U.S. Navy's Role in the Gulf War: Strategy and Outcome

Background: Cold War Roots and the Road to War

Although many people believe that the current problems in the Middle East can be traced to the end of World War II and the creation of Israel, much of the current conflict can be attributed to the Cold War. In fact, the United States maintained a strong military presence in the Middle East throughout this period. As one account notes, "The continuous, albeit limited, American military presence in the Persian Gulf demonstrated to potential aggressors that in any confrontation they faced the prospect of war with a superpower."

The United States and Russia engaged in a covert struggle over much of the Middle East, and that struggle extended to Iraq, which was Russia's ally during the Cold War. As a result of Cold War tensions and disagreements over key issues — such as the conflict between Israel and Palestine and the role of Egypt — diplomatic relations between Iraq and the United States were both strained and underdeveloped at the beginning of the 1980s. The United States and Iraq briefly became allies after Iraq invaded Iran and started the Iran-Iraq War. One of the stumbling blocks to a successful diplomatic relationship was Iraq's state-sponsored terrorism, but in 1983, Saddam Hussein expelled a well-known terrorist group. As a result, the Reagan administration began to try to build diplomatic relations with Iraq.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq became deeply indebted to both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but Iraq had problems paying its debts and wanted Kuwait to cancel them. Moreover, Iraq and Kuwait were involved in a dispute over Iraq's allegations that Kuwait was exceeding OPEC oil production quotas. Iraq ostensibly sought a diplomatic solution to its disputes with Kuwait, but the two countries were unable to reach an agreement. On August 2, 1990, Iraq began an invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait was unprepared for the invasion, and Iraq quickly conquered the country.

Both the UN Security Council and the Arab League sought diplomatic resolutions to the conflict, and the UN quickly instituted economic sanctions against Iraq. Iraq began denouncing Saudi Arabia, and the United States launched a campaign, Operation Desert Shield, to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia. The UN established Resolution 678, which gave Iraq a deadline of January 15, 1991, to withdraw from Kuwait. Iraq refused to withdraw, and coalition forces attacked.

The Start of the Coalition Offensive

On January 17, 1991, the coalition forces — predominantly composed of American troops — launched an offensive against Iraq. The coalition began by taking out Iraq's radar capabilities and communications devices, and then bombed Baghdad. Coalition forces also struck other targets in Iraq, including government buildings, communications facilities, and media outlets. Air strikes played an extremely important role in the first Gulf War. "The first planes to bomb Baghdad in the early morning darkness were U.S. Air Force F-117s. The radar-evading stealth aircraft were both the embodiment of superior U.S. weapons technology, and the harbinger of a new high-tech war."

Air Power and the Duration of the War

Air attacks continued to play a significant role throughout the war. Six weeks of bombing weakened Iraq considerably. Iraq responded by shooting missiles into Israel, a tactic it continued throughout the six-week campaign. The coalition used air strikes to neutralize the threat of Iraq's armed forces so effectively that only four days of ground assaults were necessary after the air strike phase to compel Iraq to surrender.

That is not to suggest that the coalition forces were not threatened by Iraq's military. On the contrary, Iraq had well-developed anti-aircraft defenses, which fared well against coalition aircraft — especially low-flying aircraft designed to evade radar detection — since the Iraqi defense did not rely heavily on radar.

The U.S. Navy's Strategic Role

The United States Navy played a crucial role in the first Gulf War. Before the conflict, the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf was difficult to negotiate on land, because "devout Muslim populations were not likely to accept large, predominantly Christian, and non-Arab air and ground forces operating from inland bases." However, those same populations were content to have U.S. military support in the water, which gave the U.S. Navy an important strategic role in the region:

"The U.S. Navy's performance during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988 strengthened these relations. The carrier and battleship task forces that operated in the North Arabian Sea and the cruisers, destroyers, and mine countermeasures ships of Joint Task Force Middle East in the gulf were largely responsible for maintaining the flow of oil from the producing countries of the region. The fleet also prevented Iran's military power from advancing across the gulf. These positive actions helped dissipate the memory of Washington's lack of resolve during the Tehran hostage crisis and the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s, when significant doubt had developed about American staying power. The local Arab states would not forget this American constancy when Iraq threatened regional stability in 1990."

While the U.S. Navy's presence did not prevent Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, it would be wrong to suggest it had no impact on Iraq and Hussein. The strong U.S. Navy presence in the Persian Gulf certainly helped prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia, which it was poised to do after the conquest of Kuwait. "Within days of the invasion of Kuwait, carrier aircraft were in range to help defend the Arabian Peninsula."

While the naval response was not as rapid as it might have been, it was effective and kept the seas as friendly territory for coalition forces. As a result, the coalition victory in Gulf War I was decisive:

"With Americans in the lead, coalition forces restored Kuwait to its government and people and severely limited Saddam Hussein's ability to threaten regional peace. The Navy and the other joint and combined forces reduced the Iraqi air force by more than half, eliminated the Iraqi navy as a fighting force, destroyed 4,200 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery pieces, and killed, wounded, or captured perhaps 100,000 Iraqi troops."

Conversely, NAVCENT (the coalition naval forces) did not suffer the sinking of a single ship and lost only a half-dozen aircraft. Six naval air crewmen were killed in action. The Iraqis shot down seven Marine aircraft and killed or wounded 110 Marines.

The Navy's air offensive was also crucial to success in Gulf War I. The Navy made effective use of the Tomahawk land attack missile, which proved vital to the war's outcome. While the Iraqis managed to shoot down some Tomahawk missiles, the majority successfully destroyed their targets. The Navy was also instrumental in developing strategy that helped guarantee coalition success, particularly by identifying the need to neutralize "Iraq's radar-directed, surface-to-air missile system."

The Navy also employed general-purpose bombs to destroy targets. "Navy and Marine aircraft also dropped leaflets as part of a sophisticated psychological warfare effort. Enemy morale and military effectiveness suffered badly from this constant attention. By the last days of the war, carrier aircraft and both ship-based and shore-based Marine aircraft were launching numerous strikes against the Iraqi army as it fled from Kuwait City along the 'highway of death.'"

Despite the large-scale bombing and air campaign, there were few civilian casualties during the war. Part of this was strategic: "naval leaders understood how bombing inaccuracy might enrage the enemy population and generate domestic and international opposition to the UN mission."

Navy pilots, however, "did not score additional fixed-wing kills during the war." This does not indicate a weakness on the part of Navy fighters; rather, it reflects sound strategy. The commanders overseeing Gulf War I were not confident that the Navy's equipment could accurately differentiate between friendly and enemy aircraft, so they chose not to engage Navy pilots in the same type of dogfights assigned to Air Force pilots.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the Navy's military presence in the Persian Gulf during Gulf War I was its ability to intimidate the enemy. Had the Iraqis decided to attack coalition forces in the Gulf, they might have scored early victories that could have changed the war's outcome. As one assessment concludes:

"U.S. naval leaders have concluded that a determined air assault on the fleet would probably have damaged or even sunk some coalition ships, especially in the early stages of Desert Shield when coalition air defenses in the gulf were not robust. By the start of Desert Storm, however, SAM-armed U.S. Aegis/NTU cruisers; British, Australian, Canadian, and Dutch warships; and Navy, Marine, Air Force, British, and Canadian early warning and patrol planes, backed up by fighters, saturated the northern gulf. The Iraqi air force had to test the defensive perimeter in the gulf only once to discover that the coalition's seaborne defenses were as impervious as those on land. The shoot-down of two Iraqi Mirage jets on 24 January, while exposing some command and control shortcomings, highlighted the resiliency and depth of the allied air defenses."

What all of the above makes clear is that, while Navy pilots may have played a smaller role in one-on-one aerial combat than pilots from other service branches, naval support was critical to the coalition's victory in Gulf War I.

Conclusion

Gulf War I was, in many respects, a war with a foretold conclusion. The continuous U.S. military presence in the Gulf — which had begun following World War II and escalated during the Cold War — ensured that the U.S. military would be positioned to intervene in conflicts between countries in the Middle East. Furthermore, the strong Navy presence, largely dictated by Muslim customs that discouraged substantial foreign land forces in Muslim countries, gave the United States a strategic advantage: it largely controlled the Persian Gulf even before the war began. All of these factors combined to produce a ceasefire on February 28, 1991, approximately six weeks after the war started.

However, the United States has not seen the same kind of success in the subsequent Gulf War, raising the question of whether it failed to deploy its Navy forces as efficiently as it did during the first conflict.

References

Atkinson, R. (1993). Crusade: The untold story of the Persian Gulf War: Chronology. Retrieved October 3, 2009, from Frontline. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/cron/

Marolda, E. (2001). The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf. Retrieved October 3, 2009, from the Naval Historical Center.

McIntyre, J. (2001). Tenth anniversary of the Gulf War: A look back. Retrieved October 3, 2009, from CNN.

Shenon, P. (1991). War in the Gulf: Rescue; Navy pilot is plucked from Iraqi desert. The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/22/world/war-in-the-gulf-rescue-navy-pilot-is-plucked-from-iraqi-desert.html