The Lessons of Desert Storm

it's kind of hard to believe that desert storm was 30 years ago because it doesn't seem like that to me now that short conflict taught our military a lot of lessons both good and bad so just to review the chronology in august of 1990 saddam hussein invaded kuwait as a response to that the u.s military launched what was called desert shield which was designed to keep saddam from also invading saudi arabia at the same time president h w bush bush 41 gave saddam and ultimatum get out of kuwait or we're going to attack so saddam did not political wait so on the evening of january 17 1991 we launched the first wave of strikes now it's important to note that iraq in 1991 had a robust military especially when you compare that era to the taliban post-911 or isis or the other asymmetric threats that we've fought in the last 19 or 20 years so iraq had latest generation russian-made fighters like the mig-29 they had russian tanks they had an infantry and an elite force called the republican guard they also and this is what concerns aviators the most had an integrated air defense system that was made by the soviet union so the first order of business as we were encouraging saddam to pull out of kuwait was to roll back that integrated air defense system so that we could bomb targets with impunity so night one which all of us stateside watched on cnn the boys in baghdad three correspondents who were located in a hotel downtown including wolf blitzer we saw explosions on the horizon we saw any aircraft fire going up from adjacent rooftops and we saw the plume of surface-to-air missiles heading skyward and all i could think at that time was my friends are in harm's way the navy had stationed six aircraft carriers in the red sea and the gulf a very formidable presence the air force was there in saudi arabia and gutter and bahrain and the marine corps and the army had also mobilized so we really had an overwhelming force to throw at iraq so again the first phase is the integrated air defense rollback conducted by tomahawk missiles cruise missiles fired from surface ships and submarines and also there was a new plane involved in that first wave the stealth fighter so america really didn't know what this airplane was at that time but they were quickly briefed by the pentagon on this new capability and obviously stealth technology has been a game changer it's fundamental now f-35 b-2 you know if you're going to build a new fighter it's going to have to have stealth because stealth makes an airplane not invisible as our previous president would submit but invisible to radar so that's really good when you're going against an integrated air defense system so the first couple of days using tomahawks and f-117s but in time you've got to use conventional airplanes too so you start tasking a6 intruders f-18 hornets a-10s harriers british tornadoes conventional airplanes not stealth airplanes so now the way that you make them have a chance to survive in a robust sam threat is you put a jamming airplane in company with them in this case it was an ea 6b prowler so there was a rule that you couldn't go feet dry without a prowler in company so the other thing that was new in desert storm was the way that the missions were assigned so the navy being an expeditionary force tends to think as a as the of the aircraft carrier as the center of gravity but that's not how this war was being fought the center of gravity was the joint tasking agency in riyadh saudi arabia and they would assign missions to all the assets in the theater via an air tasking order an ato so the navy had not kept up in terms of technology in the intervening years so at the outset of desert storm they didn't have any way to get the ato electronically they actually had to send an airplane from the carrier into saudi arabia to get a hard copy print out of the air tasking order and bring it back to the ship so as a result the navy was getting the second and third order missions the air force was getting all the choice combat air patrol and other strike missions and as a result if you look at the box score of who got all the mig kills during desert storm by and large it's f-15 eagles so that was a lesson for the navy we needed to get our act together in terms of our ability to get electronic mission tasking on board the carrier the other thing we needed to do was to get in the cockpit identification friend or full capability so you can imagine in a chaotic battle of britain scenario as was some of the missions during desert storm you need to have in the cockpit ability to be able to decipher between friend and foe the f-15c eagle had that capability the tomcat for instance did not so the tasking authority whose theme was the best asset for the mission they were not interested in just everybody gets a trophy so the choice combat air patrol missions were going to the evil and as a result as i said the navy only had two mig kills guys i know mark fox who went on to be a an admiral and nick mongillo who i served with later both got a mig during desert storm so the other thing we learned was some of our tactics that we were wedded to were not going to work in this modern warfare arena particularly the asics intruder the harrier marine corps attack airplane and the british tornado would come in low and then when they got the proper distance from the target they'd pop up drop their bombs and then get back down low and the idea was you're below the radar horizon so that'll make you able to survive well that was a problem because when you go down low now you're vulnerable to small arms fire to shoulder-fired tactical surface-to-air missiles and you're also very vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns so we learned that one the hard way we had four intruders shot down two hornets that went in low five harriers and a handful of tornadoes so the lion's share of the aviators who became pows were in those platforms so after desert storm the tactics of going in low were completely wiped off the table and we got into the standoff high altitude delivery profiles that we use today so the f-14 as i said was used as a secondary combat air patrol asset this was before the f-14 had precision guided bomb capability in fact one of the guys who was in the f-14 who got shot down over western iraq this guy named larry slade so pilot in rio the pilot devin jones when they landed he got picked up by the combat search and rescue team the rio larry slade did not and he became a pow so he was a pow for the balance of war ironically larry became the junior officer who was instrumental in incorporating precision guided bomb delivery capability in the f-14 in the years subsequent to that so that's what served us well in the post-911 conflicts particularly enduring freedom you know the tomcat was the long-range asset that could go in there with the lantern pot and the precision guided bombs and and take out the headquarters but not touch the mosque larry slade was the guy who made that happen a pow from desert storm so the idea of getting shot at by a sam a strategic sam is kind of a legacy idea in the wake of 9 11. again the taliban do not have an integrated air defense system now in the future if we go against china or russia or north korea we will have to worry about this capability but in the meantime the last time we had to worry about this was desert storm so let me show you this is a f-18 heads-up display and so listen and watch through this guy's windscreen and you'll see what it's like when you're going against [Laughter] okay oh so i mean that's old school action right there so you could hear his wingmen talking you could hear the aywax who's there controlling uh agency talking you could hear sort of some administrative comms in there so it's a real challenge in the heat of battle to decipher what is immediate action from what's administrative intense and as you look at that you can also see the plume of the surface-to-air missile that's coming at him go through the windscreen there so just like we did with the how goose didn't have to die episode if you haven't watched that one check it out i got my training asset here my f-14a from vf32 first tour so you remember in that episode we were talking about energy management and this is the same sort of thing that pilots have to be cognizant of when they're going against a surface-to-air missile threat so normally if you're not in a stealth airplane and a tomcat is not a stealth airplane a hornet is not a stealth airplane an eagle is not a stealth air stealth airplane so you're either going to be above 10 000 feet or you're going to have a jammer with you and in this era the jammer was a prowler right so but sometimes you would be caught without a jammer or this sam threat was not predicted because the intel was off or whatever so you you got hung out sometimes and you heard this four plane mission of f-16 falcons was seriously hung out and that stroke three is going against six sams at once and you heard also his wingmen stroke 4 was hit he was shot down and so the basics of defeating a sam after everything else has failed is kind of like dog fighting against another airplane except the other airplane is a missile right so you heard they're calling out clock codes you heard the titter of their radar warning indicator so it was a little electronic pulse and then you heard a beep beep beep so that's when they're being tracked and then when they're when they get locked up it's that other tone so let's say you're in the cockpit and you see that you've been lit up from about a two o'clock position so you look out and you'd be looking for that plume so you see the plume and then you don't know which airplane around you it's getting it's tracking because it doesn't come right for you so it's coming up and then suddenly you realize oh it's on me okay at that point you have to manage your energy just like during a dog fight so the trick is to hold your money move until the last second and then pull and take the missile 180 out so that it overshoots and it can't aerodynamically hack the the g it needs to make in order to hit you okay so if you defeat one missile that's good but this guy's getting shot at by six missiles so you seriously have to manage your energy because this move is a function of having a lot of g available proper air speed so if you use all of your available energy in that first last stitch move and then you're sitting here floundering then you're gonna get hit by one of the subsequent missiles now this guy survived so he did a great job of always managing his energy he he defeats one gets knots back on the airplane defeats the other one intense that's good stuff so but that's a lost art in some ways because now we're because of what we learned from desert storm about precision guided bombs and stealth we're now not getting in the weeds to drop our ordinance we're 10 miles away and above 20 000 feet okay so the idea of dog fighting with a strategic sam is sort of passe although if we go against china or russia or north korea those kinds of defense maneuvers will be back in fashion so desert storm was over pretty quick about 100 days saddam surrendered we actually had a victory parade and president bush 41 made the what many view is a very smart call to not keep the tanks rolling and invade and take over and force regime change so he called it accepted the surrender we're done however we did not leave the area completely right so this is one of the other lessons learned we we kept our footprint in saudi arabia places like prince sultan air base and riyadh where the joint task force was gutter kuwait and bahrain in time we had to establish a no-fly zone in fact i was patrolling the no-fly zone on two different deployments i actually was in desert storm i was part of the first aircraft carrier strike group to be on the scene after the hostilities phase so when i got there as part of vf143 aboard the uss dwight eisenhower in the fall of 1991 it was like showing up after a really wild party the oil fires were still burning because the iraqi army had cut the heads off of all the oil wells and they were burning uh like like out of control and the air was full of that oil smoke a brown hue it was really like otherworldly looking and the bridges were still blown out the boubian bridge and the highway to hell remember a-10s it cut off the ability of the iraqi army to escape and they just took out the vehicles on the road just just absolutely savaged them and that was called the highway to hell so those vehicles were still strewn around the the highway to hell when i was there some months later um and then as i said we did southern watch so we stayed in the area and that got the attention of ragged of jihadists of radical terrorist organizations and particularly one guy who will now forever live in infamy osama bin laden so that's another lesson from desert storm 30 years ago it's hard to believe it's been that long all right that'll do it for this episode as always thanks for subscribing liking sharing and commenting i very much appreciate your support and i look forward to talking to you again soon

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 229,626

Keywords: Desert Storm, Iraq, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, F-14, F/A-18, Mig kill, President Bush, Bush 41, Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, Republican Guard, tanks, F-15, strike warfare, TLAM, F-117, stealth fighter, stealth, POW, precision guided bombs, DCS, Tomcat, Ward Carroll

Id: cJaEdu5_z9Y

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021