the airfield just south and west of baghdad uh a terrific light show as everybody else you just talked to said there was a lot of triple a out there it really awed me uh having to dive into it our our attack delivery meant that we had to go had to dive into that stuff and i just it's really hard to keep my eyes and my concentration on what i was doing uh in the airplane it was really just spectacular i can't there's not enough wilds and gollys and all that kind of good stuff to tell you just what the light show looked like our airplane has two guys in it and the bn has a what's called a flear 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 a6 across the target uh four from uh the guys off to saratoga and then four from our squadron here on kennedy so there was quite a lot of airplanes and quite a lot of ordinance had just gone off and we were the last guys coming through so you can imagine it was a lot of dust and a lot of explosions going off as we were going in this combat camera footage comes from an a6e intruder on a night attack mission against a facility in iraq the a6e has a night vision sensor called the tram which enables it to attack targets day or night [Music] so [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 land at 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 fa-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 positions [Music] so so 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 refuelling 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 essential to the conduct of air combat these marine tankers are filling the tanks of marine and navy strike are getting filled aircraft and picked approximately five to six minutes to do that both asics uh are still hanging back they haven't gotten in their hoses yet uh the av-8b harrier 2 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 for 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 just better to bring it back reload it and reconstitute for another mission rather than just wasting it now when you go out on the mission how long is it before you come back a normal mission for us lasts about an hour from take off the landing but of course with the briefing and debriefing that goes on uh sometimes it takes maybe four to five hours from start to finish while marine intruders and hornets attacked deep into iraq harriers flew scores of missions into kuwait providing an essential softening 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 code name for the soviet r-17 zemlia ballistic missile the iraqis have modified the missiles into a longer-ranged version called al-hussein the original missile the original scud or as the russians would call it r17 is a relatively short range system it's a range is 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 uh what was happening this was back in the time of the iran-iraq war the iraqis wanted to target tehran which is quite a ways from the iraqi border so what they did is they would take uh 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 on the warhead weight and this combination of features cutting down on the warhead weight and ex expanding the amount of fuel in 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 tehran will also enable 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 haifar 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 uh there was a group of mobile scuds and a group of fixed site scuds the mobile scuds are missiles that are mounted on a large eight-wheel truck the military acronyms usually tell which stands for transporter erector launcher means that the vehicle carries the missile and also can erect the missile put it vertical and fire it um it's quite a big vehicle the russians uh who designed the vehicle call it kashalut which means sperm whale so that gives you some idea of the relative size of the vehicle that was one group that was about 36 launchers and they were divided into at least two launch brigades perhaps more one of the groups was located uh north of the kuwaiti border in the eastern section of iraq there was another group of these were located further on 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 iraqis started building the scud missiles themselves uh their own local derivative of the scud they couldn't build these elaborate uh mobile launchers and so they simply took simple base plates to erect the missile and then they set up concrete bunkers in the first wave of attacks these uh 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 uh near h2 and h3 uh airfield in western iraq they were clearly targeted at the israelis there so there was a fear right from the outset 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 uh on a scale of things they're 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 weren't the scuds used against military targets the reason that they're not terribly accurate is that they were designed originally to to uh to deliver thermonuclear warheads these these weapons were developed in the 1950s by the soviet army to uh to fire tactical nuclear warheads so with uh 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 about a 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 um it can be used for the bombardment of very large military targets such as airfields we've seen a lot of attacks against iran for example but when you come right down to it it's mainly a terror weapon to be used against uh civilian targets that aren't protected [Music] anticipating an iraqi missile attack american forces had deployed the patriot system near 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 lance missile 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 [Music] last night about uh 21 45 or 9 45 in the evening we'd receive words that there was uh possible scud alert incoming scuds uh with the mission we have we're always on alert 24 hours a day so it's just a matter of fine-tuning some things and shortly thereafter 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 has an air defense missile proved so consistently successful these encounters mark 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 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 struck near the scud 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 squadrons 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 crews at the same time we need to remember that uh our young maintenance kids around here they're the real heroes in this pilots go fly the good jets and everything but they're the ones that keep them going and those are my heroes these 21 22 year old kids that are out here turning these aircraft right now they're the real heroes around here 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 had 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 as over a hundred fled to neighboring iran the focus of desert storms switched from the strategic targets in central iraq to iraqi troop 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 of the elite republican god to taste the wrath of allied air power [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you

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Views: 151,791

Rating: 4.7599459 out of 5

Keywords: desert storm, gulf war, air war, iraq, iran, syria, isis, trump, bush, obama, biden, 2020, fighter, pilot, aviation, aviator, combat, military, channel, discovery, history, top gun, maverick, f-16, f-15, f-14, viper, eagle, tomcat, falcon, squadron, wing, wings, documentary, mig, sukhoi, russian, air force, naval, attack, footage, strike

Id: MyjnMKNifUo

Length: 62min 34sec (3754 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021