History concepts and applications

¶ … Gulf War reveal about the utility and ability of the U.S. military at the end of the twentieth century?

In the early 1990's, most people assumed that the U.S. military was ready to deal with a host of challenge. Yet, American forces were considered to be inexperienced with many units only seeing limited action in operations that ended quickly (i.e. Grenada and Panama). This caused some individuals in the press to believe that the U.S. would have trouble fighting against some of the more experienced military forces.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, these concerns were increasingly brought to the forefront. This is because the Republican Guard (one of Iraq's most elite units) had tremendous experience fighting a long and bloody war with the Iranians during the 1980s. This caused many military analysts to believe that the U.S. military was in a period of long-term decline. The reason why is the America had not been involved in any type of significant operations (requiring: a large number of forces and resources) since Vietnam. Moreover, there were predictions that any kind of attempt by the U.S. And its allies to expel Iraq from Kuwait would result in, "The mother of all battles" (according to Saddam Hussein). This led to concerns that the American military was unable to deal with emerging threats.

However, the strategy that was used by U.S. was considered to be a classic example of how to conduct effective military operations around the globe. This is because the American generals were focused on utilizing technology to change the nature of warfare. The way that this occurred was through having a series of airstrikes that would target: command / control, air defense and the ability of the Iraqi army to wage war.

After several weeks of the air campaign, is when ground forces moved into Kuwait and quickly expelled the Iraqis. This resulted in large defections from the Iraqi army (who were demoralized and under supplied). These lasting events are showing how the U.S. military was: very strong, technologically advanced and flexible enough to deal with a host of challenges.

A good example of this can be seen with the implementation of Global Hawk. This is an unmanned observational aircraft (which gave military commanders unprecedented access to the battlefield). During all of the allies operations, the data that was received was relayed to air force and ground units in real time. They would use this intelligence to attack and weaken the ability of the Iraqi army to fight.