Better Iraqi performance in 1991...?

Cpi;d the Iraqi army fought better during the Gulf war? By better I mean not so much inflicting heavier casualties on the coalition (it wouldn't hurt though) but rather avoiding it's own casualties.

AFAIk performance of Iraqi army was so poor that it surprised the wildest expectations of US command. THe most optimistic simulations predicted casualties twice heavier than actually suffered and most estimates predicted 10-20 times higher losses.
 

gaijin

Banned
Have the Iraqi army deploy in depth with the main heavy forces in the city. In other words, they go for a "Stalingrad" type of thing from the start.

It would allow a bigger part to survive the aerial softening up part of the campaign.

Basically anything would be better than OTL timeline of parking your army in the desert with no air support where the US Air Force can give it its undivided attention for a few weeks.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The main US (Coalition) advantages were battle range, air support and navigation.



So force the issue in a known location without flanks and in constricted terrain.
 
If the Iraqi's put a huge army in KC, the military had specific plans for that.

Task force Reaper, the huge armor element was meant to cut off (i.e. starve out) KC. The Marines where then meant to assault. You could have had horrible casualties, but it would have fallen quickly.
 
Doesn't all this depend on Saddam not appointing incompetent but politically loyal ass-kissers all through the higher ranks of the Iraqi Army?
 
Even putting the army in Kuwait City isn't going to cause that many more casualties (more than the historical minimum-definitely, but not that many more).

The regular army will still have the morale issues it did, especially if it gets cut off (which would happen easily), and putting the Republican Guard divisions in Kuwait City makes it easier for the Coalition to surround everyone.

Tactically, while being in a city definitely takes away many of the Coalition's strengths, it also amplifies (especially given the lack of training most has) a lot of the existing Iraqi weaknesses.
 
Incompetence of Iraqi commanders did play a role - nonetheless, the disparity in equipment was so large that even the most briliant military minds in the world wouldn't be able to win battles in the open field.

For example - the best tank Iraqi army had in 1991 was T-72M1 - basically mid 1970s level. It could not penetrate the armor of US M1 tank except from the side or the rear. Add extremely poor quality ammo Iraqi T-72s, together with better FCS of M1 and better situational awarness of the entire coalition force overall - and it's not hard to see that in every battle in the open the Iraqis are going to be ruthlessly decimated.

I consider 1 to 5 casualty ratio to be favorable to the Iraqis. 1 to 3 would be excellent.
 
Incompetence of Iraqi commanders did play a role - nonetheless, the disparity in equipment was so large that even the most briliant military minds in the world wouldn't be able to win battles in the open field.

Competence matters far, far, far more then equipment. The incompetence of the Iraqi military played a far larger role then their deficiencies in equipment. One of the American staffers who planned Desert Storm acknowledged this, saying that if you flat-out swapped the equipment used the results would have been little different with only marginal heavier Coalition casualties. Equipment is no silver bullet. History is littered with examples (Israel '48, Chad, Congo, Ap Bac) where badly outgunned forces were able to defeat militaries often possessing air superiority and armoured vehicles they could not reliably harm, and they did it by being better soldiers.

The problems the Iraqis have are myriad, but some include; tyrannical leaders with no tolerance for dissent, no initiative in NCOs and junior officers, poor unit cohesion, poor inter unit co-operation, nonexistant inter-service co-operation, poor mechanical aptitude, poor passage of information, poor intelligence analysis, hording of logistics elements and poor support to field units, and limited strategic foresight. To name just a few.

The resulting tactical maladroitness was crippling: units that were flanked would not reposition to defend themselves, they would not conduct recces or post sentries, nor would they use any initiative whatsoever, right up to batallion and brigade level. Equipment was never used to anywhere near its potential, and advanced features such as NVGs or lead computation computers on the newer Russian tanks were often ignored.

Given the above, which are systemic to one degree or another among all Arab armies, the Iraqis really did the best they could.
 
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Have the Iraqi army deploy in depth with the main heavy forces in the city. In other words, they go for a "Stalingrad" type of thing from the start.

It would allow a bigger part to survive the aerial softening up part of the campaign.

Basically anything would be better than OTL timeline of parking your army in the desert with no air support where the US Air Force can give it its undivided attention for a few weeks.

So... screen them with part of the force, while the rest rushes north into Iraq and on to Baghdad? Sounds like a win-win for the Coalition. Either the Iraqi's come out and can be pounded by the US and Allied airforces in open ground, or they stay put and play no role in the desperate (For the Iraqi forces) battles in Southern and Central Iraq.
 
So... screen them with part of the force, while the rest rushes north into Iraq and on to Baghdad? Sounds like a win-win for the Coalition. Either the Iraqi's come out and can be pounded by the US and Allied airforces in open ground, or they stay put and play no role in the desperate (For the Iraqi forces) battles in Southern and Central Iraq.

Especially given the Iraqis inability to make it work against someone like the US.

To use a strategy game comparison: the Iraqis are playing a turn-based game where they have to write out their orders for the next five turns and then cannot alter them until those five turns are up. They do this because they have not figured out any other way to play that actually works with the forces under their command. The US, for their part, is playing a real-time game.
 
Cpi;d the Iraqi army fought better during the Gulf war? By better I mean not so much inflicting heavier casualties on the coalition (it wouldn't hurt though) but rather avoiding it's own casualties.

AFAIk performance of Iraqi army was so poor that it surprised the wildest expectations of US command. THe most optimistic simulations predicted casualties twice heavier than actually suffered and most estimates predicted 10-20 times higher losses.

The Elephant in the room here is that the Coalition had planned for and were fully expecting the use of Biological and Chemical weapons to be used by teh Iraqis - perhaps if Bio/Chem weapons had been used both on the front line by artillery and fired by Scuds into the 'Rear Areas' supply hubs (or at least an attempt!).

Some one else mentioned more troops digging in around KC

If this happens then I can see the British force being pressured into rejoining the US Marines in retaking the city (as the Brits are quite good at FISH - Fighting In Some-ones House) as was originally the plan.

If the Iraqi's actually hold and for political reasons the Coalition have to storm the place - it does not matter how good the British and USMC are - Casualties are going to be higher than OTL (which lets face it would not have to be that many in order to be higher!)
 
Problem with Iraqi performance wasn't their gear or their strategic level plans but rather the army itself. It wasn't very good and reacted very, very slowly on all levels to events. NCOs and Junior officers refused to take the initiative, reported slowly and not always with any type of accuracy.

You really need to remake the Iraqi army from the ground up.

Michael
 
How about using the airforce the way it was ment to, to shoot down other planes instead of it deciding to take a holliday in Iran?
 
How about using the airforce the way it was ment to, to shoot down other planes instead of it deciding to take a holliday in Iran?

Same issues of training performance as the army. Plus being hugely outnumbered suggests lots of shot down Iraqi aircraft.

Michael
 
Same issues of training performance as the army. Plus being hugely outnumbered suggests lots of shot down Iraqi aircraft.

Michael

for all its major problems the Iraqi air force did have some good pilots and even a few aces, it was one of the decent things about the military. the Service as a whole was a waste though
 
for all its major problems the Iraqi air force did have some good pilots and even a few aces, it was one of the decent things about the military. the Service as a whole was a waste though

"Good" only in relation to the rest of the Iraqi military. Author Ralph Peters had some amusing firsthand insight onto the professionalism of the Iraqi Air Force in that he met them some months before Desert Storm during their "training" in the Soviet Union.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, I knew we could easily overpower his military. I had seen the best of his officer corps that Spring, in Riga, drinking and whoring.
...
disco had been taken over by Iraqi pilots brought to the wheezing USSR for training. No respectable Latvian girl would get within spitting range of them.
...
Having recently ended its grim war with Iran and with ripening plans for Kuwait, the Iraqi military might have been expected to take such training more seriously than most. But you learn to read your fellow officers, whether they're in uniform or not, on duty, or at play. And those Iraqi pilots didn't have grit. There was no crispness, no sense of vocation, no rigor about them. They were the sort who do what they're told until they spot a chance to run away. The Iraqis splurging on imported whiskey that night were the pilots who would fly their planes to Iran a few months later, rather than face the U.S. Air Force in combat.
 
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