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Operation Desert Owl

On 20 December 1990, Headquarters, Department of the Army alerted the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to be prepared to train 300 to 325 Kuwaiti personnel for service as linguists and intelligence analysts with selected US Army units in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. This was to rectify a shortage of US Soldiers proficient in Arabic. This program subsequently became known as Operation Desert Owl.

Persons to be trained were Kuwaiti college students attending school in the United States. The students already spoke fluent English, as well as the Iraqi dialect of Arabic, and had an understanding of American customs and traditions, which eased their adjustment to serving with the American Army. The Kuwaiti government-in-exile offered to underwrite the cost of the training and equipment.

The US Army Intelligence School at Fort Devens, Massachusetts received the mission, with base operations and drill sergeant support to be furnished by the Army Training Center at Fort Dix, New Jersey. A Training Task Force was established to support the training of the new Kuwaiti Soldiers as assistant voice interceptors, processors, and reporters at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and Fort Devens, Massachusetts. The abbreviated training ran from 7 January 1991 to 6 February 1991 and was designed as an intensive Combat Intelligence Training Course (CITC). The hurriedly put together training program included instruction in basic combat subjects, military terminology, and United States military organization. The students also received training on the M16 rifle, and in Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological (NBC) defense tasks. Units supporting this CITC were the 306th Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort Devens, Massachusetts; 3rd Battalion, 26th Infantry and 344th Military Intelligence Battalion at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas; 3rd Basic Combat Training Brigade and the 902nd Military Intelligence Group at Fort Dix, New Jersey; 704th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Meade, Maryland; and the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California.

The 292 students, all male volunteers, were inducted into the Kuwaiti Army on 5 January 1991 at a ceremony in Washington, DC. Training began on 7 January 1991 and ended on 14 January 1991, followed by deployment from McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. As with short-notice training for American troops then being conducted by TRADOC, Operation Desert Owl experienced shortages of weapons and equipment. Fort Dix issued BDUs from its own stock until the Army Materiel Command could replace them.

A second group of 60 Kuwaiti trainees trained at Fort Devens from 28 January to 4 February 1991, by which time Operation Desert Shield had transitioned to Operation Desert Storm. A third group of 269 Kuwaiti students, 10 of whom were female, arrived at Fort Dix on 14 February 1991 for a slightly longer training cycle. The last group of Kuwaiti trainees deployed to Southwest Asia on 26 February 1991 to serve as interrogators, assistants to military police in Prisoner of War operations, assistants to the Staff Judge Advocate in war crime investigations, translators for medical personnel, and supporters of civil affairs operations. This marked the end of Operation Desert Owl.