The Virginian-Pilot February 24, 2003
Military planners draw from 1991 war
By Dale Eisman
WASHINGTON -- As they geared up for the Persian Gulf War of 1991, American military planners couldn't believe their good fortune.
Along the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein's army dug in for an attack but did nothing to disrupt allied preparations to deliver it. The dictator simply watched and waited as a half-million troops trained for combat and millions of tons of ammunition and supplies were assembled to support them.
That no future foe would repeat Iraq's mistake has been an article of faith in the Pentagon since 1991. But this winter, as 200,000 Americans and British troops have flown or sailed into the Gulf region, Iraq appears to have followed its failed 1991 strategy to the letter.
Indeed, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's announcement that U.S. forces are now prepared to strike, some analysts suggest the military's biggest worry is keeping troops and equipment battle-ready if diplomatic efforts to head off war stretch into the summer.
``Right now, it's very pleasant'' in the Kuwaiti desert, said Pat Sweeney, a retired Army colonel who fought there in 1991 and now teaches at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Temperatures are moderate and the humidity is low, he said.
But by mid-April, Sweeney said, it will be hot and getting hotter by the day, and the troops will be getting tired of waiting, lonesome for families and sweethearts back home, and bored with training. The aircraft and trucks supplying the whole enterprise likely will be showing signs of strain.
Sweeney was in the first wave of Americans to arrive in Saudi Arabia after Iraq seized Kuwait in August 1990 and was there through the six-month allied buildup.
The summer heat, which sends daily temperature well over 100 degrees, quickly took a toll on the Americans, he said. People with any medical flaw -- a heart murmur or respiratory problem, for example -- were soon felled by the weather and the 12- to 15-hour workdays.
Before the first Gulf War, a team of 90 Seabees from Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base built a fully equipped, 500-bed field hospital near a Saudi port. It took crews twice as long to do the work there as they would have needed in a more temperate climate, one Seabee recalled.
``There's a fine sand and it gets in everything,'' said an Air Force pilot who was a controller for U.S. planes supporting French ground forces during the first Gulf War.
The dust was so intense, he recalled, that he had to clean his sidearm daily to keep it working. It was a simple chore at his level but a major undertaking for the armored troops who had to keep the thousands of parts in their tanks clean and lubricated.
``Everybody's at their peak when they arrive,'' Sweeney said, but particularly during the summer, commanders have to think about rotating in replacement troops after a few months. That wasn't a huge problem in 1991, when the United States was just beginning to scale down its Cold War force, but ``we don't have that luxury now. . . . There's not a lot of second-team guys out there now,'' Sweeney said.
Others with experience in the desert said the biggest challenge facing the American force is staying mentally sharp during what could become an extended round of diplomacy.
``A tremendous amount of readiness is mental,'' said Jay Farrar, a retired Marine officer now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. For Marine forces, it's particularly challenging to maintain a mental edge during long months at sea, he suggested.
Marine commanders fight shipboard boredom with mandatory daily workouts and drills, including live-fire exercises, but after a couple of months at sea those options have been pretty much exhausted, Farrar said.
``You have to have the physical activity of being on the ground,'' maneuvering troops and equipment, coordinating land, air and sea elements of the force, he added. When those opportunities aren't available, troops ``kind of drift off into distractions,'' Farrar said.
``You want to be fresh,'' said another officer, who because he's still on active duty asked not to be named. Troops who have to endure long waits before going into battle begin to worry, he said: ``What's going to happen and is it going to happen soon? Will we be ready? That starts to weigh on you.''
Despite such challenges, American commanders insist their troops are prepared to wait as long as President Bush wants. And analysts suggest that U.S. logisticians understand and are better equipped to deal with the challenges of a protracted delay than they were in 1991.
Indeed, some argue that as long as commanders on the ground can keep their forces active with training exercises, a long wait may serve only to increase America's military advantage over Iraqi.
``Whatever problems we have are going to be magnified on the other side,'' said Piers Wood, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based think tank.
Iraqi forces waiting for the U.S. attack are by all accounts poorly equipped, badly trained and often unpaid. Those problems will worsen in a delay while the American supply lines will get stronger, he suggested, and the Iraqis' difficulties will increase exponentially when American bombs and missiles start falling.
Wood said that as U.S. logisticians and engineers settle in, American morale may actually improve. The long and incredibly complex supply chain ``gets better and better'' and the skipped deliveries and misdirected supplies that are routine early in a deployment become unusual with time, he said. The ingenuity of individual soldiers also eases burdens, Wood said. In the run-up to the 1991 war, French troops set up bakeries that supplied hundreds of fresh loaves of bread every day; American units like the 75th Tactical Fighter Squadron, based at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, set up bars like the 75th's ``Desert Rat Saloon,'' to give troops a chance for after-hours relaxation.
While Saudi law kept beer and liquor out of such establishments, nonalcoholic ``near beer'' provided a touch of home. And particularly inventive troops often managed -- as they usually do when given enough time -- to find stronger drink.
Life in the field ``always gets better'' over time, Wood said. Thirty years ago in Vietnam, his troops went from living in holes to sandbagged bunkers and finally to wooden buildings; he can remember building an entire base out of discarded ammunition crates, he added.
Wood argues that the Americans' toughest problem may be ``arterial sclerosis'' in the Pentagon's personnel system. The United States moves individual troops into new jobs or educational programs so fast and so often that the personnel system will begin to break down if large numbers must be kept out of the rotation for a protracted period, he said.
Wood said the troops won't care, but that the system ``will clog itself'' and there'll be pressure from Washington to keep rotating people.
Staff writer Jack Dorsey contributed to this story.
Reach Dale Eisman at icemandc@msn.com or (703) 913-9872.
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