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00:01Next on Secrets of War.
00:04They were the best kept secrets of the air campaign in the Gulf War.
00:08The controversial strategic plan to wipe out Iraqi targets.
00:13The classified missions of airborne spy planes.
00:16And the clever deception that used harmless decoys to overwhelm Baghdad's air defense network.
00:22Steel Rain in the Gulf War is next on Secrets of War.
00:42Clowning Development
00:42www. dul cautious unit
00:42Se Harper's Square
00:43Helping expanded
00:59The projected missions in the Gulf War
02:00For true believers, television images of laser-guided bombs flying through ventilation shafts were proof that the technology of strategic
02:09bombing had at last caught up with the doctrine.
02:13That air power alone reigned supreme among the gods of war.
02:24As the raucous homecoming celebrations and victory parades faded from view, the true story of the 43-day air war
02:32against Iraq remained cloaked in secrecy or obscured behind waves of breathless Pentagon press releases.
02:39Employed in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, our mission...
02:43Only recently have hidden details begun to emerge, revealing levels of ingenuity and frustration that more fully depict the complexities
02:53of the air campaign.
02:57It's one of the prophecies I made that was true is that 10 years from now I'll still be writing
03:02about this war and we're still doing it.
03:04We're still finding some of the pieces, unraveling some of the pieces.
03:14As significant as the Gulf War has been to subsequent military developments, in a very real sense it caught American
03:21leaders by surprise.
03:23In the summer of 1990, relations between Iraq and Kuwait had not been a priority for the United States.
03:32For most of the previous decade, in fact, U.S. Mideast policy was preoccupied with the Islamic Revolution in Iran,
03:39which had toppled the pro-Western Shah and subjected America to prolonged and agonizing ridicule.
03:48We came to see Iran as the single greatest threat in the region, more dangerous than anything else out there.
03:56We were looking for almost any force that we could use to try to weaken the Iranians, contain them and
04:06prevent them from causing mischief.
04:07Saddam was already candidates.
04:10Saddam Hussein had shown his western leanings by attacking revolutionary Iran at the time of the revolution.
04:25So we had the interesting situation of Russia, France, the United States, in total some 29 countries, supporting Saddam Hussein.
04:34A total, eventually, of a little over 30 billion dollars being spent on arms.
04:45Just as important to the Iraqis was intelligence on the movement of the Ayatollah's forces.
04:51Information that helped break the back of the Iranian army.
04:56Information that was provided by the Central Intelligence Agency.
05:04During the fall of 1989, world attention was fixed on dramatic events unfolding in Europe.
05:15As the West celebrated the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Iraq's costly war with Iran was harvesting bitter fruit.
05:23Iraq was nearly bankrupt.
05:26Appeals by Saddam Hussein to his Arab neighbors for financial assistance fell on deaf ears.
05:33At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam had this enormous army.
05:37And what's more, he'd also built a huge defense industry to try to support the army.
05:41At the same time, he had to promise Iraqis a certain standard of living.
05:47Otherwise, he was afraid that they would become very disillusioned against the war.
05:51And more importantly, that threats to his regime would increase.
05:56Kuwait was right next door.
05:58And Saddam saw Kuwait as the money vault just across the border.
06:06Long-simmering territorial disputes boiled over.
06:09Including accusations that the Kuwaitis had stolen billions of dollars worth of Iraqi oil.
06:17Saddam's tone grew increasingly belligerent during the summer of 1990.
06:21All while he reassured both Arab leaders and the United States that he had no intention of invading Kuwait.
06:31Then on the 25th of July, he summoned American ambassador April Glaspie to a private meeting.
06:37It would be a pivotal encounter.
06:42What she basically said to Saddam was,
06:45The United States would like to see you resolve this dispute with Kuwait peacefully.
06:51However, we are not going to get involved in the details of the dispute.
06:56And what Saddam seems to have heard there was,
07:00The United States is probably not going to intervene.
07:03Is probably not going to act to oppose an Iraqi move against Kuwait.
07:11As troops massed in southern Iraq,
07:14Operational control of American spy satellites shifted from the CIA to the DIA,
07:19The Defense Intelligence Agency,
07:22Indicating an increased likelihood of war.
07:26Some analysts warned of an Iraqi invasion,
07:29But the new administration of President George Bush relied instead on the personal assurances of Arab leaders
07:36that Saddam was only bluffing.
07:41In the meantime, the Iraqis, as part of their invasion plans,
07:45had quietly obtained commercial satellite coverage of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
07:51The imagery was sold by the French, with no questions asked.
07:56On the 1st of August, an estimated 300 tanks and 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were poised on the Kuwait border.
08:04U.S. intelligence declared watch condition one,
08:08The probability of imminent hostilities.
08:11From an intelligence standpoint, it was a milestone event in the waning days of the Cold War.
08:19All of the national collection assets, meaning spy satellites, spy planes,
08:26all of this kind of thing, were given that as their number one priority.
08:31And that was the first time in 40 years that the former Soviet Union ceased to be the number one
08:37priority.
08:39The CIA issued a final warning to the National Security Council.
08:44An invasion would come in 24 hours.
08:48At 2 a.m. on the 2nd of August, 1990, Iraqi forces crossed over the border into Kuwait.
08:55The entire country was occupied in six hours.
09:00The United Nations condemned the invasion and demanded an immediate withdrawal.
09:06Saddam Hussein's intentions were unknown.
09:10There was little stopping him from continuing into Saudi Arabia.
09:13That scenario weighed heavily on the Bush administration.
09:19On the 7th of August, F-15s of the first tactical fighter wing took off from Langley Air Force Base,
09:25Virginia.
09:2615 hours and nine aerial refueling later, they arrived in Saudi Arabia.
09:33The arrival of these F-15s was the first tangible demonstration of America's resolve to protect her access to precious
09:41Persian Gulf oil.
09:45Another group of American airmen was also on the way to Saudi Arabia,
09:49the crew of a large antenna-studded reconnaissance aircraft.
09:53For many years, a familiar presence in hotspots around the world,
09:58but whose mission and capabilities had long been shrouded in secrecy.
10:11Modern conflict is sustained by electronic information.
10:17What was known as signals intelligence during the Second World War is now broadly defined as electronic warfare,
10:25encompassing everything from computers to radio communications to aircraft and missile radars.
10:34For the intelligence analyst, acquiring an electronic blueprint of the enemy's capabilities is as vital as the information provided by
10:43more traditional photographic and human sources.
10:50This blueprint is called an electronic order of battle.
10:56The electronic order of battle tells us about an enemy's electronic capabilities.
11:02Radars, early warning systems, surface-to-air missiles, tracking radars, things like that.
11:10Within days of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, an RC-135's reconnaissance aircraft was in the skies over the Persian
11:18Gulf.
11:19One of the several modifications of the Boeing KC-135 aerial tanker, this version of the RC is called rivet
11:28joint.
11:28It's mission is to collect information to establish an electronic order of battle.
11:34It's one of America's most critical and most highly classified spy planes.
11:41The RC-135 rivet joint is not as widely known as other reconnaissance platforms, such as the SR-71 and
11:49the U-2.
11:51And that is for a reason.
11:53The plane's operators avoid publicity.
11:57It's not founded air shows, and unlike the E-3 AWACS, whose mission of watching the skies is often widely
12:04promoted for diplomatic reasons,
12:08the arrival of a rivet joint on station is always low-key.
12:14What they're doing is looking and listening.
12:18They're seeing where those electronic emissions are coming from, where the radars are.
12:22They're mapping and mapping, they're saying these units are here, this missile is over here.
12:28Knowing those frequencies, it's now possible to develop countermeasures,
12:32either to jam them, to send them spurious information, ultimately to defeat those as potential threats.
12:40Any information broadcast over the electromagnetic spectrum can be monitored, analyzed, and stored by rivet joint's onboard systems,
12:49or passed on in real time to any place in the world.
12:55A fleet of 17 of these aircraft are based at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, home of the
13:0255th Wing.
13:03But the aircraft regularly deploy from bases in England and Japan.
13:11We're deployed on a daily basis. About 50% of the fleet is out there servicing our requirements. Our folks
13:18are on the road a lot.
13:20Among the many distinguishing characteristics of the rivet joint is its air-to-air refueling capability.
13:29The commanders would like to keep us airborne around the clock and out there to collect and keep an eye
13:35on the world.
13:36I have flown in the RC for 27 and a half hours. It's my longest sortie.
13:41It's a long time to be crammed up in an airplane.
13:45For most of its operational career, the rivet joint orbited along the boundaries of the former communist bloc,
13:52listening to and recording electronic signals for later analysis in Washington.
14:00During the height of the Cold War, its mission was so sensitive that even photographing the airplane was considered a
14:06breach of security.
14:10The airplane itself was so closely identified with a very classified mission that a photograph was seen as revealing the
14:18mission,
14:19which was utterly ironic because once the aircraft was airborne and off the coast of, say, the Soviet Union,
14:28Soviet pilots would come up and waste miles of Kodachrome taking photographs of the aircraft in excruciating detail.
14:37On the first of September, 1983, for several hours, the Soviets tracked a different version of the RC-135 named
14:45Cobra Ball.
14:47It regularly monitored compliance with nuclear treaties.
14:51Suddenly, on their radars, an object crossed into Soviet airspace.
14:56Interceptors were scrambled. The intruder was shot down.
15:01It was a Korean Airlines jumbo jet flight 007.
15:06Two hundred and sixty-nine people perished.
15:10To this day, it's not known why the passenger jet was off course or if the Soviets mistook the Korean
15:16airliner for Cobra Ball.
15:18Some media reports claimed that an RC-135 rivet joint had provoked the tragedy when, in fact, no rivet joint
15:26was in the area.
15:29After their brief but intense notoriety, the RC-135s returned to obscurity.
15:38During Operation Desert Shield, the five-month build-up of U.S. and coalition forces in the region,
15:45rivet joint flew continuous 24-hour orbits along the Saudi-Iraqi border,
15:51methodically piecing together the building blocks of the Iraqi air defense system.
15:55One tactic involved sending fast-moving U.S. fighters towards Kuwait and Iraq only to turn away at the last
16:03moment before crossing the border.
16:07The ensuing flurry of electronic activity was quietly monitored by the rivet joint from a safe distance.
16:14And although the Iraqis eventually caught on to the deception and quickly turned off their radars,
16:19the rivet joint needed only a few seconds to capture the essential information.
16:26They might know that the Iraqis are using a radar at this particular frequency,
16:31which would facilitate the jamming capability because then by narrowing the frequency range of the jammer,
16:38you can increase the power output rather than having a lesser power by covering more frequencies.
16:46Of particular concern was the ability of the Iraqis to track the F-117 stealth fighter on radar.
16:56The Iraqis are believed to have used low-frequency radar communications which were possibly thought they might have a bearing
17:04on the detection of stealth fighters.
17:07And one of the primary targets which the RC-125 was used for was to detect the usage of these
17:14low-frequency radars so that coalition forces would go in and eliminate them.
17:21The degree to which the supposedly invisible stealth was tracked by Iraqi radar was never revealed even to congressional investigators
17:29conducting a classified analysis of the air war in the Gulf.
17:35The only clearance we were denied was a report on the issue of guided SAM launches against the F-117s.
17:46We asked to see that report. We were denied access to that report.
17:54For the first time on television, these images reveal rivet joint's inner chamber.
18:02The business end of an RC-135 is crammed with 45,000 pounds of high-power computers and displays processing
18:12information at a rate equivalent to 10,000 of the fastest home computers.
18:18The electricity required to run this vast array is enough to light up several city blocks.
18:28Three electronic warfare officers, called RAVENS, locate and analyze enemy radars.
18:35Another 12 to 16 information operators from the Air Force's Air Intelligence Agency, many of them trained linguists, oversee the
18:43aircraft's most secretive election task, communications intelligence, or comment.
18:52They start listening to the conversation, pilots talking to the control tower, the ground intercept controllers talking to the pilots,
19:00different units in the field.
19:05Although the specifics of its comment missions during the Gulf War remain classified,
19:10it is likely that rivet joint played a key role in what has been described as the strategic intelligence coup
19:17of the war.
19:21The US National Security Agency, the eavesdropping people, managed to intercept several conversations between Saddam Hussein himself and Nezar Hamdoun,
19:31who was his ambassador at the UN in New York.
19:33And those conversations provided an absolutely critical insight into Saddam's state of mind and what he really believed he could
19:42achieve at different times.
19:43So, for example, shortly before the ground war, a lot of us who were covering the story at the time
19:48were wondering, well, is this ground war really necessary?
19:51And the confidence with people like President Bush expressed that a ground war was necessary seemed a bit puzzling to
19:58us.
19:59And I think now one can say with hindsight that he was privy to this extraordinary strategic intelligence,
20:05which showed that Saddam still thought that his ground forces could bog down the coalition.
20:12It'll be many years before the extent of rivet joints exploits in the Gulf War are fully known, but its
20:19vigil in the skies of the Middle East and around the world will certainly continue for the foreseeable future.
20:30In the weeks following the Iraqi invasion, as American aircraft and troops flowed into the Persian Gulf, a far-reaching
20:39controversy surrounding the use of air power welled up from the basement of the Pentagon.
20:44It would influence the most concentrated and sustained air campaign unleashed since World War II.
20:53Ever since the early 1920s, the advertised potential of aerial bombing to render an enemy helpless from the skies had
21:01been an elusive goal.
21:03During the Cold War, strategic bombing had become synonymous with obliterating an enemy with the awesome power of nuclear weapons.
21:14No sooner had Saddam Hussein made his fateful move than a small Air Force think tank called Checkmate began formulating
21:22the use of conventional or non-nuclear bombing in the Persian Gulf crisis.
21:31Checkmate's leader, Colonel John Warden, held as an article of faith that air power, using new precision-guided weapons could
21:40by itself topple the Iraqi regime and force its withdrawal from Kuwait.
21:51Warden's strategy called decapitation or inside-out warfare targeted so-called centers of gravity with the Iraqi leadership and command
22:01authority providing the bullseye.
22:05Followed by key production sites, infrastructure, propaganda directed at civilians, and finally putting bombs on the Iraqi army in the
22:18field.
22:20This did not conform to U.S. military doctrine that had evolved since the early 1980s to counter-numerically superior
22:27Warsaw Pact Forces.
22:30The Americans emphasized a use of air power that was closely linked to, some would even say dictated by, the
22:38needs of the ground commander.
22:44This doctrine chafed at strategic bombing advocates like John Warden.
22:50Checkmate's grandiose scheme would likely have remained just an interesting theory had not General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of
22:59CENTCOM, U.S. Central Command, thrust himself into the debate.
23:06Headquartered at McDill Air Force Base in Florida, Central Command is responsible for Persian Gulf security matters.
23:14Seeking to redress the experience of the Vietnam War when President Johnson selected targets from the Oval Office,
23:22the authority and independence of theater commanders like Schwarzkopf had been strengthened by Congress.
23:30Removing both the Pentagon and the White House from day-to-day battlefield operations.
23:40CENTCOM's air commander, Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, a veteran fighter pilot, was clear about his mission.
23:46I'm especially proud.
23:47To support Schwarzkopf, the theater commander-in-chief, the Sink, whose orders from President Bush in August of 1990 were
23:56to get forces into the region to defend Saudi Arabia.
24:02There was, as yet, no talk of forcibly expelling Iraq from Kuwait.
24:09Nevertheless, Schwarzkopf was worried about Saddam's next move and the number of Iraqis arrayed against his meager CENTCOM forces.
24:18There would be mere speed bumps in countering any serious Iraqi move against Saudi Arabia.
24:24Without consulting Horner, Schwarzkopf called the Pentagon on the 8th of August.
24:29He wanted help in developing what he called a strategic campaign.
24:36The initial days after the invasion shows the importance of chance and happenstance in the formulation of plans and activities.
24:45When Schwarzkopf called the air staff to ask for assistance, this is an unusual event.
24:51Not only is a combatant command asking for air staff help, but the combatant commander is an army officer who
25:01is asking for an air force officer to devise an air force plan to defeat an enemy.
25:06And so that's quite unusual.
25:07In pointed contrast to the slow escalation of Vietnam's rolling thunder bombing campaign, Checkmate's aerial offensive against Iraq was named
25:18Instant Thunder.
25:20Top secret briefing was part theory and part operational plan.
25:27It called for a mix of 500 aircraft targeting some 90 locations, all inside Iraq.
25:35Warden estimated the job could be done in only six to nine consecutive days if the weather held up.
25:43Instead of gradual build up and instead of sending messages, the message that would be sent by Instant Thunder was
25:52a sudden devastating simultaneous attack on all kinds of targets and all areas within the Iraqi military and government that
26:01supported its war effort.
26:04Schwarzkopf was greatly impressed with the plan.
26:07But Instant Thunder was not met with universal enthusiasm.
26:13The Navy, always leery of strategic bombing claims, dismissed it as distant blunder.
26:21The plan not only violated the precept of keeping the Pentagon out of the war fighting business, but critics also
26:28suggested it might trigger the unpredictable Saddam into attacking Israel.
26:32Or even Saudi Arabia.
26:36Furthermore, Warden's centers of gravity didn't include the 17 Iraqi divisions inside Kuwait and literally poised on the Saudi border.
26:47Along or about the 20th, 21st of August, John Warden brings his plan and several personnel to brief General Horner
26:58on his strategic plan to defeat the Iraqi military.
27:04Horner, however, is worried about the direct political and military threat of the Iraqi troops.
27:09And he questions Warden very hard on the practical and immediate military problems.
27:18What happens if the Iraqis come right now?
27:20How does the strategic plan defeat the Iraqis right now?
27:24How do you engage in interdiction?
27:25Tell me about air refueling routes.
27:28Well, Warden hadn't worked that out.
27:29The colonel was informed that his services would not be further required in country.
27:35The next day, he was on a plane back to Washington.
27:40Warden's hasty departure notwithstanding, in August of 1990, instant thunder was the only far-reaching proposal on the table.
27:50And it provided the foundation for planning the actual air campaign that would emerge over the coming months.
27:58As diplomacy failed to budge the Iraqi dictator, President Bush marshaled international support and prepared his countrymen for the coming
28:07military showdown.
28:19One aspect of planning the air war that had top priority was defeating Iraq's formidable air defenses.
28:33Losses on the first day of airstrikes were estimated to be as high as 100 aircraft.
28:39Baghdad bristled with more than seven times the number of surface-to-air missiles, SAMs, than were in Hanoi at
28:47the height of the Vietnam War.
28:52My experience in flying over North Vietnam definitely had a great impact on my thinking.
28:59We never really went after their air force except after they took off.
29:04We never got a good grip on their command and control.
29:07Some of those things were emblazoned in my mind and I watched a lot of people pay a bitter price.
29:16Brigadier General Larry Henry, a decorated former WISO or Weapons Systems Officer in Vietnam,
29:22was the air force's leading authority on air defense suppression and electronic combat.
29:30He was given three hours' notice to get on an airplane to Saudi Arabia.
29:37When I got there, I set about setting up an electronic combat planning organization by gathering people from the deploying
29:45units
29:45to include Navy and Marine expertise so that we could integrate electronic combat assets into a team.
29:56Henry ruled out attacking Iraqi air defenses piecemeal or incrementally as had been attempted in Vietnam.
30:06On the 21st of August, 1990, his group issued an important classified document,
30:12a joint concept of operations for electronic warfare, the first one ever to be executed in wartime.
30:19He planned a massive coordinated strike on the air defense system to break it into chunks and then smash it
30:26to pieces.
30:31The whole business about an integrated air defense system is that you can have an emitter over here,
30:36you can have a radar looking, and you can shoot a missile over here without exposing itself.
30:40And that's the danger. These guys can pop up and kill you before you ever know you're being looked at.
30:46Using the data provided by Rivet Joint and other intelligence sources, General Henry and his group probed the electronic connections
30:55of the system's brain,
30:56watching how Iraqi ground controllers performed, learning where radar coverage was spotty.
31:04You've got to understand how it's all put together, how it works, how the information is put out to those
31:10people that are going to shoot you.
31:12And then you deny those shooters that information.
31:17On the diplomatic front, the U.N. issued a January 15th deadline for Iraq to either withdraw from Kuwait or
31:24face military action.
31:28In Saudi Arabia, detailed planning for CENTCOM's air campaign had been turned over to Air Force Brigadier General Buster Glassen.
31:38Larry Henry's electronic warfare group joined Glassen's planners in a converted 30-by-50-foot storage room,
31:45euphemistically called the Black Hole.
31:51One stage, I finally felt like that I had a good understanding of their air defense system, how it worked.
32:00But there was a critical piece missing from Henry's puzzle.
32:03Months before, engineers from Northrop Corporation in California had approached the Air Force with a plan to use Navy target
32:11drones as a deception.
32:15It employs reflectors to make the drone look like manned aircraft.
32:21And the concept was to use the target vehicles as decoys to stimulate the surface-to-air missile sites and
32:32force them to show their position.
32:37Henry included decoys in the Iraq planning, but ironically, there were none in the Air Force inventory.
32:44Several types were under consideration when Northrop stepped forward.
32:50Although the BQM-74 drone had shown its potential, the small jet-powered vehicle would have to be substantially modified,
32:58deployed into harsh desert conditions,
33:01and be fully operational, all in a breathtakingly short span of time.
33:10A typical cycle to go from presentation of a concept to contract to implementation is at least two years.
33:21Probably closer to three by the time you really get out in the field.
33:25We did it in days.
33:27Called in to work with Northrop was a shadowy group of facilitators from the Air Force Logistics Command.
33:35Called Big Safari, the group provided special management services to classified programs.
33:43Under the code name Scathemean, some 20 companies nationwide, large and small, became involved in a frenzied effort to deliver
33:51a combat-ready package of decoys to Saudi Arabia in just 30 days, in total secrecy.
33:58Lockheed Corporation helped to coordinate the effort.
34:03Big Safari turned to the only Air Force personnel experienced in launching missiles under austere field conditions.
34:13Nuclear-armed ground-launched cruise missiles, or GLICAMs, had been withdrawn from Europe as part of the 1987 arms reduction
34:22treaty.
34:22They were being dismantled.
34:29A former GLICAM commander, Colonel Doug Livingston, who'd never even heard of the Northrop drone, was ordered from his base
34:36in Arizona to a location in Southern California to view some unfamiliar equipment.
34:45A major from air staff said, we need you in theater in two weeks, and you could have knocked me
34:52over with a feather when he told me that.
34:56Livingston was ordered to select 40 GLICAM alumni to receive a crash course on setting up and launching the drones.
35:05I turned in the list Monday morning, Wednesday night, everyone was in California.
35:13That's how quickly things happened.
35:17After a quick orientation from the Navy, 40 of the crated drones, tons of support equipment, and Livingston's crew were
35:25loaded onto three giant C-5 transports.
35:29Secrecy was essential. Even family members were unaware that their loved ones were deploying to the Gulf.
35:37From the moment the hastily assembled decoy crews arrived in Saudi Arabia, their lives were transformed by constant training and
35:46the exhortations of General Larry Henry,
35:48who bestowed on the orphan unit his long-time call sign, Puba.
35:57We were talking over the Saudi telephone system.
36:00I couldn't say anything about, I want this to do that, so I said, your name is now Puba's party.
36:08He was our cheerleader, if you will. We'd go out to train and he'd say, I'm coming with you.
36:13General Henry was normally about 300 miles from where we were.
36:16And he would come to our location and, by golly, he would deploy with us.
36:24The January 15th deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait came and passed.
36:38In Saudi Arabia, most aircraft were put on ground alert, ostensibly as a precaution against a preemptive Iraqi attack.
36:52The real reason was to allow final mission planning.
36:57Crews were briefed.
36:59Aircraft were armed.
37:02The first strike on Baghdad, H-hour, was set for 3 a.m.
37:09On the 15th of January, when the deadline approached, you could feel tension in the air because nobody knew what
37:18was going to happen.
37:20The drones were fueled. Everything was ready.
37:22And all it would take is somebody to say, Livingston, you and your people go.
37:28And we were ready to go.
37:31At 2.38 a.m. on the 17th of January, 1991, the pre-dawn silence was shattered by a barrage
37:38of Hellfire missiles unleashed by Army Apache gunships.
37:46Guided to their launch points by ground-hugging Air Force Pave Low Special Operations helicopters, the Apache's mission was to
37:54destroy two clusters of early warning radars in southern Iraq.
38:00Operation Desert Storm had begun.
38:03At H-hour, exactly 3 a.m., F-117s released the first laser-guided bombs on the telecommunications building in
38:12the Iraqi capital.
38:16Minutes later, Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea found their targets in
38:23Baghdad.
38:25Some of the Tomahawks had been modified for an unusual reason.
38:32The use of special non-lethal warheads, and it was a carbon-wire warhead. This warhead would fly over an
38:40outdoor electrical grid. It would spew out like a spider web of these little wires, specially constructed to increase their
38:52conductivity.
38:52And they would settle like a spider web over these outdoor grids, and that would immediately trip the circuit breakers
38:59in the power-generating plant.
39:01They would go offline. Now, they knew that these power plants were what drove with the mainframe computers that integrated
39:06all these air defenses.
39:09While the Iraqis were firing at shadows, a second force bore in.
39:14Poobah's party, right on cue. For the first time on television, this video shows the actual launch of the BQM
39:23-74 decoys.
39:28These BQM-74s come flying in. They look like a fleet of airplanes.
39:32Now, the integration of the air defense system is destroyed. They can no longer look at these planes from some
39:42warehouse.
39:43So each radar for each missile system has to come up.
39:48Deprived of their master control, radar operators defending the Iraqi capital painted the night sky with powerful electronic beams,
39:56like hundreds of searchlights piercing the darkness.
40:01By exposing their locations, they were committing mass suicide.
40:07The next part of the plan is that there's somewhere, depending on who you talk to,
40:1250 to 200 higher missiles, high speed anti-radiation missiles, that are coming right behind them.
40:17So as these radars come up to wipe out this second wave of aircraft, they are just hammered by these
40:25waves of anti-radiation missiles.
40:35In the three hours before sunrise on the first day of Operation Desert Storm,
40:40more than 400 combat aircraft swarmed over the border to hit targets throughout Iraq.
40:48Three waves of stealth fighters revisited Baghdad, hitting the air defense centers and Iraqi command and leadership facilities,
40:55the centers of gravity, the very heart of John Warden's instant thunder.
41:09The use of decoys combined with anti-radiation missiles was crucial to suppressing Iraq's missile damage.
41:16The ground-based radar defenses, leading to unrelenting Allied aerial bombing attacks, night and day.
41:23A 43-day rain of steel that preceded the ground assault to liberate Kuwait.
41:31By day five of the war, ground-based Iraqi radar defenses were effectively eliminated.
41:37But suppression efforts continued.
41:40Rivet joint operations, far from subsiding, became more intense.
41:47What very few people realize is that although the first few days of the war clearly destroyed most of the
41:53Iraqi air defense capability,
41:55there were still mobile SA-6 sites, for example.
41:59Their radar would appear for minutes at a time, go away, and then appear a couple days later somewhere else.
42:07And one of the things that Rivet joint did was maintain an accurate picture of the enemy electronic order of
42:14battle.
42:15During the whole of the air campaign, only ten aircraft were lost to Iraqi radar-guided missiles.
42:22A remarkably low number when considering that coalition forces flew nearly 70,000 combat sorties.
42:33If we'd have lost a bunch of airplanes right at first, it could have swayed public support that were behind
42:39the whole Allied effort.
42:41And if you'd have had a scenario where you had a bunch of POWs being drugged through the streets by
42:48a bunch of mad Iraqis, such as you saw in North Vietnam,
42:52it would have affected how the public perceived the thing.
43:00And public perception was important.
43:03Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple.
43:06First, we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it.
43:09The Pentagon masterfully orchestrated the ebb and flow of information during the war.
43:17That was how the world was introduced to the wonders of so-called smart bombs that seem to have been
43:23designed by public relations genius.
43:29And this is my counterpart's headquarters in Baghdad.
43:35This is the headquarters of the Air Force, and keep your eye on all sides of the building as the
43:40airplane overflies the building and drops the bomb down through the center of the building.
43:54Keep your eye on the crosshairs.
43:58Right there. Look at here.
44:00Right through the crosshairs.
44:03And now in his rearview mirror.
44:09No sooner had the last sortie been flown than another offensive was launched.
44:14A combined effort by the Defense Department and arms manufacturers,
44:18aimed at protecting expensive systems from budget-cutting politicians and bureaucrats.
44:23Basically, aside from Desert Storm being somewhat of a success story as far as the American military goes,
44:31it's also a success story for American technology and American industry.
44:36The F-117A has demonstrated that it has unmatched survivability
44:41while destroying high-value targets in a dense threat environment.
44:45In a world where potential adversaries may possess superior numbers of weapons and near technological parity,
44:52the F-117A Stealth Fighter is a vital defense asset.
45:10The initial claims of the effectiveness of stealth technology and smart bombs have since been qualified.
45:19The initial claims of the effectiveness of stealth technology and smart bombs have since been qualified.
45:27In fact, on the first hours of the first night, and in their words, revolutionized warfare,
45:33all of those assertions were not supported by the data.
45:36One of the justifications for the stealth fighters' high cost of maintenance and operations
45:42is that it can go unprotected and unescorted where non-stealthy aircraft fear to tread.
45:49Actually, during the Gulf War, the F-117 received quite a lot of help, as from this radar-jamming EF
45:56-111.
46:00We interviewed about 100 pilots and about a dozen of them, F-117 pilots.
46:06One of them said an interesting thing about jamming.
46:09He said that for them, it was like American Express.
46:13Don't leave home without it.
46:16And as to the accuracy claims of laser-guided bombing?
46:21Pilots told us, the manuals told us, the physics told us that these things do not operate effectively in clouds,
46:31in dust, even in humidity.
46:33And we're talking about the Persian Gulf here, we're not talking about the Vietnamese jungle.
46:38Post-war analysis has since determined that smart bombs were indeed smart only 40% of the time.
46:49But probably the most compelling secret of the air war, and one that still resonates,
46:54was how an effective air strategy was created and implemented in the face of myriad communication and coordination problems.
47:02Air Force computers couldn't network with the navies.
47:06In some cases, Army and Air Force radios were incompatible.
47:13After the first week of the air campaign,
47:15selection of targets became a daily 18-hour marathon race between intelligence and operations.
47:23Where to send the strike aircraft?
47:26What to arm them with?
47:27Would there be enough aerial tanker support?
47:31Finally liberated from official Washington interference,
47:35CENTCOM battle commanders developed ad hoc arrangements for critical information from personal contacts and associations inside the Pentagon.
47:44Sneaking in the back door, so to speak.
47:47Because the black hole required information faster than was available through established channels.
47:55In planning and executing the air campaign,
47:57secure telephone became General Glosson's personal link to intelligence.
48:02Not from his own specialists in Saudi Arabia,
48:05but from the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington,
48:09thousands of miles away.
48:13Officers in the black hole said, basically, that we don't have time for this,
48:18and we can win the war without the formal part of the intelligence organization helping us.
48:25We can get that help that we need to figure out what targets to attack,
48:29and to evaluate our attacks elsewhere.
48:31And they did.
48:33The air campaign during the Gulf War marks a turning point in the application of air power.
48:39Secret advanced technology sensors provided vital information on the enemy's capabilities,
48:45even the enemy's frame of mind.
48:49Yet the demand for that information, immediate information,
48:54overwhelmed the means of dissemination.
48:59The fog of war was not lifted.
49:02Friction of war was not lifted.
49:03There was no one single coherent picture of this war.
49:08And the fact that we fight now, with such a complicated organizational structure,
49:12means that for our senior leaders, they don't really understand what's going on.
49:17They want to present the image that they understand what is going on in the war.
49:22In point of fact, they neither understand nor can they manage what is going on in that war.
49:28There are too many people, there are too many weapon systems,
49:31there are too many activities going on to understand.
49:35Luckily for the United States and its coalition allies,
49:39whatever command and control difficulties they experienced were dwarfed by those of Saddam Hussein.
49:46It is unlikely that the next adversary will be so accommodating.
49:52But in analyzing the war's problems and successes,
49:56it's important to consider one overriding fact.
50:00This was the first military engagement in recent history
50:04in which the needs of battlefield commanders, for the most part,
50:08outweighed political considerations.
50:10From the standpoint of those tasked to go and fight,
50:14that was no small achievement.
50:17You want to ask me my overall impression of how we prosecuted this war,
50:21we used common sense.
50:23And one of the things I found out in my career is common sense isn't common.
50:29You can say it's common sense.
50:59You can still stand by a few layers of power.
51:27Transcription by CastingWords
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