Gulf War Air Power Survey

Eliot Cohen directed the 5 volume survey. Williamson Murray, et al. authored this V. 2. Consists of 2 reports. The 1st report, Operations, focuses on the employment of air power as part of the Coalition's military efforts to destroy Iraq's military forces and potential, and to liberate Kuwait. Examines objectives and dissects problems associated with air operations. The 2d report, Effects and Effectiveness, by Barry Watts. et al., surveys the accomplishments of Coalition air power at the operational level relative to the military and political objectives for which the war was fought.

Eliot Cohen directed the 5 volume survey. Lewis D. Hill, et al. authored this V. 5. Consists of two reports. The first report, A Statistical Compendium, concentrates on airpower-related aspects of the conflict. Organized in roughly chronological order, it moves from prewar force postures and the deployment of Desert Shield through the air campaign of Desert Storm, tabulating aircraft victories and losses as well as the human cost of the war. The second report, Chronology, outlines many of the principal events of clear, direct, and tangible relevance to the planning of the Gulf War.

From 16 January through 28 February 1991, the United States and its allies conducted one of the most operationally successful wars in history, a conflict in which air operations played a preeminent role. The Gulf War Air Power Survey was commissioned on 22 August 1991 to reviewall aspects of air warfare in the Persian Gulf for use by the United States Air Force, but it was not to confine itself to discussion of that institution.The Survey has produced reports on planning, the conduct of operations, the effects of the air campaign, command and control, logistics, air basesupport, space, weapons and tactics, as well as a chronology and a compendium of statistics on the war. It has prepared as well a summary report and some shorter papers and assembled an archive composed of paper, microfilm, and electronic records, all of which have been deposited at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. The Survey was just that, an attempt to provide a comprehensive and documented account of the war. It is not a definitive history: that will await the passage of time and the opening of sources (Iraqi records, for example) that were not available to Survey researchers. Nor is it a summary of lessons learned: other organizations, including many within the Air Force, have already done that. Rather, the Survey provides an analytical and evidentiary point of departure for future studies of the air campaign. It concentrates oil an analysis of the operational level of war in the belief that this level of warfare is at once one of the most difficult to characterize and one of the most important to understand. The Survey was directed by Dr. Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and was staffed by a mixture of civilian and military analysts, including retired officers from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. It was divided into task forces, most of which were run by civilians working temporarily for the Air Force. The work produced by the Survey was examined by a distinguished review committee, which included scholars, retired general officers from the Air Force, Navy, and Army, as well as former and current senior government officials. Throughout, the Survey strived to conduct its research in a spirit of impartiality and scholarly rigor. Its members had as their standard the observation of Mr. Franklin D'Olier, chairman of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey during and after the second World War: "We wanted to bum into everybody's souls that fact that the survey's responsibility... was to ascertain facts and to seek truth, eliminating completely any preconceived theories or dogmas."The Survey attempted to create a body of data common to all of the reports. Because one group of researchers compiled this core material while other task forces were researching and drafting other, more narrowly focused studies, it is possible that discrepancies exist among the reportswith regard to points of detail. More importantly, authors were given discretion, within the bounds of evidence and plausibility, to interpret events as they saw them. In some cases, task forces came to differing conclusions about particular aspects of this war. Such divergences of view were expected and even desired: the Survey was intended to serve as a point of departure for those who read its reports, and not their analytical terminus.

This volume consists of two reports and concentrates on direct as well as indirect support required to conduct air operations. The first report, Logistics, discusses logistics in the Persian Gulf War as it applies to all military operations and in particular to air operations. Includes functions for maintaining an air base and support services. The second report, Support, concerns itself with the air base and airbase operations (e.g., civil engineering, services, and personnel). This is the dual theme of the volume.

For nearly two decades the United States Air Force (USAF) oriented the bulk of its thinking, acquisition, planning, and training on the threat of a Soviet blitzkrieg across the inter German border. The Air Force fielded a powerful conventional arm well rehearsed in the tactics required to operate over a central European battlefield. Then, in a matter of days, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait altered key assumptions that had been developed over the previous decade and a half. The USAF faced a different foe employing a different military doctrine in an unexpected environment. Instead of disrupting a fast paced land offensive, the combat wings of the United States Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) were ordered to attack a large, well fortified, and dispersed Iraqi ground force. The heart of that ground force was the Republican Guard Forces Command (RGFC). CENTAF's mission dictated the need to develop an unfamiliar repertoire of tactics and procedures to meet theater objectives. How effectively did CENTAF adjust air operations against the Republican Guard to the changing realities of combat? Answering that question is central to this study, and the answer resides in evaluation of the innovations developed by CENTAF to improve its operational and tactical performance against the Republican Guard. Effectiveness and timeliness are the primary criteria used for evaluating innovations.