Operation Desert Storm, the combat phase of the Gulf War, began with an extensive aerial bombing campaign by the air forces of the coalition against targets in Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait from 17 January to 23 February 1991. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs, destroying military and civilian infrastructure. The air campaign was commanded by United States Air Force (USAF) Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, who briefly served as Commander-in-Chief—Forward of U.S. Central Command while General Norman Schwarzkopf was still in the United States. The British air commanders were Air Chief Marshal Andrew Wilson, to 17 November 1990, and Air Vice-Marshal Bill Wratten, from 17 November. The air campaign had largely finished by 23 February 1991 with the beginning of the coalition ground offensive into Kuwait.
The initial strikes were carried out by AGM-86 ALCM cruise missiles launched by B-52 Stratofortress bombers, Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from U.S. Navy warships situated in the Persian Gulf, by F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft with an armament of laser-guided smart bombs, and by F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft and F/A-18 Hornet aircraft armed with HARM anti-radar missiles. These first attacks allowed F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F/A-18 Hornet combat aircraft to gain air superiority over Iraq and then continue to drop television-guided and laser-guided bombs.
Armed with a GAU-8 rotary cannon and infrared-imaging or optically guided AGM-65 Maverick missiles, USAF A-10 Thunderbolt IIs bombed and destroyed Iraqi armored forces, supporting the advance of U.S. ground troops. United States Marine Corps close air support AV-8B Harriers employed their 25mm rotary cannon, Mavericks, cluster munitions, and napalm against the Iraqi dug-in forces to pave the way forward for the U.S. Marines breaching Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's defenses. The U.S. Army attack helicopters: AH-64 Apache and AH-1 Cobra fired laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire and TOW missiles, which were guided to tanks by ground observers or by scout helicopters, such as the OH-58D Kiowa. The Coalition air fleet also made use of the E-3A Airborne Warning and Control Systems and of a fleet of B-52 Stratofortress bombers.
Opposing Forces
Coalition Armed Forces
On the eve of Operation Desert Storm, the Coalition of the Gulf War numbered 2,430 fixed-wing aircraft in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations (KTO), almost three-fourths of which belonged to the United States Armed Forces. When the ground assault began on 24 February, that number had increased to over 2,780. Representing a relatively high tooth-to-tail ratio, approximately 60 percent of Coalition aircraft were "shooters" or combat aircraft. The United States Air Force deployed over 1,300 aircraft during the course of the campaign, followed by the United States Navy with over 400 aircraft and the United States Marine Corps with approximately 240. Collectively, the other Coalition partners accounted for over 600 aircraft.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates all contributed air forces to the campaign, as did the United Kingdom (Operation Granby), France (Opération Daguet), Canada (Operation Friction) and Italy (Operazione Locusta). South Korea, Argentina and New Zealand provided a small number of transport aircraft. South Korea, Kuwait, Italy and Japan paid for the cost of 200 airlift flights into Saudi Arabia. Germany, Belgium and Italy each sent a squadron of fighters as part of their NATO obligation to protect Turkey. These aircraft were strictly defensive and did not take part in the campaign against Iraq.
In terms of quantity and quality, Coalition airpower was superior to its Iraqi counterpart. This was particularly the case in special capabilities which the Iraqis simply lacked, including aerial refueling, airborne command and control, electronic warfare, precision munitions and stealth aircraft. Such capabilities were primarily, if not exclusively, provided for by the United States. In space, sixteen military communications satellites, fourteen of which belonged to the United States, were supplemented with five commercial satellites to provide the vast majority of communication within the theater of operations. Combined they had a total transmission rate of 200 million bits per second, or equivalent to 39,000 simultaneous telephone calls. A range of other satellites provided additional intelligence-gathering services, including the Defense Support Program, Landsat program, SPOT, and six meteorological satellites.
One area where the Coalition was deficient was in tactical reconnaissance. Aircraft specializing in reconnaissance were reportedly given low priority due to lack of space and the belief that strategic platforms could take over their role, a belief which would prove misplaced. Efforts to compensate for this deficiency included using regular fighter aircraft in the reconnaissance role and RQ-2 Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicles. Deployed mainly by the U.S. Marines, the RQ-2 was sufficient for certain missions but lacking in many respects compared to dedicated aircraft.
Iraqi Armed Forces
At the time of the Gulf War the Iraqi Air Force (IQAF) was the sixth largest in the world, with 750 fixed-wing combat aircraft operating out of 24 primary airfields, with 13 active dispersal fields and 19 additional dispersal fields. Iraq had constructed 594 hardened aircraft shelters to house nearly its entire air force, protecting them from attack. Iraq similarly possessed an impressive amount of air defenses. Its inventory included 16,000 surface-to-air missiles, both radar and infrared guided, with over 3,600 of these being major missile systems. Up to 154 SAM sites and 18 SAM support facilities were located in Iraq. Another 20 or 21 sites were in the Kuwaiti theater of operations (KTO). Iraq possessed a large number of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), with 972 AAA sites, 2,404 fixed AA guns and 6,100 mobile AA guns. Providing complete coverage of Iraqi airspace were 478 early warning radars, 75 high-frequency radars, and 154 acquisition radars.
Much of this equipment was combined into an integrated air defense system (IADS) overseen by Kari, an automated C2 computer system developed by Iraq and built by French contractors in the wake of Operation Opera. Kari is the French spelling of Iraq, backwards. Kari tied the entire IADS to a single location, the national Air Defense Operations Center (ADOC), located in an underground bunker in Baghdad. It divided Iraq into four defense sectors, each overseen by a Sector Operations Center (SOC) located at H-3, Kirkuk, Taji and Talil. A fifth SOC was added at Ali Al Salem, to cover the recently conquered Kuwait. Each SOC oversaw the local airspace and commanded anywhere from two to five Intercept Operations Centers (IOCs) per sector.
The IOCs were located in bunkers constructed at Iraqi Air Force bases and tied into local radar systems, whose information they could pass on to their SOC and from there on to Baghdad. In this way a SOC was capable of simultaneously tracking 120 aircraft and selecting for the appropriate weapon system to engage them. The SOC could automatically target for SA-2 and SA-3 SAM systems in their sector, which meant the SAMs did not have to turn on their own radar and reveal their position, or an IOC could direct local interceptors to engage the targets. Baghdad was one of the most heavily defended cities in the world—more heavily defended several times over than Hanoi during the Vietnam War—protected by 65% of Iraq's SAMs and over half of its AAA pieces.
Though impressive on paper, the Iraqi Air Force's primary role was to act as a regional deterrent, with a secondary role of supporting the Iraqi Army, rather than attempt to gain air superiority in any conflict. Basic training was rigid, inflexible, and left pilots with extremely poor situational awareness. Additional training was provided by the Soviet Union. Iraqi Mirage pilots attended courses in France. Soviet trainers generally passed everyone, but assessed that less than half of the IQAF students would have been accepted into Soviet fighter units. French training, which the Iraqis considered decidedly superior to Soviet training, resulted in an 80% failure rate by Iraqi pilots. Nevertheless those who failed were qualified to fly upon return to Iraq.
In all, a third of Iraqi pilots were deemed to meet the standards of Western pilots, and almost all of them lacked aggressiveness and were overly dependent upon ground control to direct them to targets. The air force suffered from spare parts shortages and maintenance shortfalls, and a majority of their equipment like the MiG-21 were outdated and of dubious combat value. Only 170 aircraft like the MiG-29 and Mirage F1 were considered comparable to Coalition aircraft, with the Iraqi MiG-29s being downgraded export models.
The Kari air defence system had a number of deficiencies, of which Coalition air forces took advantage. The system was primarily oriented towards defending against much smaller attacks from Iraq's most likely enemies—Iran, Syria and Israel—and focused on point defense rather than area defense. This meant there were significant gaps in its coverage, particularly on the orientation from Saudi Arabia straight to Baghdad, and attacking aircraft would be able to approach their target from multiple directions.
Like its aircraft, much of Iraq's ground air defenses were outdated: SA-2 and SA-3 systems were nearing the end of their operational lifespan and their countermeasures were well-known at this point, while its other SAM systems were not much younger. Furthermore, the Integrated Air Defense System was centralized to a fault. Although each IOC was datalinked to their respective SOC and back to the ADOC, the defense sectors couldn't share information between each other. If a SOC was knocked out of action, the attached air defense weapons lost all ability to coordinate their response. Its respective SAM batteries were forced to rely on their own radar systems, while most AAA lacked any radar guidance.
Main air campaign starts
A day after the deadline set in United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, the coalition launched a massive air campaign. This began the general offensive codenamed Operation Desert Storm, with more than 1,000 sorties launching per day. It began on 17 January 1991, at 2:38 AM, Baghdad time, when Task Force Normandy, eight US Army AH-64 Apache helicopters led by four US Air Force MH-53 Pave Low helicopters, destroyed Iraqi radar sites near the Iraqi–Saudi Arabian border, which could have warned Iraq of an upcoming attack.
At 2:43 A.M. two USAF EF-111 Ravens with terrain following radar led 22 USAF F-15E Strike Eagles against assaults on airfields in Western Iraq. Minutes later, one of the EF-111 crews—Captain James Denton and Captain Brent Brandon—were unofficially credited with the destruction of an Iraqi Dassault Mirage F1, when their low altitude maneuvering led the F1 to crash into the ground.
At 3:00 AM, ten USAF F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft, under the protection of a three-ship formation of EF-111s, bombed the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The striking force came under fire from 3,000 anti-aircraft guns on the ground.
Within hours of the start of the coalition air campaign, a P-3 Orion called Outlaw Hunter, developed by the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which was testing a highly specialised over-the-horizon radar, detected a large number of Iraqi patrol boats and naval vessels attempting to make a run from Basra and Umm Qasr to Iranian waters. Outlaw Hunter vectored in strike elements, which attacked the Iraqi naval flotilla near Bubiyan Island, destroying eleven vessels and damaging scores more.
Concurrently, U.S. Navy BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles struck targets in Baghdad. Other coalition aircraft struck targets throughout Iraq. Government buildings, TV stations, airfields, presidential palaces, military installations, communication lines, supply bases, oil refineries, a Baghdad airport, electric powerplants and factories making Iraqi military equipment were all destroyed by massive aerial and missile attacks from coalition forces.
Five hours after the first attacks, Iraq's state radio broadcast a voice identified as Saddam Hussein declaring that "The great duel, the mother of all battles has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins."
The Gulf War is sometimes called the "computer war", due to the advanced computer-guided weapons and munitions used in the air campaign, which included precision-guided munitions and cruise missiles, even though these were in the minority when compared with the amount of "dumb bombs" used. Cluster munitions and BLU-82 "Daisy Cutters" were also used.
Iraq responded by launching eight Iraqi modified Scud missiles into Israel the next day. These missile attacks on Israel continued for the six weeks of the war.
On the first night of the war, two F/A-18s from the carrier USS Saratoga were flying outside of Baghdad when two Iraqi MiG-25s engaged them. In a beyond-visual-range (BVR) kill, an Iraqi MiG-25 piloted by Zuhair Dawood fired an R-40RD missile, shooting down an American F/A-18C Hornet and killing its pilot, Lieutenant Commander Scott Speicher.
In an effort to demonstrate their own air offensive capability, on 24 January the Iraqis attempted to mount a strike against the major Saudi oil refinery, Ras Tanura. Two Mirage F1 fighters laden with incendiary bombs and two MiG-23s acting as fighter cover took off from bases in Iraq. They were spotted by US AWACs, and two Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s were sent to intercept. When the Saudis appeared, the Iraqi MiGs turned tail, but the Mirages pressed on. Captain Iyad Al-Shamrani, one of the Saudi pilots, maneuvered his jet behind the Mirages and shot down both aircraft.
A few days later, the Iraqis made their last true air offensive of the war, unsuccessfully attempting to shoot down F-15s patrolling the Iranian border. After this episode, the Iraqis made no more air efforts of their own, sending most of their jets to Iran in hopes that they might someday get their air force back.