Gulf War Air Power Survey A Statistical Compendium And Chronology

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 review all aspects of air warfare in the Persian Gulf for use by the United States Air Force. The Survey has produced reports on planning, the conduct of operations, the effects of the air campaign, command and control, logistics, air base support, space, weapons and tactics, as well as a chronology and a compendium of statistics on the war. 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, that were not available to Survey researchers. Nor is it a summary of lessons learned. It concentrates on 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. This volume consists of two reports. The first, A statistical Compendium, concentrates on airpower-related aspects of the conflict and is not intended to portray other facets of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm except as they concern aerial operations. The second report, Chronology, outlines many of the principal events of clear, direct, and tangible relevance to the planning of the Gulf War.

This report draws upon the wealth of information collected about the Gulf War to present a compilation of statistical data that traces the course of the crisis, marks the progress of the war, and illustrates some of their most salient features. It is neither all inclusive nor infallible. When one considers that historians are still analyzing the events of World War II, and even World War I, the scant twenty-four months since the end of the Gulf War is far too brief an interval to aim for either of those goals. This report offers only those statistics that the Gulf War Air Power Survey considers to be most important in describing and analyzing air power in the Gulf War. It is not intended to portray other facets of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm except as they concern aerial operations. While constrained by time and availability of data, the authors selected data based on a few broad criteria. First, they included data from the various operational reporting mechanisms in the commands, such as situation reports (SITREPS) or individual mission reports (MISREPS) because they contained information directly concerned with the conduct of air operations as those commands perceived it at the time. Second, this report contains data that depict the tempo of mobilization, buildup, and operations to illustrate the depth and breadth of the underlying support effort as well as the scope of the Desert Storm air campaign. Finally, this report presents data that concentrate on the operational employment of air power and focus on information needed by those who plan future operations or shape future air force structure. As a result, space considerations mandated that much useful information could not be included in this report, and readers should consult the other reports for more detailed information. The authors had to choose at times between competing sources of information. In this war, as in most, even original records produced by participants at the time of the action were often erroneous. This should not be surprising, given the conditions of uncertainty and time pressure under which most wartime records are produced. Nonetheless, GWAPS is confident that no more comprehensive or reliable set of statistics on the air war has yet been produced.

Eliot Cohen directed the 5 volume survey. Richard J. Blanchfield, et al. authored this V. 4. Consists of two reports. The first report, Weapons, Tactics, and Training, focuses on the impact of these three elements on the application of air power projected by the United States and Coalition forces in the Gulf War. The second report, Space Operations, was classified and reduced to a three page precis. Examines the planning and training for the use of space systems, space mobilization, military utility, command and control, and the role of commercial space systems and receiver equipment.

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.

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.