The Gulf War air campaign introduced profound changes in the planning and conduct of warfare. The results were dramatic in that they changed the expectations of modern warfare. Today and in the future, armed conflict is expected to be short, decisive, and accomplished with a minimum of casualties.

Much of the success achieved by the US and its allies in Desert Shield/Desert Storm is rightfully attributed to advances in technology—the combination of greater precision in weapons with the access enabled by stealth, along with more rapid dissemination of knowledge through information technologies.

Over a decade has elapsed since the Desert Storm turning point in the conduct of conventional war. The security environment has changed and the tools of warfare have been improved, but what is yet to be fully understood and incorporated into our security planning is another critical element of what enabled success of the Gulf War air campaign: the effects-based approach to its planning and execution.

In this essay, Brigadier General Dave Deptula updates an earlier work, and explains the essence of effects-based operations. Describing how it was used as the basis of air campaign planning in the Gulf War, he goes on to suggest that the US security establishment incorporate effects-based operations as the foundation of its security strategy as we move into the future.

In presenting this paper, the Foundation hopes to expand the nation’s discussion of these important security issues. General Deptula’s paper has significant implications for how we fight in the future, how we will define success in warfare and—perhaps most important of all—the nature and type of forces that we must field to deal with emerging and future threats to our national security interests. It also has very significant implications for the mix of aerospace, land, and sea forces for the future.

Download Effects-Based Operations: Change in The Nature of Warfare

PDF format, 1.6MB, 40Pages.

Brigadier General David A. Deptula
Aerospace Education Foundation.

Introduction:

Skimming 300 feet over the desert at 500 miles per hour it was so dark the night vision goggles and low light TV system didn’t help. Iraqi early warning radars forced Biscone to drop his huge, old bomber lower—the surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat was greater than the danger of flying within a wingspan of the ground. Minutes later, Biscone and his counterparts’ “Buffs” executed a successful multi-axis attack crippling the airfield and leaving anti-aircraft artillery with nothing to fire at but the receding jet noise.

Less than an hour earlier, stealthy F-117s had struck the heart of the enemy—Baghdad—in the opening minutes of the war. Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAMs) followed, striking critical electric systems and government decision-making and communications centers. F-15Es, part of an initial covert entry scheme into Iraq, attacked known Scud launch facilities that threatened Israel and Coalition nations. While Biscone and his flight were departing the target area in central Iraq, similar attacks occurred at four other forward fighter bases spread across Iraq.

Simultaneously, 13 F-117s flew against 22 separate targets including command leadership bunkers north of Baghdad, communications exchanges in Baghdad, interceptor operations centers in Kuwait, satellite downlink facilities, and vital communications nodes around the country. In western Iraq 30 aircraft attacked Saddam Hussein’s chemical air attack facilities. Just north of Basrah, 38 fighters put Shaibah air field out of commission, and 44 others stripped away the medium altitude SAM defenses west of Baghdad near Al Taqqadum airfield, the Habanniyh oil storage area, and three chemical weapons precursor facilities to clear the way for attacks the following afternoon.

Before the crews of Biscone’s flight returned to Diego Garcia, Republican Guard headquarters in the Basrah area and regular Iraqi ground forces near the Saudi border came under air attack. All suspected biological weapons storage sites were targeted and critical oil storage facilities were hit. Conventional air launched cruise missiles (CALCMs) fired by B-52s flying from the United States reached electric facilities at Al Mawsil in Northern Iraq. By the end of the first 24 hours of the war, bombs also hit enemy bridges, military support and production factories, and naval facilities.

In all, more than 1,300 offensive air sorties were flown that day.2 It was not the number of sorties however, that made this first day of air attacks so important, but how they were planned to achieve specific effects.

The first night of the Gulf War air campaign demonstrated that the conduct of war had changed. One hundred fifty-two discrete targets— plus regular Iraqi Army forces and SAM sites—made up the master attack plan for the opening 24-hour period of the Gulf air war. The Gulf War began with more targets in one day’s attack plan than the total number of targets hit by the entire Eighth Air Force in all of 1942 and 19434—more separate target air attacks in 24 hours than ever before in the history of warfare.

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