What if the Iraqi Army had gone South?

MacCaulay

Banned
Simple question, but to frame what I'm thinking about, I'll quote from Every Man A Tiger, by Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Chuck Horner, and Tom Clancy. Horner was the overall combined Air Forces commander in Desert Storm, and during the initial buildup was also CENTCOM-forward, meaning he was the actual commander in Saudi Arabia in '91, while Schwarzkopf was in Tampa at the actual CENTCOM HQ.

"On one of their first nights in-country, Horner asked John Yeosock what he had that night to fight with if the Iraqis decided to attack into northern Saudi Arabia. Yeosock reached into his pocket, pulled out a penknife, and opened it's two-inch blade. "That's it," he said.
He wasn't far from wrong.
From the start, air defense was the first order of business. Fortunately, much of this was already in place thanks to...the sale of F-15s and E-3 AWACS to Saudi Arabia. These very aircraft enabled the the safe passage of the giant USAF trasnports vital to the rapid buildup of U.S. forces.
The first deploying forces were F-15 fighters and E-3 AWACS to flesh out the Saudis who had been flying CAPs since the beginning of the crisis. Next time the the aircraft carriers USS Independence and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, with their attendent battlegroups. Then came the first USAF air-to-ground attack aircraft, F-16s from the 363d TFW at Shaw AFB in the States and others from Europe. A-10 tank busters arrived from Egland AFB, Lousiana, and Myrtle Beach, AFB, South Carolina. All of this was designed to provide enough airpower to blunt an Iraqi thrust, and to devastate their supply lines.
The F-111s and U-2s went to Taif, near Mecca, and the F-117s went to Khamis Mushayt, south of Taif and about thirty miles north of the Yemen border.
The 82nd Airborne Division was first on the ground, but there was no way to move them around except in the limited vehicles they had brought with them and the trucks and rental cars that could be scounged from civilians. Owing to their lack of mobility, not much else could be done with them except to move them out from Dhahran into the desert near the air base, though some element moved up toward the Kuwait border in position to fight delaying actions.
Defenses were dreadfully thin.
In those days, just in case, John Yeosock and Chuck Horner always kept their staff cars filled with gas, with a case of water in the trunk, and in the glove compartment a map of the road to Jeddah-if all else failed, the last ditch fallback."



So...what do you think would've happened had the Iraqi Army gone south after taking Kuwait?
 
You mean what if the Republican Guard had invaded Saudi Arabia after conquering Kuwait? Well, the US and allies declare war on Iraq as in OTL, however there is probably more of a desire to go into Iraq and take out saddam for good unlike IOTL. Although I dunno why Saddam would want to draw first one of the most powerful nations in the middle east and then the most powerful nation in the whole world into its war, that was actually something he wanted to avoid.
 
Desert Shield took quite a lot of buildup; that said, Saddam steaming south, perhaps without even Shield being in place, would be a logistical nightmare for the West--and perhaps for Saddam as well.

So the Iraqi armed forces hammer into Saudi Arabia--but are probably going to be unable to walk to Riyadh, let alone deal with the Saudis armed forces, which, with the benefit of a major bombing run against Iraq, will probably shut down the Iraqi offensive.

Saddam may opt to deploy chemical weapons, but in reality, the Iraqi armed forces, while better than those of the Saudis, are not going to be able to win facing massive destruction from the air. And that is likely to be the scenario--the Saudis win, the US bombing campaign goes into Iraq and the UN agrees to replace Saddam.
 
Actually, if the Iraqis did manage to get far enough into Saudi Arabia (and find the airbases...some were unused until the Gulf War), they could render the US/UK/Saudi air advantage useless. The US forces would mostly be in transit.
However, it's likely that Turkey would allow the US & Allied Forces to immediately begin invading Iraq if Iraq attacked Saudi Arabia. The war could potentially go on longer...
Finally, the main reason the US didn't take out Saddam was that they needed him as a buffer against Iran. (Though that soon changed to using him as a boogeyman for continued Mideast troop deployments...)
One other difference... The Saudis would need all the help they can get, including from a Saudi millionaire who helped finance a jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan...
 
Iraqi's go south

The simple answer here is they would have had little problem running over the Saudi's. In the short run they would win but in the long run they would have lost it all. The allies would in turn have driven them out and probably also taken Bagdad 12 years earlier.
 

burmafrd

Banned
The only way the Iraqis got surprise in the first place is that they did not have all that much logistic support close to Kuwait (did not need it). To invade Saudi would have taken much more transport and especially fuel movement which would have been VERY noticeable. The time needed after Kuwait to really invade Saudi would have been more then enough to get the US forces in place in sufficient quantity to destroy it. Bottom line is that Saddam really had no intention of taking Saudi and made no real preparations to do so.
 
The only way the Iraqis got surprise in the first place is that they did not have all that much logistic support close to Kuwait (did not need it). To invade Saudi would have taken much more transport and especially fuel movement which would have been VERY noticeable. The time needed after Kuwait to really invade Saudi would have been more then enough to get the US forces in place in sufficient quantity to destroy it. Bottom line is that Saddam really had no intention of taking Saudi and made no real preparations to do so.

Not so sure about that, I remember watching the news in the days before the invasion and it was reported about the massing of Iraqi troops on the border so it was not a surprise or unknown. Its much more likely that Saddam didnt move onto Saudi because of concerns about supply lines and indeed whether the Iranians could see an opportunity to attack him and so wanting to keep forces closer just incase.

Also in invading Saudi, Saddam would definitely have lost any chance of support from other Arab countries, I think he genuinely believed that places like Syria would prefer him to the US in Kuwait but in that sense he massively misunderstood the situation.

As others have said if the Iraqis had gone south, they would have had initial success but ultimately failed, with higher casualties to both sides and the probable invasion of Iraq and his removal from power.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If the Iraqis had gone south as soon as they could after conquering Kuwait, they would have faced the Saudi Army, the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airmobile divisions, and, IIRC, a brigade of Royal Marines. These would not have been sufficient to stop the Iraqis, though the fighting would have been fierce and their losses would have been high.

Don't forget that the men of the 82nd nicknamed themselves "Iraqi speed bumps" during the early days of Operation Desert Shield.

The Iraqi Air Force would have done better than it did IOTL, because they would not have been outnumbered, the Allied airbases would have been under attack, and the Iraqis would not have suffered the massive damage to their command and control that they did IOTL during the first two or three days.

Saddam could still have rallied the Arab world to his side if he proclaims that he is fighting to overthrow the "Westernized" rulers of the Gulf states, who have never been popular with the ordinary Arab. But the Saudis would counter by asserting their role as the protectors of Mecca and Medina. And, in this scenario, the Israelis will certainly strike back if they are hit by Scuds. In fact, they might start a strategic bombing campaign anyway to help the Coalition- one wonders what the image of Israel coming to the aid of Saudi Arabia would have meant for the future of Arab-Israeli relations.

My guess is that the Iraqis could have driven far down the coast and probably captured Riyadh as well. But eventually the Coalition would have landed sufficient forces (the 24th Mech being the first heavy unit to arrive) to drive them back. And I would also bet that the U.S. Marines would stage an amphibious landing behind the Iraqis, perhaps in Kuwait, to trap them and cut them off from their supplies.

You'd have a long war- 6 months to a year- before the fall of Baghdad, and American/British/French casualties would have run into the thousands. The world economy would be badly hit by the massive spike in oil prices.
 

burmafrd

Banned
Actually the Saudi Airforce plus what we were able to get in early would have cleaned the Iraqi Air Forces clock easily. Then they would have been hitting with greater force day the iraqi forces. We would have been able to get B-52 strikes in by day 3; and that would have been pretty nasty.

Air droppable mines would have been available by day 5. I really doubt that the Iraqi forces could have made it anywhere near Riyadh.

Once again I have to remind people that any larger concentration of logistics support near kuwait or saudi would have gotten a LOT of attention.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
One issue is logistics, a second, closely related one is command and control. The Iraqi Army, like most 3rd World forces, is very light on "tail" and has a fairly short radius of action. The troops, additionally, with the exception of some of the Guards units also had almost pitiful levels of training for any sort of manuever warfare. The force was okay against the equally poorly designed and trained Iranians, but against any reasonably trained force it was going to have serious problems, and was going to have a really difficult time once it got a couple hundred miles from its primary base of supply.

It is also worth noting that the Iraqi greatest vulnerability, supply and C&C are also the portions what would be the most vulnerable to the air power that the U.S. could get rapidly into the AO (carrier borne aircraft and U.S. forces coming out of Diego Garcia and NATO bases in the Med).
 
I agree that the Saudi's had enough strength to keep the Iraqi army in the middle of nowhere until the might of the US Air Force and Navy could engage.

But I loved Orville's comment about Bin Ladin. If the Iraqi army made it 50 miles into Saudi Arabia or so, would the Arabic and Islamic worlds have reacted so negatively towards western involvement? Could the war have become a Pan Islamic/Arabic affair with US/UK air and naval support only? If US troops are on the ground to liberate and secure the holy lands of Islam, does the US still end up as the ultimate infedel? Does 9/11 happen?
 

burmafrd

Banned
Osama and the fanatics want a radical Islam WORRLD. They HATE western culture. Now maybe it would have taken longer for them to work up the support needed but the terrorism would have come sooner or later. The BS about US troops in Saudi never had much traction anywhere.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I agree that the Saudi's had enough strength to keep the Iraqi army in the middle of nowhere until the might of the US Air Force and Navy could engage.

It's funny you should mention that. According to Into the Storm, written by the VII Corps commander in Desert Storm, the Saudi military only had two companies of armoured cars on the border.

But I loved Orville's comment about Bin Ladin. If the Iraqi army made it 50 miles into Saudi Arabia or so, would the Arabic and Islamic worlds have reacted so negatively towards western involvement? Could the war have become a Pan Islamic/Arabic affair with US/UK air and naval support only? If US troops are on the ground to liberate and secure the holy lands of Islam, does the US still end up as the ultimate infedel? Does 9/11 happen?

Originally, Bin Laden did make an offer to the Saudi government to raise an army that would get the Iraqis out of Kuwait. That personally scares the shit out of me, because it would basically mean that the second major incarnation of Al Qaeda after it's infancy in Afghanistan in the '80s would have been as an actual ground army fighting the Iraqis.
 

wormyguy

Banned
Originally, Bin Laden did make an offer to the Saudi government to raise an army that would get the Iraqis out of Kuwait. That personally scares the shit out of me, because it would basically mean that the second major incarnation of Al Qaeda after it's infancy in Afghanistan in the '80s would have been as an actual ground army fighting the Iraqis.

[minor conspiracy theorizing]Bin Laden had an ulterior motive to his offer to raise 150000 mujahideen against Saddam - he was plotting a coup against the Saudis, using his contacts in high level government, religious, and industry positions to establish his own brand of theocracy after becoming a war hero, while using his large and intensely loyal private army to rapidly gain control of the country and disarm remaining pro-Saudi forces. His subsequent extreme emnity to the US (he had previously expressed very negative opinions of the US, but not nearly as belligerent as he would get post-Gulf War) was due to America's denying him the chance to make his move, something he had been meticulously plotting for years.[/minor conspiracy theorizing]
 
It's funny you should mention that. According to Into the Storm, written by the VII Corps commander in Desert Storm, the Saudi military only had two companies of armoured cars on the border.


MacCauley,

Agreed.

Khafji pretty much showed that the Saudis were worthless. They would have bugged out if the Qatari forces and Marines hadn't also been there.

The Iraqis hit Khafji over five months after seizing Kuwait and in less than division strength and the Saudis still tried to run away. An Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia immediately after the invasion of Kuwait would have been "spearheaded" by what ever fleeing Saudi troops they were driving ahead of them.


Bill
 
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