Excellent Resource on Gulf War Tactics?

[Guest Pillar]

I'm looking for a book that will explain to me exactly how the US managed to conduct such an efficient conflict.

With such small losses for such a great victory, the US forces must really know what they're doing.

Thanks for the advice, yet again.

[Disaster]

After you find your Gulf War book I recommend that you read Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern War, a book which has far more relevance to U.S. military policy in the next decade than any lesson you might take from the Gulf War.

Here is the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0871137380/102-8614366-4139304

"Blackhawk Down" is the true story of how the U.S. became embroiled in Somalia and focuses on the mission to save the downed crew of a Blackwawk helicopter which went down in the hart of Mogadishu. It details with warfare in a built up area where the line between noncombatant and 'irregular' was blurred. This is a situation in which the U.S. will become increasingly involved. I don't think the U.S. will have another Gulf War for some time but the chances of the U.S. facing another Somalia are great.

[Guest Mirage2k]

I thought a good book was "Into The Storm," by General Fred Franks (Ret.). Franks has worked with Tom Clancy and his people on a number of occasions ("Armored Cav," Force 21) and commanded VII Corps during the Gulf War. "Into The Storm" details his experience during the war, as well as his past military experience in Germany in the 1980s and Vietnam.

-Andrew

------------------

Throw me a frickin' smiley people!

[Guest Mirage2k]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Pillar:

With such small losses for such a great victory, the US forces must really know what they're doing.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It helped that Saddam Hussein and most of his staff weren't very good at their jobs.

-Andrew

------------------

Throw me a frickin' smiley people!

[speedy24]

Another good Gulf War book is "Every Man a Tiger", also by Tom Clancy. This one is similar to Into the Storm, but focuses on the air war.

[Guest Pillar]

Are you sure "Into the Storm" is a good resource for Tactics and Strategy?

I was told to stay away from it because it was mostly a reflection of Fred Franks on his own personal experience and life. I was told it didn't detail much other than what happened in his corner of the war.

[Guest Mirage2k]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Are you sure "Into the Storm" is a good resource for Tactics and Strategy?

I was told to stay away from it because it was mostly a reflection of Fred Franks on his own personal experience and life. I was told it didn't detail much other than what happened in his corner of the war.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's been a little while since I last read it, so I'm not completely sure of how in-depth the book is. From what I do remember, it talks about what Franks saw from his command perspective and what some of the thought processes were at his level of command. With that in mind, I would agree that it is probably not a great source of tactical wisdom, but it is still a useful resource on the Gulf War. "Armored Cav," by Tom Clancy, is a good non-fiction description of the technology of modern ground combat, and in some places roughly summarizes standard U.S. Army doctrine, though it does not hold a wealth of tactical analysis by any stretch of the imagination.

But I think that if you found any resource on modern (ie early 1980s onward) U.S. Army tactics, you could apply it to the Gulf War.

Post something in the thread if you find something, because I would be interested in this too.

-Andrew

------------------

Throw me a frickin' smiley people!

[Guest Mirage2k]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I don't think the U.S. will have another Gulf War for some time but the chances of the U.S. facing another Somalia are great. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think that the possibility of a Gulf War-sized engagement still exists. The hot spots are there, and the U.S. government has downsized its military enough to make potential belligerents contemplate taking on the United States, if necessary, to achieve a strategic goal. For instance, the Navy is only two-thirds the size it was during the Gulf War.

China is still modernizing its forces (especially its navy, which only has about 7 or so modern hulls), but it seems (at least to me) that the PRC will be the next major thorn in U.S. foreign relations. And, of course, there is still the question of Israel and its relations with Egypt, Syria and the rest of the Middle East. The fact that Israel has nukes and the means to deliver them and its adversaries have biological/chemical weapons makes that little problem very urgent.

-Andrew

------------------

Throw me a frickin' smiley people!

[Jeff Pattison]

Because of interservice rivalries for declining defense dollars after the Gulf War, it is hard to find one good book on the Gulf War that doesn't have an agenda. If you're looking for information on the Army's participation in Desert Storm, the best book I have found to date is Robert H. Scales' book, "Certain Victory: The US Army in the Gulf War", which is the official US Army account. This book covers the US VII and XIII corps advances and gives a much better view of the development and use of the concepts of AirLand Battle doctrine than "Into the Storm".

[This message has been edited by Jeff Pattison (edited 07-18-2000).]

[Disaster@work]

I quickly searched Amazon and found a couple books referenced that are Israeli lessons learned from the Gulf War.

Check this out:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0714647551/qid=963953302/sr=1-5/002-2864667-9511213

Perhaps this outsider view would have a new perspective that isn't influenced overmuch by interservice rivalry.

[Disaster@work]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mirage2k:

I think that the possibility of a Gulf War-sized engagement still exists. The hot spots are there, and the U.S. government has downsized its military enough to make potential belligerents contemplate taking on the United States, if necessary, to achieve a strategic goal. For instance, the Navy is only two-thirds the size it was during the Gulf War.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is true in a general sense. What I meant more specifically is the possibility for land battles. There are many indications that the U.S. is loading up more on long range force projection rather than on expeditionary forces. This means more cruise missiles, more navy, more strike aircraft. What the U.S.' opponents count on is that America will continue to try and strike from afar to punish its opponents, thereby causing itself political damage when it is revealed that many non-combatants were hurt by such a 'cowardly' act.

Two recent examples hilight the extremes. In Somalia, hundreds, maybe thousands became casualties when the U.S. and other UN forces went in to try and save a handful of their own troops in a built-up area. Dozens of U.S. troops were killed in a nightmarish firefight and potentially could have become highly public hostages. Having bodies of one's own troops being dragged through the streets on CNN is a horror for any U.S. general. Avoiding Vietnam-era style domestic opposition remains a goal for U.S. commanders.

In Serbia, the U.S.-led bombing of the capital and the Chinese embassy again caused worldwide anger and heavily damaged U.S. face in its relationship with China. Domestically, however, there was little harm to the U.S. commanders because no troops were hazarded.

To me, this means that the U.S. will be less inclined to go global on a scale approaching Desert Storm. One danger area, however, is in territory it considers its own turf. For example, many expect that the U.S. will become more and more involved in Colombia to help break the alliance between the FARC and the drug lords. Since the U.S. considers the Americas its own turf, it will expend lots of energy toward this. I suspect this will become an undeclared conflict in the next decade. Yet, even here the type of warfare will be more counter-insurgency than large scale mechanized warfare. For the U.S. to commit hard assets (i.e. tanks, ships, strike aircraft) would be 'showing their hand' to the public and so for a long time this cannot happen. Since it is unlikely that the FARC will ever be of the strength to actually challenge the Colombian government in the cities (i.e. no emergencies), there will probably not be a rapid escalation on the part of the U.S and no such commitment.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

China is still modernizing its forces (especially its navy, which only has about 7 or so modern hulls), but it seems (at least to me) that the PRC will be the next major thorn in U.S. foreign relations.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

China is indeed modernizing but more to deal with the possibility of regional conflicts. The three hot spots for U.S.-Chinese conflict are Taiwan, Korea and less so Japan, areas in which China is highly sensitive. The Chinese forces of projection over Taiwan and Japan are without much doubt unequal to even local defense and have more to do with sabre rattling than actual military threats. For all of the hightened tensions between Taiwan and its mother country, cross-investment between them is increasing and mainland Chinese sentiment growing more capital-oriented.

As far as Japan goes, ask any Chinese and they would happily imagine a glowing crater where Tokyo used to be but again investment by Japanese companies is much more important than such sentiment.

Korea is more hazardous because of the unpredictability of North Korea. North Korea is as much a threat to China as both are to South Korea. Investment between S. Korea and China grows but the relationship between the North and China is unstable. Without Chinese food subsidies, the North would starve and China would never allow the North to collapse as this would mean refugees and the possibility of western troops in the North. An analogy would be if the East German government in the early 80s had suddenly deteriorated while Russia was still at the peak of its powers. Despite the North and South rapprochement of last month, the North is still very much an unknown factor, as much to the Chinese as to the west. If the North collapsed, Southern Koreans and stationed U.S. troops would be on a state of high alert for similar reasons.

The problem for the U.S. in all these areas is that America would very much like to get out of possible entanglements, especially in areas where conflict with China is a possiblity, however remote. From across the oceans America gets on with China just fine. But its ties to neutrals and allies in the region threaten to embroil it in indirect conflict with China. If the U.S. was not there, these countries would build up to compete with Chinese emergent power. This would speed up the region's arms race. China does not yet have the economy to modernize its military as quickly as Japan, Singapore or Taiwan. This is a central irony. China needs the U.S. to stay in the region so that the other countries don't feel threatened and build up. Yet China is annoyed by the U.S. presence and America wants to cut costs and leave the region to its own devices.

As far as China's navy goes, its leaders must realize that it can hardly compete against Indonesia's navy much less the American pacific presence. To do that it requires an aircraft carrier (or two or three or four) and it won't have one for another decade. It simply lacks the technology and wealth.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

And, of course, there is still the question of Israel and its relations with Egypt, Syria and the rest of the Middle East. The fact that Israel has nukes and the means to deliver them and its adversaries have biological/chemical weapons makes that little problem very urgent.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I am more and more heartened by the progress that region is making toward peace. The older generation (such as Hafez Assad) are passing on and most of the succeeding regimes are concerned more with modernizing and investment than in flexing their muscles. More and more young people circulate in other parts of the world and return (such as Bashir Assad). To me it seems like a gradual trend toward liberalization which can only have benefits for the financial and political stability of the region. I don't see anything changing this despite the weapons that each possesses. For all of his vaunted biological warfare supply, even Saddam didn't use it. Why? Because that would have been the end of his rule and his goal is not apocalyptic. Even the Israeli instability will settle down. There will be bumps surely, but the majority on both sides just want to get on with business.

[This message has been edited by Disaster@work (edited 07-18-2000).]

[EZJCA]

I would suggest "Crusade, The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War" by Rick Atkinson.

EZ

[Aacooper]

I'd like to second EZJCA's recommendation of "Crusade" -- it tells it like it is, without "Monty-cizing" (mythologizing) any of the generals involved, or lapsing into jingoistic folly. As far as tactics goes, it basically says the US had better weapons and better coordination of its arms.

[Bullethead]

Pillar said:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I'm looking for a book that will explain to me exactly how the US managed to conduct such an efficient conflict. With such small losses for such a great victory, the US forces must really know what they're doing.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

"KNEW what it was doing" might be more appropriate given Clinton's gutting of the forces that made the Gulf War what it was.

As to how we did it at the time, I don't know any good books. All I can say is how it appeared to me at the time, which is of course pretty much limited to my own LOS (and that wasn't too far with all the smoke)

First off, the Iraqi deployment had its flaws. Although the basic plan of putting throw-away troops on the Kuwait border to simply call for help, then counterattacking with numerically superior mechanized forces that had been protected from most of the tac-air effort by the oil smoke and being dug in, was sound, there were 2 main problems: 1) Although the planes couldn't bomb many combat assets through the smoke, they could and did find and destroy many communications assets. Thus, the whole Iraqi C^3I network was pretty much a shambles by the time of our main attack, so while we still faced numerically superior forces, we almost always had local superiority due to better organization. 2) All the forces in Kuwait were vulnerable to large-scale envelopment through southern Iraq, as actually happened.

Second, we won the artillery battle hands down. When you do that, you generally win every other battle, too. Again, they had the numbers, and in some cases the range as well. However, we had EXCELLENT counterbattery radar operating in conditions that nearly maximized its effectiveness. This was combined with kick-ass survey equipment and digital burst radios to allow us to bring devastating counterfire right on target within about 90 seconds of them pulling the lanyard. Because the Iraqis used Soviet arty doctrine, this kind of response (combined with C^3I losses to air efforts) totally frustrated their ability to mass fires and enabled us to quickly whittle their arty down to nothing without much loss. We were doing this from Day 1 of the "air" war, BTW. Plus, we had DPICM ammo and they had a fairly high percentage of defective shells (as distinguished from the low-order explosions of gas rounds). So this is not to say the Iraqi gunners were incompetent--most times they were WAY too accurate. However, they just didn't get the chance to capitalize on this, due to our gear giving us a few seconds advantage on them, and their gear failing them when they had us dead to rights.

Third, at the grunt and tank level, we had better stuff in the majority of cases, both personnel and equipment. So it ended up with our guys killing from beyond their effective range a lot, with local superiority from better C^3I, and us being pretty free from their arty and our arty hammering them.

------------------

-Bullethead

It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

[Guest Pillar]

Bullethead,

I was hoping that you'd post here Thanks for the info, I live for your stories

Email me any time at moiety@hotmail.com, I wouldn't mind talking to you more about the conflict and your experiences.

Thanks to everyone else as well for the recommendations and the discussion.

Is there an equivalent of the Germany Army Handbook for the Modern US Army? (Has units, tactics, organization etc.)

[Guest Mirage2k]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Is there an equivalent of the Germany Army Handbook for the Modern US Army? (Has units, tactics, organization etc.)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I would assume so. I have something sort of related: a field handbook from the Gulf War on the identificaton of Coalition and Iraqi forces. The only "tactics" in it that I can think of are diagrams of the vulnerable points in the armor of Soviet vehicles. I also have a helicopter operations manual from 10th Mountain Div., Fort Drum, NY. But....neither of these are very helpful, I guess, and I wouldn't know how you would get them anyway.

-Andrew

------------------

Throw me a frickin' smiley people!

[IntelWeenie]

First, dittos to Bullethead!

My $.02 on the Gulf War and why we won so handily...

To expand on his point #1, the Iraqi inability to communicate was one of the biggest reasons for their near-total lack of manuever once the "ground war" started. We had their commo nailed down so tight, some units were under orders to not use radios under ANY circumstances! What does that leave? Land line and runners, both of which were really vunerable to arty and air attack.

In any modern battle, winning the information (C3I) war is a necessary precedent to winning the shooting war, no matter what type of conflict it may be.

------------------

"Belly to belly and everything's better" - Russian proverb

[speedy24]

Pillar,

Check outhttp://www.uwm.edu/People/jpipes/start.html

for German WWII OoB and Organization. Not sure how much is there about tactics tho.

[Undaunted]

http://www.tradoc.army.mil/

It is the US army training and doctrine command website. Go to the publication, and there are links to many field manuals, ranging from corps operations to legal guides for commander! It's great fun to read.

UD

[Disaster@work]

I was looking over that website some time ago and I had a funny thought: how many of America's opponents would benefit from all this free information? I was amazed at how detailed some of the online material is. What isn't available online you can buy through Amazon.

[Jeff Pattison]

Yeah, Disaster, it is amazing what information you get from the free press. I just wonder what would have happened if the Iraqis had read and learned anything about the Gazala Battles. There seems to be a remarkable similarity between the Desert Storm campaign and the campaign to capture Tobruk.

[Disaster@work]

I think this highlights one of the real costs of a dictatorship, removing the ability of your citizens to gain information including information about the enemy. Somehow I doubt that the average Iraqi commander had access to the Internet and full browsing privileges before the Gulf War (and certainly not now). So I would hazard that even if they knew of the existence of such documents online, they could never read them and therefore learn something of their coalition opponent's doctrine. Perhaps if they found out how much thought went into the U.S. doctrine from the platoon commander level on up they would have filled their pants in advance.

[Guest Pillar]

I'd LOVE to be able to browse the US Army site, but I can't.

I can NEVER connect to it, no matter how often or at what time I try.

I ALWAYS get a "Page not Found" error. So far, it's only page that I've ever come across on the entire world wide web that gives me this problem.

I posted about it before, nobody could figure it out. My ISP doesn't even get it.

That's why I need a book reference

Must be an FBI conspiracy

[Bullethead]

Sorry to be lagged here but I've been busy lately

Disaster@work said:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Somehow I doubt that the average Iraqi commander had access to the Internet and full browsing privileges before the Gulf War (and certainly not now). So I would hazard that even if they knew of the existence of such documents online, they could never read them and therefore learn something of their coalition opponent's doctrine.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

On a related note, I think the Iraqis also had some serious problems understanding their own gear. This stemmed from buying a lot of weapons from countries that speak something other than Arabic.

Take the typical Russian AFV in Iraqi service. All the placards by all the dials and buttons were printed in Russian. But the tech manuals were printed in English. And very bad English at that, like what you often see in the instructions for cheap electronics from the Far East. I doubt there were very many Iraqi tankers who could read enough Russian and English to know what all the buttons in the tank did or how to troubleshoot and repair problems with them. Hell, I even had trouble figuring some of it out, due to the confused English translations And the USSR was just 1 supplier. The Iraqis also had Chinese, US, French, Brit, and Brazilian gear, and probably some other stuff. I poked around in a lot of this and the only Arabic writing I saw inside was a few lines in grease pencil.

So it seems to me that the average Iraqi vehicle crewman had to have been trained by rote. "Push this button to traverse the turret, push this button to fire," etc. This would have limited his ability to utilize features of his vehicle that he hadn't been instructed on, plus would have ruled out most 1st echelon and preventive maintenance and emergency field repairs.

Observations support the latter suppositions. I came across many vehicles abandoned due to some minor failure. Plus just about everything was filthy, sand-choked, and/or rusty. But with little effort, my platoon was able to get a T72, an MTLB, a couple of 2S1s, a BMP-1, and several Ural trucks and Land Rovers all running fine.

------------------

-Bullethead

It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

[Disaster]

Thanks for that first hand information Bullethead!

Training and logistics are certainly areas where the U.S. is leaps and bounds over its potential enemies everywhere. Your comment about training from rote is certainly telling. One story I heard is that Iraqi line troops purposely were not allowed to take part in maneuvers and field training so that they would not be possible internal opposition against Saddam's powerbase and his Republican Guard. Certainly, this is the case in many countries where the military forces are there primarily to prop up the leadership, not to fight battles with other organized forces.