WI: Desert Storm More Difficult and Costly?

I imagine that with a costlier Iraqi war in 1991 several promising pieces of kit that were cancelled in the following decade would have been put into production. Perhaps if a few more planes had been lost in air to air combat F22 would have been accelerated and more purchased, for example.
 
Hmmm I guess the question is how can we improve enough of the Iraqi army and the Republican Guard to make it more difficult for the Coalition.

The Iraqis had to my understanding employed a Soviet model so improving the calibre of junior officer is paramount in this system. No or limited amounts of Senior NCO's apart from technical roles, has always been a weakness of this system.

So the crux of the matter improving the calibre of junior officer... difficult with an army based on tribal alliances.
 
I imagine that with a costlier Iraqi war in 1991 several promising pieces of kit that were cancelled in the following decade would have been put into production. Perhaps if a few more planes had been lost in air to air combat F22 would have been accelerated and more purchased, for example.
A costlier Desert Storm would kill the idea that without a peer opponent, Western armed forces have no need for high-end equipment. It would probably also give regional powers the idea that they can actually fight the US with some chance of winning - that probably means more Russian exports, and slightly less care taken not to tread on the toes of the US.
 
Impossible, given the sheer incompetence of the Iraqi army. A major reason the whole war (not just the ground campaign, but the air campaign too) was such a walk is because the Iraqis generally were incapable of fighting in anything more then the most basic manner.

For example: take Iraqi artillery. The Iraqis were locked into pre-set fire missions and could not adjust fire to save their lives. Literally. There is an account of a battle during Desert Storm where an Iraqi artillery battery continually kept pounding the same patch of empty land about a kilometer from an American position which was destroying their division with no attempt to adjust fire. As a result of things like this, Iraqi artillery was totally ineffective throughout the campaign.



And these weren't the thuds of the Iraqi military. This was during the battle of the Madinah Ridge against one of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions. The Republican Guard at least gets some points for using its artillery in a half-hearted attempt to defend itself. Most Iraqi divisions didn't even get that far. In short, this was the very best the Iraqis could field. It's hard to grasp just how ineffective the Iraqis were without these anecdotes, because it beggars the imagination, but there it is. They really, truly, were that bad.

In order make the Iraqi army do better, you would have to overhaul Iraq itself to the point where it is unrecognizable and you have likely butterflied away Desert Storm (or indeed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) altogether. They were a rigidly hierarchical culture that ruthlessly discourages ANY form of personal initiative. Additionally, a system in which intellectual resources are horded by a handful of officers, for fear of overly empowering the men, leaving them ignorant and un-educated. An Iraqi tank might have been equipped with sophisticated fire control equipment, but none of the men would have been trained how to use it, because the company commander horded the relevant training materials so only he would know how to operate the system.

Note that this isn't a solely Iraqi problem: all of the Arab country military's have been observed to have it too varying degrees... the Jordanians and Egyptians are the best (or at least the "least bad") while the Saudis are the among the worse. One of the reasons the IS is kicking so much ass right now is precisely because they have a organizational culture that encourages personal initiative a lot more when compared too their enemies.

Maybe not if Washington force Schwarzkopf into the early, one corps attack in late 1990, in particular without the weeks of air attack which crppled the Iraqi army by cutting off supplies and demoralizing many of its; units. The Coalition will still win but he battkle will be harder and losses higher. Had the infantry conscript divisions put up a fight the trenches would have had to be cleared the hard way, by close in fighting
 
The forgotten hero of the Gulf War was Col. John A. Warden III. The Gulf War saw his "Five Rings" theory of air power fairly well executed, as developed by Project Checkmate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Warden_III#Checkmate_and_the_First_Gulf_War

But his plan being the one chosen was not destined to be.

David Halberstam in War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals details how the seniority at Tactical Air Command were against Warden's plan.

Lt Gen Charles Horner was against Warden from the start. Warden was able to slip past him and brief Schwarzkopf directly. If the Air Force had their way, the air campaign would've been very different, and the war potentially deadlier.
 
David Halberstam in War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals details how the seniority at Tactical Air Command were against Warden's plan.

Lt Gen Charles Horner was against Warden from the start. Warden was able to slip past him and brief Schwarzkopf directly. If the Air Force had their way, the air campaign would've been very different, and the war potentially deadlier.

Halberstam doesn't make Horner look that bad. Temperamental, to be sure, but in terms of strategic judgement, he's really guilty of nothing more than both seeing everything through CentFront eyes (understandable) and viewing the Iraqis as more aggressive than they actually were (also understandable).

An overly tactical focus mixed with an earlier ground war might make it a little more difficult, but the Iraqis are still so inept that the losses won't be that much higher.
 
I agree. The Gulf War is a really surprising example of the military staff using the newest weapons right the first time.
 
It shouldn't be that surprising, the US military had been giving considerable thought on how to use Tomahawk in a conventional role. The Navy in particular had been looking at methodology for such attacks against heavily defended targets since 1979 and increasingly so from the early 1980's which was studied extensively in the Naval War Colleges annual global wargames.

Admittedly they were very cold war centric but the underlying planning was very useful for GW1 and subsequent operations.

https://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-Press/-Newport-Papers/Documents/20-pdf.aspx

https://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-Press/-Newport-Papers/Documents/04.pdf
 
Perhaps a more obvious one, but let's say the Iraqis continue their drive into Saudi Arabia.

That in and of itself would make the coalition build far more difficult.
 
Perhaps a more obvious one, but let's say the Iraqis continue their drive into Saudi Arabia.

That in and of itself would make the coalition build far more difficult.

'Buster' Diggs nightmare that week. Lt Col Diggs commanded the USMC tank battalion flown into Saudi Arabia to meet the Maritime Prepositioning ships arriving from Diego Garcia. They set to unloading the M60 tanks & making them combat ready. LtCol Diggs was getting nothing but fluff for intel reports from US sources, and borderline panic from the Saudis he met. So, when the first M60 tank was combat loaded Diggs climbed aboard ordered the driver to roll down to the land end of the dock, and waited for whoever might come south along the freeway.

Diggs was a colorful character & his version of this was a bit more embelished. But, from the several times I worked with him it is not hard to visualize him posting the tank with a round in the breech & gunner alert at the entry to the port.
 
'Buster' Diggs nightmare that week. Lt Col Diggs commanded the USMC tank battalion flown into Saudi Arabia to meet the Maritime Prepositioning ships arriving from Diego Garcia. They set to unloading the M60 tanks & making them combat ready. LtCol Diggs was getting nothing but fluff for intel reports from US sources, and borderline panic from the Saudis he met. So, when the first M60 tank was combat loaded Diggs climbed aboard ordered the driver to roll down to the land end of the dock, and waited for whoever might come south along the freeway.

Diggs was a colorful character & his version of this was a bit more embelished. But, from the several times I worked with him it is not hard to visualize him posting the tank with a round in the breech & gunner alert at the entry to the port.

At least he had M60s, the poor bloke who commanded the 82nd Airborne only had M551 Sheridans.

Those 33kt SL7 transport ships were a godsend to the US heavy forces.
 
'Buster' Diggs nightmare that week. Lt Col Diggs commanded the USMC tank battalion flown into Saudi Arabia to meet the Maritime Prepositioning ships arriving from Diego Garcia. They set to unloading the M60 tanks & making them combat ready. LtCol Diggs was getting nothing but fluff for intel reports from US sources, and borderline panic from the Saudis he met. So, when the first M60 tank was combat loaded Diggs climbed aboard ordered the driver to roll down to the land end of the dock, and waited for whoever might come south along the freeway.

Diggs was a colorful character & his version of this was a bit more embelished. But, from the several times I worked with him it is not hard to visualize him posting the tank with a round in the breech & gunner alert at the entry to the port.

From that account alone I like the man already.

Although from the perspective of that sole M - 60 you'd be feeling pretty bloody alone!
 
At least he had M60s, the poor bloke who commanded the 82nd Airborne only had M551 Sheridans.

Those 33kt SL7 transport ships were a godsend to the US heavy forces.

Agree, I bet the 82nd Airborne wished they had developed the T - 92 in lieu of the M551 Sheridan, but that's another story.
 
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