Military



The Desert Storm Victory: Conventional Air Power Against Moral Force

The Desert Storm Victory: Conventional Air Power Against Moral Force

CSC 1997

Subject Area - Operations

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

TITLE:  The Desert Storm Victory: Conventional Air Power Against Moral Force

 

AUTHOR:  Major George S. Amland.

 

THESIS:  While the techniques of employing conventional air power have matured over the past eighty years, Desert Storm provided the first example where the moral force effects of conventional air power proved more decisive than the physical effects.

 

BACKGROUND:  Proponents of air power have claimed success for various campaigns through the statistical analysis of data generated from the physical results of conventional bombing campaigns.  Not until Desert Storm have the results been so disproportionately in favor of claiming decisive success through air power.  Unfortunately, proponents of air power continue to emphasize the analysis of the enemy as a mechanical system and fail to acknowledge the moral force issues at stake.  Interdiction campaigns have historically been directed at both of the essential elements of an adversary's capacity for waging war: the physical force and the moral force.  However, post conflict analyses normally focus on only physical data.  In this analysis, a number of psychology studies and historical examples will be applied as a means of demonstrating how the mass application of conventional munitions, complemented by selected applications of precision guided munitions, destroyed the Iraqi will to fight.  Desert Storm provided a watershed example of how moral forces were addressed and systematically destroyed by conventional air power.

 

RECOMMENDATION:  The US Armed Forces must resist the temptation to focus solely on the attrition of physical assets by increasingly expensive and relatively limited quantities of precision munitions.  It is a very seductive, though historically hollow, promise being presented by contemporary air power theorists.  Desert Storm was a decisive lesson on the current state of maturity of conventional air power and the decisive capability for the non-lethal shaping of an adversary's will to fight.

 

THE DESERT STORM VICTORY:

CONVENTIONAL AIR POWER AGAINST MORAL FORCE

 

INTRODUCTION

      Since the advent of armed conflict, operational and tactical thinkers have methodically improved the status of weaponry in accordance with J.F.C. Fuller's five dominant attributes of weaponry: accuracy of aim; range of action; striking power; volume of fire and portability.[1]  The ultimate goal has been to design a weapon system that would provide a one hundred percent hit capability from ranges greater than those of the enemy's systems.  This attitude has merit from the science of war standpoint, but tends to promote warfare solely in terms of actions against inanimate objects.  In this perfect world, each target destroyed represents a calculable percentage of the remaining capacity of one's opponent to wage war.  Unfortunately, the history of warfare provides a litany of examples where the sum of one and one equals everything but two.  While physical results have always proven simpler to measure, history has played out many scenarios using the destructive aspects of moral force.  Desert Storm was a classic manifestation of the power inherent in both the physical and moral forces of warfare. 

      After the initial phase of the air campaign failed to force the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the focus of effort shifted to the Kuwait theater and a transition began towards a conventional air campaign aimed at the Iraqi ground forces.  While the employment of precision guided munitions (PGM's) provided excellent leverage to coalition forces, it would not be the decisive factor behind the success of the coalition campaign.  A GAO report has suggested that the Department of Defense overstated its claims concerning the impact that PGM's had on the outcome of the Gulf War and that both their roles and overall impact may have been substantially less than stated.[2]  For example, laser guided bombs (LGB's) represented a mere 4.3% when compared against the total number of US unguided munitions.[3]  It would be of greater value to view the roles of PGM's and conventional munitions in Desert Storm as highly complimentary. 

      The proliferation of PGM's in conflict may have unleashed an altogether new capability.  PGM's have relieved air operations planners from the need to invest thousands of sorties in the destruction of high value command and control structure and essential organic infrastructure.  At the same time, new generation of smart delivery platforms significantly increased the impact that conventional munitions have in the lethal and non-lethal shaping of the battlefield.  Desert Storm provided the empirical evidence to support both of these positions.  Contrary to the USAF's opinion, the strategic pressure campaign conducted early in the Desert Storm air campaign did not achieve its desired results.  The Iraqi military in Kuwait dug itself in deeper.  As the focus of effort shifted to the destruction of Iraqi fielded forces, the probability of requiring an offensive ground campaign increased.  As the assessments of the physical destruction of enemy assets became less and less accurate, each sortie was eroding another fundamental Iraqi capability.  Moral force was defined by Carl von Clausewitz as "the will which compels an animate object to react to stimulus".[4]  It was the ability of conventional ordnance to destroy the moral force underwriting the Iraqi will to fight proved greater during Desert Storm than ever before.  The unprecedented success of the coalition ground campaign during Desert Storm will serve many purposes in the following analysis.

      The issue of what has constituted effective employment of air power has been diverted by false claims and ignored realities.  On the other hand, intuitively obvious results have been ignored since they do not lend themselves to linear, graphic depictions.  There have been few scenarios which have provided as optimum a set of circumstances for the analysis of moral force effects as Desert Storm.  Although it may appear difficult to break down moral force effects into a system of tangible, predictable segments, it is not impossible.  The first step in this process is to discuss why an enemy is more like an organism than an inanimate mechanical system made up of target sets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

Interdiction, the "Enemy System" and What Really Happens

      The term "interdiction"  has the following meaning according to FM 105-5-1, Operational Terms and Symbols: 1. To isolate or seal off an area by any means; to deny use of a route or approach. 2. To prevent, hinder, or delay the use of an area or route to enemy forces.[5]  This is consistent with air power parlance which tends to break down the concept further into deep (or strategic) interdiction and battlefield interdiction.  Deep interdiction refers to those air activities not requiring close coordination with the ground component.  Battlefield interdiction is defined as: "air action that is directed against hostile surface targets which are in a position to directly affect friendly forces and which require coordination."[6]  These two definitions of interdiction will be used for the remainder of this analysis.

      A camp of air power proponents has evolved which espouses the theory that all potential adversaries exist as systems and can be forced to capitulate by directing a simultaneous, broad application of deep interdiction against critical components of the system.  This viewpoint expresses the essence of the concept, "the parallel attack".  Critical analysis of an article by Colonel John A. Warden USAF, "The Enemy As A System", will illustrate some of the important omissions in viewing an enemy strictly as a mechanical system and not as a true organism.[7]   The more outrageous Desert Storm claims by "system" proponent Richard Hallion serve only to muddy the water further.[8]   Advocates of the "system" camp view the nature of war in terms limited to the  quantifiable and permanent destruction of the system's physical components.  Most students of the science/art of war would agree with the following truism regarding the equation of force to conflict outcome: (physical force) x (moral force) = outcome.  The essence of Warden's discussion involves the assumption that the enemy's physical capability of waging war can be reduced to zero, thus making an entry in the moral side of the equation unnecessary.  After all, the result of multiplying anything by zero is zero.  Unfortunately, this assumption creates a very narrow model that lacks any applicability to past, present or future conflicts.          

      Warden's theory involves viewing the "enemy system" as five concentric rings expanding outward in importance with the innermost ring representing the source of all power.[9]  His means of paralyzing this system is by applying his theory of the  "parallel attack"  to one ring, preferably the innermost.  If an inner ring is paralyzed, the remaining outer rings are rendered dysfunctional and the conflict is thereby concluded.  It was through careful application of Warden's model that Lieutenant General Horner's Central Command Air Force (CENTAF) staff planned the Desert Storm air campaign, "inside out starting at the center of Iraqi power."[10]

      The first category of Warden's five ring "system" is defined by the enemy command and control (C2) structure.  Warden's case is well made that totalitarian regimes make it a simpler task to isolate the heads of state from the military problem and from there to isolate the military command and control structure from its fielded forces.  The Ba'ath Party regime of Saddam Hussein certainly seemed to fit the totalitarian example.  Given the situation faced by Iraq, with long and very exposed lines of communication to the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, the Desert Storm scenario would appear to represent the textbook circumstance for the complete isolation of the C2 ring.  However, despite an intense application of PGM's against this ring, strategic paralysis was never achieved to the point that capitulation or withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait occurred. 

      By comparison, the Allies were equally unsuccessful against the Germans during the campaign in North Africa in 1942.  During December of 1942, the Germans were so effectively cut off, that not a single tank made it across from Italy to Tunisia, though a large number of them along with a significant amount of German and Italian shipping lay at the bottom of the Mediterranean.[11]  Without the benefit of precision munitions, Allied air power from Malta effectively cut off every link that the Germans had to their headquarters.  Nevertheless, General Rommel continued to inflict significant damage on the Allies ground forces for months.[12]  Ultimately, the German ground force had to be physically defeated in Africa, followed by successive campaigns in Sicily and Italy.  Both the Iraqi and the German examples lead one to believe that some elements of command and control are redundant and capable of functioning in an environment of complete isolation.  An adversary's political objective at the conflict's inception can obviously influence what level of damage and isolation is acceptable during that conflict. 

      The ability to physically target a command and control structure may depend greatly upon the social climate within the local region.  Situations in agrarian and sub-subsistance level nations cannot be ignored.  "Non-integrated political infrastructures"[13] within societies will defy the Warden model.  A closer examination of events in Somalia and the current level of trans-national friction in Western Africa could make the idea central command and control meaningless.[14]  Warden also dismisses the Maoist model as a remote case in point, even though communist revolutionary ideology continues to manifest itself throughout the Western Pacific, Africa and South America.[15]  In fact, Mao Tse-Tung stresses a doctrine of protracted warfare in an environment of very decentralized command and control that fits Warden's model very poorly.[16]  In these environments, attacks directed against the moral force of a fielded adversary may become the primary means available due to an opponent's lack of centralized command and control.  Although characterized by highly centralized command and control, Iraqi field commanders appeared to be well aware of Hussein's intent.  During the final days, Saddam was still launching SCUD's and the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait began as an organized redeployment complete with security screens.[17]  Continued attempts by the coalition to isolate the Iraqi "first ring"  proved that its structure was "more redundant and more able to reconstitute itself than first thought"[18] and that an element of decentralized C2 existed.

      The next level of Warden's model addresses the system's organic essentials.  These are described as the essentials for waging modern war, e.g. petroleum products, electricity and munitions.  Again, the context used is oriented towards a foe which bares all the similarities and susceptibilities of a modern nation state.  The removal of power grids and petroleum facilities may have enhanced effects in some locales and little to no effect in others.  The ability of cultures and infrastructures to revert from pre-conflict living conditions to more rudimentary modes of daily existence is more natural in less developed nations.  Many societies of the world exist in regions where armed conflict continues without the benefit of running water or electricity.  The images, provided by Cable News Network (CNN), of Iraqi women doing their laundry in the Tigris river in the middle of downtown Baghdad provided a great testimony to this elasticity.  While the Iraqi populace was deprived of electricity through coalition targeting, the military command and control merely suffered the inconvenience of being forced to backup power sources outside the civilian grids.[19]  

      Despite significant damage to Iraqi production facilities, analysis of the petroleum, oil and lubricant (POL) status of the Iraqi ground forces in Kuwait painted a disturbing picture.  Coalition ground forces uncovered dispersed stockpiles capable of supporting months of ground combat.[20]  Coalition forces also liberated millions of rounds of small arms, artillery and rocket munitions from the retreating Iraqi forces.[21]  Redundancy in organic essentials was well provided for by the Iraqi leadership prior to and during Desert Storm. 

     The next ring in the strategic model is comprised of the transportation infrastructure.  Although Warden does address redundancy in this area, the third ring (transportation systems) represents the most significant difference between the characteristics of a mechanical system and a living organism.  It is the characteristic of an organism to evolve and to regenerate itself when damaged.  Although this attribute exists in the second ring, nowhere else in the model are the evolution and regeneration attributes more pervasive than in the third ring. 

      The level of national will throughout the conflict can have a significant impact at this level.  The national will has frequently manifested itself through the willingness to rebuild, reroute and repair infrastructure at all levels.  The most extreme historical example was presented during the Vietnam conflict.  Dr. Henry Kissinger described the North Vietnamese transportation system as "too rudimentary to be crippled and too unessential to serve as a neuralgic target".[22]  He was not entirely accurate in this observation.  During the late 60's and into the 70's, over 80,000 Vietnamese engineers and laborers kept the Ho Chi Minh Trail open by fixing existing arteries and creating new ones.[23]  In North Vietnam, shock brigades comprised of some two million workers, with the slogan "Combat and Construct", conducted repairs of secondary road, rail and bridge structures immediately following each air raid.[24]  It is inconceivable for one to promote a theory of paralysis in an environment as determined as this.

      The Iraqis proved no less willing or adept at repairing infrastructure.  While precision munitions initially were able to destroy over two thirds of the permanent road and rail bridges in southern Iraq, a post-war remark by LtGen. Horner proved that history had again repeated itself:

 

            Anybody that does a campaign against transportation systems             {had} better beware!  It looks deceivingly easy.  It is a               tough nut to crack.  {The Iraqis} were very ingenious and               industrious in repairing them or bypassing them...I have                never seen so many pontoon bridges. {When} the canals in                Basra were bombed, they just filled them in and drove over              the dirt.[25]

 

      The enemy has time on his side in this process since he has a more intimate knowledge of the relative importance of damaged material and infrastructure.  While the enemy is repairing the critical damage, the targeting agency is attempting to analyze the intelligence picture and is always operating in a time lag.[26]   The prerequisite for an effective interdiction campaign against the third ring is the ability to maintain continuous interdiction pressure every day, around the clock against a broad range of targets.[27]  In Desert Storm, the net effect of combined precision and conventional interdiction against third ring infrastructure ultimately became important to long term shaping activities.  The movement of essential supplies to support Iraqi forces in the field diminished from 216,000 metric tons per day to less than 20,000.[28] .  The benefit derived from this effort will be discussed in Chapter 3.

      Trial and error with precision munitions is probably not going to provide an acceptable solution to suppression of the third ring.  General Giap pointed out with great satisfaction that the US was risking million dollar aircraft to destroy bamboo bridges.[29]  While aircraft are more expensive today than they were in 1960, it is not the cost of aircraft that has become prohibitive.  "Smart" free-fall munitions cost thirty to forty times that of their unguided equivalents and cruise missiles are exponentially more expensive.  If future attempts to direct a parallel attack against the third ring also fail, it will be economically unfeasible to keep 24 hour pressure on an enemy with precision munitions.[30]  The Gulf War cost of a Tomahawk cruise missile (1,000lb conventional warhead) was approximately $1.2 million.[31]  To conduct a 15 day shaping campaign using 3 Tomahawks per hour, 24 hours a day will require 1080 non-reusable assets at a cost of $1.296 billion.  Within the context of target sets that can regenerate themselves, this form of expenditure may even appear futile.  Although, this is an extreme example, it will serve a purpose later when the discussion of complementary munitions is continued.      

      The next strategic ring is the population and although it will never be the victim of direct attack, it can be a viable element of the system against which we operate.  The Vietnam War provides the most heroic example of a civilian force structure willing to assist in dispersing, concealing, duplicating assets and rapidly repairing infrastructure damage.[32]   Analysis of Gulf War data provides little substantive evidence that the Iraqi population actively participated in the war effort other than to express the type of mute tolerance expected from the subjects of a police state.[33]

      The application of significant force to the inner three rings of Iraq's "system" failed to achieve the type of decisive paralysis suggested in Warden's model and, as has happened so often in the past, the "system" proponents were denied their surgical victory.  The results of Desert Storm support the position that physical destruction was achieved out of all proportion to the level of investment in time and raw material required in previous campaigns.  Yet, it still fell short of solving the force/outcome equation.  The primary problem: Desert Storm was just another historical example of the effects of pressure and friction on a highly complex organism versus a mechanical system.  A secondary problem with the Warden model is that it appears to be patterned on his expectations of how the United States might react in a similar set of circumstances.  In doing so, it is difficult to divorce the strengths and limitations of one's own society from the model.  Any warfare model that is underwritten by the assumption that the strengths and weaknesses of all societies and cultures are mirror images of one another is fatally flawed.     

      Once again, a ground campaign became a certainty as the air campaign of Desert Storm failed to coerce the Iraqi military into leaving Kuwait.  This brings the focus of analysis down to the fifth and final ring of the enemy system.  The opposing fielded force represents the final ring of the model and what Warden refers to as the least efficient element to focus on.[34]  Unfortunately, if one's best attempts to demolish the other rings fail, destruction of the fifth ring becomes the sole means of the ultimate objective of war, that is "to compel our enemy to do our will."[35]   As inefficient as Warden portrays it, the final alternative for Desert Storm was the physical and moral destruction of the Iraqi fielded force.  That fielded force consisted of approximately 400,000 troops with extensive armor and artillery support.  Although the Iraqi force would suffer significant material loss, the lightning success of the 100 hour ground war was the direct result of the total destruction of the moral force variable of Iraq's force equation by conventional air power.  Interestingly enough, the majority of this moral destruction was accomplished as a byproduct of CENTAF's attempt to attrit Iraqi physical assets and not through any skill or cunning on the part of the air campaign planners.  The air planners believed that they could mitigate the need for a ground campaign and when the battlefield interdiction phase arrived, the Master Attack Plan "presented no consistent pattern beyond geographic distribution of sorties and F-111 "tank plinking" efforts.[36]  The essence of how this particular fielded force was destroyed will be covered in Chapter 3.

 

 

CHAPTER 2

What Was So Different About Desert Storm ?    

      Desert Storm represented the optimum set of circumstances for the conduct of modern air campaign.  The U.S. had unlimited time to gather its forces, sew together a coalition and then dictate the time, location and terms of battle.  The Israelis refer to it as the "luxury war".[37]  With regards to Warden's model, the Iraqi command and control relationship was exposed and maintained along hundreds of miles of open terrain.  The organic essentials were exposed and easily targeted.  The infrastructure was exposed with little cover or concealment available to deceive an opponent.  The fielded forces were relatively static in an open, featureless environment.  Desert Storm was an interdiction planner's dream come true.  Yet, after five and a half weeks of continuous targeting, air power had not subjugated a very obstinate adversary to the coalition's will.  Coalition ground forces then moved into the offensive and encountered a force structure relatively intact, but which had lost the ability and the will to fight.  Obviously, there were significant factors involved in the dramatic success of the 100 hour ground war that followed.  A short historical synopsis will illustrate some of the post-Vietnam evolution inherent in the conventional delivery systems of Desert Storm.

      On 10 May 1972, a strike package of 35 aircraft accomplished in one mission a feat that had been denied to the Air Force during the entire Rolling Thunder campaign of the mid 1960's.  Sixteen F-4 Phantoms, armed with MK-84 LGB's, destroyed the Paul Doumer Bridge outside Hanoi, North Vietnam.[38]  Although this use of precision guided munitions marked a significant breakthrough in air power applications, the 1980's would introduce additional improvements to the capabilities of the conventional fighter bomber.

      Desert Storm was the first conflict in which every U.S. strike aircraft was equipped with an inertial navigation system (INS).  Alone, this piece of equipment significantly increases the capability of the day conventional bomber.  When augmented by other targeting sensors, this INS equipped armada represented a giant leap in the lethality of conventional munition delivery.  During the Vietnam era, aircrew involved in conventional munitions delivery were forced to constantly and accurately monitor airspeed, dive angle and altitude in relation to a manually entered milliradian setting[39] within the aircraft's gunsight.  Any deviation from these parameters would produce significant bombing errors.  This type of "iron sight bombing" was difficult enough in peacetime without the added disadvantage of defensive maneuvering in combat.  In its most rudimentary form, an INS removes the variables of dive angle and airspeed from the pilot's workload by continuously computing them.  With the introduction of a system capable of accurately measuring slant range (radar for example), the altitude variable is replaced by an actual range measurement and entered into the bombing equation.  With all the variables being constantly updated, the manual "iron sight" was replaced with a "continuously computed impact point"[40] system.  The pilot was now free to maneuver up to the point of weapon release and obtain hits with an unprecedented degree of accuracy.  Conventional munitions delivery had been reduced to three physical limitations: the slant range to the target at weapon release; the ballistics of the weapon itself; and deviations within the aircraft suspension equipment that carried the weapon.  The accepted "worst case" criteria for Desert Storm analysis was the ability to obtain single munition hits within a 160 foot circular radius from a slant range of 20,000 feet.[41]  Some Desert Storm participants would argue that more routine release altitudes would correspond to slant ranges from 5,000 to 10,000 feet with a corresponding increase in accuracy.  Regardless, this is an appreciable improvement over the "best case" 400 foot circular radius of the Vietnam era.[42]  Of the 1,012 U.S. attack aircraft in the theater, every one was equipped with an INS and some system for determining slant range. 

      The next incremental improvement was the addition of a system capable of accurately identifying surface features, typically a ground mapping radar.  These systems vary in capability from those used to ground map for navigational purposes to those designed specifically for point targeting.  The older generation of A-6's, B-52's and F-111's fall into the category of strike aircraft with radar systems used for navigational purposes and represented 263 of the 1,012 aircraft.  As the A-6's and F-111's possessed an internal laser capability, they were heavily relied upon during the PGM campaigns.

      The largest category was represented by the generation of aircraft capable of using their onboard radar for search, acquisition and track of large or small battlefield installations and moving vehicles.  These are the F-16's, F-18's and F-15E's, the current generation of fighter-bomber, which made up 507 of the 1,012 US aircraft.[43]  The representative capability of this category is outlined in an unclassified Technical Order for the Block 40, F-16C.  In its highest resolution mode, the F-16 radar is capable of 1:64 expansion for detailed search and analysis of a designated surface area.  In this mode, a 40 nautical mile (nm) search can be narrowed down to a 0.97nm x 0.97nm area on a 6" x 6" video screen for scrutiny, target acquisition and attack.[44]   Accurately locating cultural features such as buildings, roads, road intersections, waterways, bridges, etc. is a matter of relative simplicity.  An added bonus to this generation of aircraft is the incorporation of Ground Moving Target (GMT) acquisition and its delivery mode of Ground Moving Target Track (GMTT).  This system processes radar returns from moving objects on the battlefield or along lines of communications (LOC's) with the capability of providing lead computed targeting data up to the point of munition release using the object's known speed and direction of movement.[45]  Both of these systems represent alternative weapon release modes that provide relatively accurate delivery day or night and in all weather conditions. 

      The proliferation of Forward Looking Infra Red (FLIR) systems in conventional strike aircraft further enhanced the ability of a large cross section of the US force to continue effective deep interdiction and battlefield interdiction at night.  The employment of LANTIRN equipped F-16's, TRAM A-6's and a number of Navy and Marine F-18's equipped with targeting FLIR's was augmented by the hordes of A-10's at King Fahd, Saudi Arabia, who effectively used the video from the AGM-65 Maverick as a "poor man's" FLIR.[46]  Approximately 30% of the fighter bombers in the theater employed some form of night visual targeting device.[47]  The enhanced radar and FLIR capabilities were heavily relied upon by an F-16 night attack squadron, the 69th TFS, King Fahd Air Base, Saudi Arabia to locate field fortifications, trench lines, large armor and artillery defensive positions, isolated structures and moving vehicles in Kuwait and southern Iraq during periods of darkness and inclement weather.[48]  Although visual acquisition, followed by a visual attack, remained the preferred and most accurate means of conventional delivery, the new generation proved able to generate 24-hour pressure with a level of effectiveness previously unavailable.  Saddam Hussein completely underestimated this capability and apparently depended on some form of sanctuary, either cover of darkness or seasonal weather systems, to permit operational freedom of movement.  He was wrong.  Robert Pape described this phenomenon in Bombing to Win as a "denial campaign."[49]  Fixing the Iraqi war machine to the battlefield and exacting a price for any form of operational movement marked the beginning of the denial campaign.  Contrary to the designs of the Warden/Hallion camp, it was the armada of smart platforms equipped with generic, unguided munitions that ground up the Iraqi's fighting spirit like a giant millstone. 

      The following scorecard will shed some light on the magnitude of the division of labor between precision and conventional munitions:

 

      PRECISION MUNITIONS

      Expended:    9,342 LGB's (4,493 were GBU-12, 500lb

                               class)

                   5,448 air-ground missiles (5296 were

                               Mavericks with a 350lb warhead)

                   333 cruise missiles (mostly Tomahawks

                               with a 1000lb warhead)  

      Targets:     Command and control facilities, hardened

                   aircraft shelters, bridges throughout Iraq

                   and Kuwait and armor in the Kuwait

                   theater[50]

 

      CONVENTIONAL MUNITIONS

      Expended:    Approximately 210,000 units (includes

                               77,653 500lb; 43,435 750lb; 12,289

                               2,000lb; 19,081 1,000lb; 55,853 cluster

                               munitions

      Targets:     All target sets listed under precision munitions plus

                               the Iraqi logistics mechanism and fielded

                               forces[51]

                                 Table 1

 

      There is an immense disparity in the total explosive weights of the two classes.  The total weight of the precision munition campaign, Table 1, amounts to a little over 10 million pounds of ordnance.  The weight of the conventional 2,000 pound class alone comes to over 24 million pounds of ordnance.  While the leverage provided by precision munitions in the opening days of a conflict was invaluable, it began to taper off.  All of the Tomahawks were launched in the first two weeks, with 65% launched in the first two days (Table 1).  Precision platforms, like the F-117 and the F-111, contributed the greatest percentage of damage to Iraq's first and second rings, but their roles were also fulfilled early in the conflict.[52]  The resiliency of the Iraqi Command and Control structure and the ingenuity of the Iraqis in repairing infrastructure damage were pointed out in Chapter 1.  A large variety of precision platforms were involved in attacks on the third ring and that campaign would continue on until the end of the conflict.  What became apparent was that the employment of precision munitions approached a point of diminishing marginal utility very quickly.[53]   Even at the fifth ring, the Iraqi ability to adapt to the adverse circumstance of a PGM campaign extended to their Air Force.  Thwarting coalition efforts to destroy their Air Force on the ground, the Iraqis played a very effective shell game.  With over 600 hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) spread throughout the country, the Iraqis capitalized on the slowing rate of incremental attrition by moving aircraft out of undamaged shelters and into previously struck shelters.[54]   The example poses the question that if one's opponent does not react as Warden would expect and a point of diminished utility has been achieved, what happens next?

      Sun Tsu expressed it as a simple axiom, "Keep (the enemy) under a strain and wear him down."[55]  Clausewitz was more elaborate in his discussion of the three means of increasing the enemy's level of expenditure, " The third, and far most important method,...is to wear down the enemy.  Wearing down the enemy in a conflict means using the duration of the war to bring about the gradual exhaustion of his physical and moral resistance."[56]  As effective as PGM's can be, they proved to have severe employment limitations when cloud cover, smoke, haze and severe humidity became factors.[57]  Even if weather and battlefield conditions prevailed in one's favor, it is economically unfeasible to physically target each component and individual in the enemy force with a precision munition.  When it became absurd to conduct trial and error targeting with PGM's, the only practical alternative for Desert Storm planners was to escalate the conventional bombing campaign against the fielded forces.  In this case, it involved the application of some 210,000 unguided units (Table 1, pg. 15) at the nominal cost of about one dollar per pound.[58]  It was this campaign that caused the unraveling of Iraqi moral force.  

      While area weapons, like the B-52, were extremely useful in the conventional role, for the first time, the US was able to bring the application of conventional weapons down to the individual level.  The systematic, often blind, conventional attacks against LOC's and suspected marshaling areas typical of the Vietnam era[59] were replaced by attacks from highly flexible, individual weapon systems capable of autonomous target acquisition.  It was the ability to sustain large volumes of accurate, conventional fire across the length and breadth of the battlefield which proved so decisive in Desert Storm.  Large units in the field presented excellent targets for mass bombing.[60]   While B-52's are credited as being the most readily identifiable platform, the Iraqis admitted that they were rarely able to distinguish between the systems attacking them.[61]  Throughout January it was not uncommon for 30 ship packages of fighter-bombers to attack troop positions in Kuwait.[62]  The Iraqis fully recognized the debilitating effects of the other 1100 plus tactical sorties applying pressure daily throughout the KTO.  This was the result of seemingly random targeting by approximately 46 fighter-bombers (not including B-52 strikes) conducting battlefield interdiction throughout the Kuwait theater every hour of every day, each averaging 1.5 to 2.0 tons of high explosives.[63] 

      The most fascinating aspect now becomes the coalition's inability to assess the physical results of the conventional bombing campaign in Kuwait.  The battle damage assessment process was broken and by mib-February there was no consensus between ARCENT, CENTCOM, CIA or DIA on what had been accomplished.[64]  Even though the post-war evidence suggests that relatively little physical destruction was accomplished, the question was largely irrelevant at the time.[65]  While the accuracy of the fighter-bomber force proved to be slightly less than that required to hard-kill point targets, it proved to be more than adequate in terrorizing forces in the immediate vicinity of the intended target.  By 27 February, the moral force account of the Iraqi military machine was bankrupt.  Although the level of moral destruction may appear unique, in retrospect all of the elements of that destruction were readily recognizable from historical examples of similar scenarios and medical studies.


CHAPTER 3

Desert Storm and the Many Faces of Moral Force

      Air delivered conventional ordnance has produced a variety of effects over the past 80 years.  In some cases, the effects are merely  derivatives of elements that have always been a part of modern warfare.  In other cases, the effects are magnified out of all proportion due to the difference in the size of air delivered munitions, the improved accuracy of delivery platforms and the capability of distributing those munitions in areas previously immune from attack.  Only one of these effects involves the physical destruction of men and equipment.  The remaining effects fall into the category of moral force, that portion of the equation deemed so inconsequential by Colonel Warden.  These effects have been taken far more seriously in the past as Napoleon once observed that "moral was to material as three is to one."  By virtue of their diverse natures, moral force properties are not usually capable of being targeted in the same manner as physical properties.  The many facets of moral force require time, patience and persistence to create an environment of total decay.  Moral force must be eroded under a campaign of constant pressure, very much like the physical "system" discussed in Chapter 1.  Summarized from numerous sources, some factors that make up a significant portion of moral force are categorized in the following Table:

 

        Commotional

     1. Paralysis generated through fear and shock

 

        Emotional

     2. Loss of sanctuary

     3. Isolation and loss of group identity

     4. Loss of confidence in force protection

     5. Confinement

 

 

 

        Physiological

     6. Sleep deprivation

     7. Denial of adequate food and water

 

        Intellectual    

     8. Breakdown of sense of purpose/ideological belief

 

Table 2   

                        

      Commotional shock is created by exposure to large explosive devices and forms the nucleus of the degenerative process.  The fusion of one or more of the emotional factors to that nucleus will cause an acceleration of the degenerative process.  Emotional factors have been known to cause total incapacitation by themselves but are typically byproducts of the commotional factor.  The physiological factors closely resemble their physical force counterparts in that they represent fundamental requirements for the sustainment of life itself.  The intellectual factor determines the relative time frame within which the other combined moral force factors will take effect.  Ultimately, it may determine whether an adversary force appears on the field of battle or simply quits.  Fierce programs of political, ideological or religious indoctrination[66] can increase the time required for moral decay to reach incapacitating levels and the lack of any credible indoctrination will accelerate the rate of decay generated by other moral factors.

      Previous conflict has shown air power capable of producing one or more of these effects, but rarely a combination of the majority of them.  On 18 October 1915, three biplanes of the Australian Flying Corps dropped two 30lb, two 20lb and sixteen 2lb bombs on the camp of a hostile Arab sheik, 45 miles north of Kut in Mesopotamia.  Five days later, the sheik surrendered his forces.[67]  Based on the limited physical destruction that these twenty munitions were capable of generating, it is apparent that a commotional effect was combined with an emotional effect and the sheik's moral force was overthrown.  The Arab sheik's dramatic action represents the ultimate end state which air campaign planners have traditionally hoped to achieve.  Since then, the achievement of total capitulation through air power has proven to be a most elusive and unpredictable outcome.  It becomes somewhat irrelevant whether a force surrenders or not.  What should be of greater concern is the duration that the enemy can sustain himself on the battlefield and  whether is capable of executing any coordinated operation.  The commander of the 2nd Marine Division during Desert Storm, LtGen Keyes, described the level of Iraqi resistance: "They would take us under fire. We would return fire with effect,...and they would just quit.  That proved to be the pattern for the entire 100 hour ground war."[68]

      If each of the eight factors outlined in Table 2 is applied individually, the effects may be mitigated or eliminated.  If the effects are compounded with one another and sustained over time, they can be devastating.  Desert Storm is the first conflict in which the advanced capabilities of conventional delivery platforms were able to systematically bring to bear and sustain a majority of these effects against a fielded force.  The end state of Desert Storm, at the conclusion of the 100 hour ground campaign, was the rout of the Iraqi forces and the capture of a Corps' worth of Iraqi Enemy Prisoners of War (EPW's).  A figure that emphasizes the level of moral destruction is that only 627 of the 90,000 EPW's were treated for physical wounds, equating to a remarkable 0.69% of all prisoners.[69]   To further compound the success, only 148 U.S. fatalities were sustained over the entire campaign.  This outcome could well have been analogous to the sheik's situation in 1915.

 

1. BATTLE PARALYSIS/EXHAUSTION

      The sights and sounds of battle and the perception of what they represent can render an individual completely incapable of accomplishing routine tasks.  This incapacity, referred to as "commotional" shock in W.W. 1, may be temporary or may evolve into permanent disability.[70]  

      Colonel P. Abraham of the Royal Army Medical Corps redefined commotional shock as an individual affliction and termed it "battle paralysis":  "those forces which render one unable to fight without a concurrent major physical injury or disease."[71]  The effects will last for a minimum of two minutes in all individuals and can last for days in some.  A W.W. 1 British regimental surgeon, Lord Moran, noted that the effects of temporary shock from artillery attacks could range from half an hour to hours in duration depending on the physical and mental condition of the individual.[72]  Col. Abraham provided an example of battle hardened panzer troops of 3rd Co., 503rd Tank Bn. in the 1944 battle for Caen in Normandy.  After two and a half hours of aerial bombardment, "they were dazed and demoralized and they came out of the cornfields attempting to surrender.  German anti-tank gunners were lying in their trenches or besides their guns completely dazed and taking no interest in the proceedings."[73]  Rommel was the master of using the shock value of battlefield preparation by conventional air.  During the invasion of France in 1940, each surge was immediately preceded by intense Stuka attacks for their disruptive effects and immediate shock effect.  The time between the commencement of his personally requested air support and his ground attacks was measured in minutes.[74]  His ultimate objective was to maximize the short term advantage gained by disorientation of both the group and the individual.  Rommel would continue this methodology on into his North Africa campaign of February 1943.  Inexperienced US combat troops at Kasserine would break and run on several occasions under the intense shock generated by the employment of German tactical air.[75]  One notes from Rommel's accounts that he did not depend on the systematic physical destruction of material.  A panzer corps commander on the Eastern Front during WW 2, General Balck, also recognized the necessity for maximizing shock effect over time by synchronizing air activity in such close proximity to armor that, on one occasion, bombs intentionally detonated within 5 meters of the lead tank entering a Russian village.[76]

      The shock effect of conventional air power achieves a point where its value diminishes if the time frame and intensity of exposure cannot be repeated at close intervals.  For true "battle paralysis" to be achieved, the pressure must be relatively continuous and the force exposed to it must not be permitted to remove itself from the environment.  By the end of February 1943, General Rommel commented that despite the initial effects that his use of air power had produced, the Americans recovered very quickly.  The North Africa component of the Luftwaffe was capable of producing an intense application of fire for only a short duration due to a lack of air superiority.[77]  Rommel lacked the assets necessary to make the transition into the next level of moral warfare, where battle paralysis becomes "battle exhaustion."[78] 

      Dr. Watson's study, in 1978, expressed the nature of this transition well.  The fear of being injured was replaced by the fear of the noise which specific munitions create, specifically because of the lack of warning and the lack of defense.[79]  Conventional munitions delivered from the air produced this type of fear in far greater proportion than its next nearest competitor, the artillery shell.  This is entirely consistent with Dr. Anthony Kellet's conclusion that "the most significant factors of noise, lack of warning and vulnerability can exaggerate the munitions actual effect out of all proportion."[80]  When one considers that the average 155mm artillery round weighs 78 pounds and the generic aircraft munition of Desert Storm weighed 500 pounds, this should not be surprising.  "Fatigue seems to be a natural effect of being under fire.  Even in a slit trench a man tends to brace himself continuously and this is exhausting."[81]  Colonel Abraham noted a Royal Army Medical study conducted after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War: "Due to the violence and intensity that can be generated, battle exhaustion can achieve its peak incidence level in as little as one day."[82]  He also noted that the number of battle exhaustion casualties had been as high as 30% of the total casualties and were directly proportional to the number of physically wounded.[83]  Abraham's context was one of intense ground combat combined with a furious air campaign.  The corollary is that if the ground combat element is removed but the air campaign is increased in intensity, then physical casualties may diminish but battle exhaustion casualties will remain the same.

      The only preventative measure that can be taken is removal from the environment for a minimum period of 48-72 hours.[84]  Lord Moran concurred with this estimate and pointed out the alternative by describing in detail the long term effects of exposure to fires.  He described the human condition as a bank account where courage was will power and that every man had finite resources within his account.  When the funds were reduced to zero, the man was finished and was unrecoverable as a combat resource.[85]  From 17 January to 28 February, 1991 some Iraqi units in the Kuwait theater were the recipients of a three-ship B-52 strike every 3 hours, twenty four hours a day (24 sorties).[86]  Each strike dropped a nominal load of two hundred and twenty-five 500 pound bombs.  An additional 25 B-52 sorties were then evenly distributed throughout the theater.  Another 46 fighter-bomber strikes per hour, day and night, filled in the gaps.  Force commanders have no means of desensitizing soldiers from this form of constant stimulus when it is compounded by the inability to remove them for short periods of rehabilitation.[87]  From his studies of Israeli soldiers during Middle East conflicts, Zohawa Solomon determined that, while it may be delayed, sensitization will occur and "repeated battery will fell even the hardiest of souls."[88]  It is this constant battery that forms the nucleus of the structure that the remaining moral force factors build on.  The air campaign during Desert Storm provided both the nucleus and an overwhelming combination of the seven other compounding effects.

 

2. LOSS OF SANCTUARY

      The loss of sanctuary is an important emotional building block in the degenerative process.  This factor both accelerates and magnifies the effect of battle paralysis.  The desire to preserve a sanctuary is a very human response to any adversity.  A human may engage vigorously in conflict as long as he can maintain the belief that there is some secure place that he can retreat to for rest and rehabilitation.  If this sanctuary is removed, the strength of the human spirit is diminished accordingly.  Nowhere is this more true then in the analysis of the psychological dynamics of the "modern empty battlefield."[89]  The "modern empty battlefield" is a place where death comes suddenly and with great violence, where the enemy is often totally invisible and where the first act of a combatant is to seek sanctuary.[90]  If the idea can be implanted in the mind of the individual combatant that there is no secure rear area, his fighting spirit has been predictably eroded and a force debilitation has been created.

      The chief complaint given by 450 captured Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Main Force infiltrators during the second half of 1965 was the collateral effects that the interdiction campaign was having in the south.  From June through December, VC morale was described as "very brittle with combat effectiveness declining."[91]  Breaking down the effects, the most common problems contributed by interdiction were: insecurity in camps; frequent disruption of rest and cooking of meals; constantly kept moving; generation of fear.  Summarized by a Main Force Platoon Leader: "nothing is more effective in destroying the morale of men than bombs,..... specifically the lack of sanctuary and the speed with which {they} could be brought to bear."[92]  Iraqi prisoners were very specific about the effects of the inexhaustible supply of bombs randomly falling on them, around them and behind them.  It induced both "helplessness and surrender."[93]

      A totally unanticipated product of the battlefield interdiction campaign was the destruction of logistics vehicles on the roads inside the theater.  Moving during daylight became impractical due to the air threat.  Historically, night or periods of bad weather had offered a sanctuary for the continuation of intra-theater logistical movement.  The increase in all weather/night sensor capabilities of strike aircraft halted night movement in some areas completely.  Officers and enlisted alike in one division were so terrified that they refused to drive vehicles for the purpose of resupply.[94]

 

3. ISOLATION AND LOSS OF GROUP IDENTITY

      In his landmark 1982 study, Canadian sociologist Anthony Kellet noted that the larger a group an individual can identify with, the stronger the overall force structure remains.  Large groups provide symbols of power, valor and indestructibility.  With reference to the British in World War 1, the representative group was the regiment.  Once the regiment ceased to be combat effective, so did the individual.  Anxiety increases proportionally as groups gradually break down towards the individual level.[95]  This corresponds with a post W.W. 2 psychological study which emphasized social bonding as the force within the group that causes an individual to expose himself to both danger and discomfort.[96]  The strongest force preventing gross disorganization of behavior is the social bond within the group.[97]  Desert Storm proved that a prolonged battlefield interdiction campaign can attack and destroy this aspect of small unit cohesion.  The ability of conventional air power to isolate units on the battlefield and to reduce social bonding down to the lowest common denominator, preferably the individual, proved achievable.  The social bond, which prevents an individual from capitulating, was capable of being broken.  During Desert Storm, Iraqi EPW's described the effects of listening to another unit being bombed but being unable to communicate with them in order to compare notes: "in total isolation troops had no idea what was happening to units next to them."[98]  "Bombs which missed everything were assumed to have hit something."[99]  The effects were highly degenerative.  Interviews with other EPW's noted the effect produced by continued air attacks, apparently directed against their equipment.  While B-52 strikes provoked terror, it was the "ceaseless attacks by A-10's and F-16's which caused day to day living conditions to worsen."[100]  Recognizing the danger of proximity, the final act of Iraqi troops distancing themselves from their equipment completed the social breakdown of many units.

 

4. LOSS OF CONFIDENCE IN FORCE PROTECTION

      In 1944, Dr. F.M. Richardson, a British psychiatrist, asserted this: "the most severe stress that soldiers face is continued dive bombing and machine gunning from the air, particularly when they are experienced under conditions of inactivity; without the possibility of retaliation and in the absence of aerial protection."[101]  Depriving the enemy of his own force protection is another psychological tool which conventional air power has exploited over the course of 20th century warfare.  Strung out across the Russian steppes, German armor was subjected to Russian air assault with the following report by the Commanding General of the XXIV Panzer Corps on 9 Nov. 1941, "my troops were suffering severe psychological and material damage due to continuing Russian air attacks,...the psychological effects on armored units must not be underestimated when they are attacked for hours, day af