Kuwaiti Army
Under the constitution, the amir is the supreme commander of the armed forces. The minister of defense directs the armed forces through the chief of general staff. The National Guard has its own commander, who reports directly to the minister of defense. The public security forces are all under the minister of interior. The minister of defense in early 1993, Ali as Sabah as Salim Al Sabah, had been shifted from the Ministry of Interior as part of the military shakeup after the gulf war. The ruling family maintained a tight grip on the centers of power, including many senior posts in the security services.
The Kuwaiti Army was established in 1938. Initially, the country's armed forces were under the command of the Public Security Directorate, which became a subdivision of the Ministry of Defense after its formation and consisted of three forces: land, air and naval, The Kuwaiti army was established in 1961 at the independence of Kuwait (although there was previously a 600-strong British-led group to protect the emir).
Before the Iraqi invasion, the army's manpower strength was 16,000 officers and enlisted men. The principal combat formations were three armored brigades, one mechanized infantry brigade, and one artillery brigade with a regiment of self-propelled howitzers and a surface-to-surface missile (SSM) battalion. All the combat units were under strength; by one estimate, as of 1988 the army's entire fighting strength was the equivalent of only one Western brigade.
The biggest event in this force is the Persian Gulf War. At that time (1990), the Kuwaiti army was a small force that focused on Kuwait's ground forces. It consisted of several brigades and an armored battalion with Chieftan and M84 tanks, as well as a number of BMP-2s. When the invasion of Kuwait began, the country was taken by surprise (although it had no effect).
The Kuwaiti army, despite having a manpower of over 50,000, has performed poorly on the battlefield. In the most serious battle of the Iraqi army during the occupation of Kuwait by the Iraqi army, the Iraqi army was defeated only after 48 hours of resistance against Iraq, which eventually led to the occupation of Kuwait. The entire Kuwaiti army did not resist, but in a rare case an armored brigade stood against Iraq with the help of a tank battalion, but their resistance did not exceed a few hours, and the rest of the forces fled to neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia.
The Iraqi invasion in the early hours of August 2 was detected by a balloon-borne early warning radar, but the army had insufficient time to mount any organized resistance. Some contingents continued a small-unit defense, including those equipped with Chieftain tanks. About 7,000 soldiers escaped to Saudi Arabia; the remainder were killed or captured or participated in the internal resistance movement. Some Mirage and Skyhawk aircraft carried out attacks on the advancing Iraqi columns; when their air base in southern Kuwait was overrun, they flew to Saudi Arabian bases, as did some of the armed helicopters.
According to Norman Friedman, author of a study on the strategy and tactics of the Persian Gulf War, the Kuwaiti forces participating in Operation Desert Storm in February 1991 included the 35th Armored Brigade (renamed Martyr Brigade), the 15th Infantry Brigade, and the lightly equipped Liberation Brigade, which was armed with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on trucks. One source estimated that 7,000 Kuwaiti troops were involved. The Martyr Brigade was the first of the units of Joint Forces Command East in the drive paralleling the coast northward when the allied operation began on February 24, 1991. Along with Saudi, Qatari, and Bahraini forces, supported by United States marines on their left flank, their assignment of liberating the city of Kuwait incurred little Iraqi resistance.
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas reported on 29 December 2015 that the Kuwaiti government will send troops to Saudi Arabia to assist the Saudi military in its fight against the Houthis in Yemen. "Kuwait has decided to join the ground war against the Houthis and to counter the Houthi attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," al-Qabas newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying. The Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry has not yet commented on the report in the Kuwaiti newspaper. Kuwait had participated in the operation and supported Saudi Arabia since the beginning of Saudi airstrikes against Yemen. However, in the nine months since the war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen, Kuwait had not yet participated in its ground forces and has not been involved in a ground battle with the Houthis. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Kuwaiti Army denied sending the country's ground forces to Yemen.
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