Sacking the Generals

Recently Ukraine's President Zelensky caused a stir (rapidly overtaken by other news) when firing his fairly well-regarded Commander of Joint Forces Gen Zaluzhnyi.  Political machinations?  A sign of weakness?  Well, I don't have any specific insight into what's going on there.  But I do know that firing generals is a perfectly legitimate option when things are going wrong.  You just need to be sure you've picked the right ones for the right reasons, and are not just lashing out in some kind of random scapegoating or personal score-settling.

It immediately brought to mind a recent book on the firing - and non-firing - of US generals: The Generals - American military command from WW2 to today, by Thomas E Ricks.  The author's twofold thesis is that:

(a) when the chips are down, prompt and adroit dismissals are vital to ensure that failure is not rewarded and that the right talent gets to the top, as fast as possible.  The players need to take over from the gentlemen at the earliest possible juncture;

(b) this used to be the American Way in the good old days when George C. Marshall was Chief of Staff: but the the mighty US Army inexorably became bureaucratised thereafter, so that very bad generals have been left in place to wreak havoc in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, the US system wasn't perfect - Marshall left Mark Clark, a truly awful general, in place.  But evidently he got through a lot of dead wood in pretty short order, as part of the vast expansion of the US Army in a very few years after 1940.  That's all the more remarkable because, in my experience of ultra-fast-growing organisations (I've worked in a couple), there's a tendency to feel that that hasty firings deplete the numbers just when every more-or-less able-bodied person is needed for the burgeoning task in hand.

Ricks' critique of several postwar US generals is unsparing.  Read it if this is your thing.  I'll just say that the book has told me stuff I hadn't known about the one I worked under (indirectly) - Norman Schwartzkopf - making me think I gave him too much credit in my thread on Desert Storm etc a few years back, which you can find here.  If what Ricks says is correct, I hadn't realised Stormin' Norman's first plan of attack was so lamentably wooden; (I was busy trying to figure out the other side's plans) nor that he so fundamentally misread what Ricks reckons were the strategic significances of the striking initiatives Saddam launched at the Battle of Khafji and his Scud campaign (posts 3 & 4 in my thread).  Colin Powell doesn't come out too well from the book, either.  I could offer a bit of a defence for both men, notwithstanding we all know they didn't manage to decapitate the Iraqi army when with perfect hindsight, we now know it might (possibly) have been achieved in 1991, saving the world a lot of bother twelve years later.  But nonetheless, they did achieve quite a lot.

And firing generals in the UK?  Well, Churchill fired a fair few.  Since WW2 I'm not sure we've been put to the test in quite the same way as the USA.  I once personally witnessed that irascible martinet Peter Inge, when a Lt General commanding 1(BR) Corps, publicly destroy an unlucky (and possibly incompetent) Brigadier in front of the whole Corps staff.  That didn't seem right then, and it still doesn't - and that's not to say the man shouldn't have been fired.  But there are ways and ways.  

I wonder how Zelensky's move will be seen in the years - or even the months - to come?

ND

What Putin Didn't Do next

Ten days ago, one of our BTL anons asked: why aren't the Russians interdicting Western military supplies en route to Ukrainian forces?   We suggested that wasn't the only dog not barking, and that we'd take a look at the whole subject.  What hasn't Putin done, that he might have?  And what might that mean?  Here's a random handful - one could list many more.

1. Cut off gas supplies to Germany.  Indeed, nobody has done this - and nothing could be simpler, for Russia, Ukraine, or a rogue actor with a big long gas position and access to mercenaries with a kilo or two of semtex.  We know exactly why: literally nobody wants to piss off Germany in such an obvious fashion.
2. Use gas in Azovstal.   We know Putin isn't squeamish in matters of chemical warfare.  And he had to sit and watch  for a truly remarkable number of weeks while the defenders of Azovstal incommoded him seriously, riveting observers worldwide, and buying Ukraine a lot of time.  Obviously a Red Line there.
3. Interdict inbound western military supplies - the one that puzzled Anon.  Actually, I think we do hear occasional reports that Ukrainian logistical bases close to Poland have indeed been hit.  But maybe not as much as one might expect, given that one presumes Putin's intelligence forces have at least some fifth-column sleepers and sympathisers on the ground with mobile phones.  He seems, though, to be husbanding his aircraft and stocks of cruise missiles, which may be more to the point.
4. Mount serious cyber warfare against the west.  It could even be conducted on a disavowed basis, if Putin so chose; there are enough rogue players out there in cyberspace.  Another important straw in the wind.  Readers will recall I warned against this before 24th Feb: it seemed to be an obvious one.   Clearly, I was being overly pessimistic. 
5. Deploy readily-available Red Army operational doctrine - which was purpose-written for invading places swiftly, based squarely on a realistic assessment of what Russian resources could muster.  See below.   
6. Pick on 'loudmouth UK' for unpleasant unconventional retribution - as some of our own BTL commenters have suggested (!), a propos of some of the bellicose nonsense spouted by Truss, and our egregious military assistance.  After all, the UK is no longer owed any "compulsory solidarity" by the EU: why not make an example of us ?     
7. Reduce Odesa to a smoking ruin.
8. Have a submarine accidentally trawl up one of the massive transatlantic comms cables.

Nota bene, all these "surprises" are passive / negative: surprises of omission, the kind we can identify when we know what dogs we're expecting to hear in the night.  Equally, we haven't seen any "positive surprises" from Putin, the creative kind that any military commander worth his salt should sprinkle liberally around his campaign to keep everyone guessing.  Readers will know this is one of the most damning criticisms I have to offer of any politician or military leader.  What creative strokes has he pulled?  The nearest we've seen from Putin is the hint that something nasty might come out of Transnistria, which is pretty feeble; and the flamboyant testing of a new strategic missile off-stage.  OK, Putin thought he could pull off the whole thing inside a week, Crimea-style: and an outright coup de main doesn't need an accompanying smokescreen of several other little surprises.   But he knew that it wasn't working almost straight away.  By contrast, the pocket dictator Saddam Hussein was well up for unexpected eye-openers, when he in turn realised his own sudden (and successful) lightning invasion wasn't going to be the end of the story.  Hat-tip to the man: pulled several strokes, he did.    

*  *  *  *  *

As regards 5: we've discussed this one before, mostly concluding (as have many others) that the Russian Army of 2022 doesn't have the leadership or training to execute on what would be involved.  One aspect I haven't mentioned: if we take at face value Ukrainian claims of Russian aircraft shot down - well over 200 - it suggests Putin is potentially unable to deliver the necessary aerial bombardment, at least from within the resources he's willing to hazard.  More recently, I've seen it suggested that Russian 'grinding' techniques in Donbas are perfectly appropriate, and will ultimately be successful; and, hey, it's only been 100 days!  

Here, we've never doubted some limited territorial gains can be delivered that way: but the cost and the time involved can't possibly have been in the original budget.  Sure, Russians will put up with a great deal - a lot more than soft westerners will, as many pundits suggest - and ultimately (if they can manage conscription plus mass mobilisation plus training) they can "win" against objectives that are narrowly-enough defined.  

But do they have time?  Are they certain to win the slow-bicycle race between their own grinding methods, and German / French / Italian unwillingness to keep the sanctions applied ... with winter coming ... and starvation looming for Africa etc ..?  Maybe that calculation is all he has left now by way of grand strategy.

*  *  *  *  *

So what do we conclude?  We might ponder these potential inferences, some or all of which might be in play:

A.  He's persuaded himself everything is going just fine: he's Stalin in 1943.  Hell, some of our BTL-ers have said as much!  Personally, I'd say that's a delusion, but there we are.

B.  He's holding all the above possibilities - and more - in reserve, just letting us stew on them.  Burn as few boats as possible.  Hope to get back to normality by Xmas in the time-honoured fashion.  On Odesa, for example, for the long term he'd rather capture it intact.

C.  Xi has had a little word with him.

D.  He's imposed some rigid Red Lines of his own devising (as any political leader should, c.f. George Bush Snr), on the assumption that 'Vietnam Rules' apply: i.e. he can do more-or-less whatever he wants in-theatre, and the Americans can do whatever they want outside the theatre, provided everyone makes sure direct clashes don't occur, in-theatre or anywhere else.  In particular, he guesses use of chemical and cyber weapons might trigger a western response that would really hurt him - in other words, he does have something in mind that really makes him lose sleep.

Maybe we should try to guess exactly what it is.   Here's a suggestion, which relates (e.g.) to 6 above: he knows there's a lot more we (the UK financial authorities in concert with GCHQ) could do to beggar him personally, and all his friends.  

Any other suggestions as to why he's staying his hand?

ND

Midweek Reading: Ukraine; Legislating the Internet

Being somewhat too busy for writing, here are a couple of excellent reads for you.

Ukraine:  First, a caveat, I have absolutely no idea whether "Consortium News" is a website of good repute (as regards conspiracy theory etc etc - everyone has to rely on their own judgement, and virus protection etc).  Also, the article I'm linking to here - What War With Russia Would Look Like by seemingly ultra-well qualified former US marine Scott Ritter - definitely serves Putin's purposes, whether or not the author has any leanings that way himself or, as I hope we can assume, not.

That said, it's a really good analysis of the realpolitik in play just now - or kiddy-politik in the case of Joe Biden.  Sobering stuff.  It contains an observation you might have read here at C@W before: 

Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaign - Operation Desert Storm, of Gulf War I - and has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict.

Yes indeed it has - being deeply impressed, nay shaken, by how successful was NATO AirLand Battle doctrine on its first roll-out in earnest.  Russia had a ringside seat, and was watching intently.  Here's another good soundbite: 

Russia can survive being blocked from SWIFT transactions longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy.

Yes, that's Angela Merkel's enduring legacy.   A Russophile all her life, she did nothing to fix Germany's dependence on Russian gas.

*   *   *   *   *

Internet:  Hey, we're a blog, and we don't much like the idea of our freedom of speech being curtailed.  That said, we are still bound by (e.g.) the laws of copyright and libel ... so obviously internet freedoms are on a spectrum.  Here's a great piece by my favourite practising American philosopher (and qualified lawyer), Brian Leiter: The Epistemology of the Internet and the Regulation of Speech in America.  (You can download the full paper from that abstract.)

No need to buy into all his conclusions to agree that (a) there's something very wrong with some of what gets pumped out on the www; and (b) the concept of "epistemic authority" is very powerful.

I'm guessing Dominic C agrees with the latter.

ND

Desert Storm (8) - the Halt on the Road to Baghdad

30 years ago, the Coalition had eventually launched its ground offensive to expel Saddam from Kuwait, having used the many months of planning-time well.  The huge and (in its better units) capable Iraqi army was well dug-in, and as ever, had devised some genuinely innovative defensive tactics.  Particularly creative and noteworthy was the digging of a system of forward trenches fed directly by Kuwaiti oil wells: at the opening of a valve, the trenches could be flooded with crude oil and set on fire, creating a genuine obstacle as well as a tremendous smokescreen, that staple of tactics since WW2.

But notwithstanding the solid core of battle-hardened units, stiffened by the highly committed Republican Guard, much of their army was bulked out by raw, ill-trained conscripts of low morale.  The whole force had been degraded by weeks of exceptionally vigorous air attack.  And everything out in the open was fully reconnoitred in detail, with nowhere to hide.  The Coalition had a plan for everything they saw in front of them.  In "the biggest tank battle since Kursk", wherever the front line Iraqi units were not swiftly and remorselessly crushed (in some cases, literally) by the well-planned ground offensive, they typically showed a willingness to fight only for an hour or so, then surrender.  The number of willing prisoners, and speed of overall enemy collapse, surprised the already confident Coalition forces, who nonetheless had the leadership and logistical wherewithal to capitalise on it and steam ahead.  You can can easily find plenty of fulsome further reading material online.

It's pretty well known that massacres happen during rout, when an army turns its back and flees.  This is exactly what occurred at the end.  The Iraqi rabble that evacuated its newly-annexed Kuwaiti territory and fled north to Basra was caught in the open and, for a few hours, mercilessly strafed.  The result was predictable carnage and I'm choosing not to rehash some of the truly gruesome "Highway of Death" photos that adorned newspaper front pages the next day.  (Wiki doesn't, either.)

We've discussed before the vulnerability to air attack of vehicle columns, not least in the context of equally famous photos of what the Israelis periodically used to inflict, particularly on the Syrians who must be unusually bad at convoy discipline.  To be fair, it's not easy at the best of times - and in the desert, pretty damned impossible.  The only thing to do is break the convoy into packets of 5-6 vehicles, which ain't gonna happen in a rout.  The Germans in WW2 were the acknowledged masters of vehicular discipline in conditions of zero air cover, particularly in Italy: but (a) Italy isn't quite such hopeless terrain for the job, and (b) which other army has ever had the discipline of the Germans?  (I was once leading a packet that was part of a gigantic RAF convoy on exercise in Germany, supposedly being conducted under wartime "tactical" conditions, and the whole thing was an hilarious farce - subject of a story for another day.)

A day later, President Bush (Snr) called a halt to the Coalition advance into Iraq, a long way short of Baghdad.  Some say the carnage played a part in his decision.  There was much hoo-hah about this:  why didn't he allow Schwarzkopf to finish the job?  Or at least spend another 24 hours degrading Saddam's military capabilities still further?   (Given that politically this hoo-hah may be said to have led to Bush Jnr's crazy essay at Gulf War 2 the following decade, it's a fair question, and an interesting, multi-dimensional strategic counterfactual to mull over.)  

But Schwarzkopf, true soldier-of-a-democracy that he was, obeyed the political instruction to halt without demur.  All credit - massive credit - to both men, I always say.  For months, Bush had stayed out of real-time military meddling, which many another president wouldn't have been able to resist.  (Hitler never could.)  But Bush was always on the ball: and at the end, he was crisply decisive.  The military respected the ultimate political authority.  That's the way the bargain should work in a democracy at war.

We'll look at what happened next in another episode.  

ND

Desert Storm (7) - FOB Cobra: Land War Begins

At the end of February 1991, after a month of intense and purposeful air activity of the shooting kind, Desert Storm moved into the decisive land engagement that Saddam Hussein had already tagged "the mother of all battles".  He directed what was probably the fourth largest army in the world at the time, and without doubt the most recently combat-experienced.  The Coalition, so carefully assembled by George Bush Snr, fielded ground forces adequate to the challenge, in what promised to be the biggest tank battle since the Kursk salient in 1943.  Hotter weather was on its way: there was a serious imperative to get on with the job.  You'll find no shortage of accounts of what followed, from border skirmishes and the French advance on the left flank, through the retaking of Kuwait, to the final halt on the road to Damascus, 100 hours of fighting later: but I want to concentrate on a fascinating element of the first phase of the main assault that well illustrates the high quality of the Coalition generalship.

One of many big problems faced by the Coalition was always going to be logistics.  The distances and desert going involved; the ultra fuel-hungry nature of the heavy M-1 and Challenger tanks; the allies' determination to use artillery to the full; the huge quantities of drinking water needed in the desert; and the anticipated (indeed, necessary) rapid rate of advance - all spoke to a critical logistics dependency, as is often the case for swiftly advancing armies.  How to ensure this was managed successfully?

The answer was an imaginative piece of logistical genius that probably only the Americans are capable of (though below we'll consider a British precedent).  Instead of having logistics trying to catch up with the front line, it was decided to have the leading armoured units fight their way towards already-established logistics bases behind enemy lines, deep in the Iraqi desert.  This was particularly relevant for the wide left hook on the western flank, where the distances for advancing forces would be greatest.  The first of these, Forward Operating Base Cobra some 80 miles into Iraq, was to be established on G-Day itself, 24 February, by the legendary 101st Airborne Division - all made possible, of course, by accurate prior air reconnaisance and a very substantial fleet of attack and transport helicopters.

They deployed in the biggest heliborne assault ever mounted, against a carefully chosen, lightly-defended Iraqi location.  Not only was the resulting FOB Cobra a logistics base for following units, it was a jumping-off point for further bases set up even deeper into Iraqi territory over the following three days.  The concept was excellent in design, and successful in execution.

You can read about it here and (in a soldier's rather deficient English prose) here - and of course much more besides that you'll find for yourself on the www.

Is there any precedent for such a strategy?  Well, airborne forces were of course used several times to capture bridgeheads in WW2, not least on D-Day itself and, perhaps with greater similarity in Market Garden later the same year.   That latter plan was to establish a fighting base behind enemy lines towards which armoured forces would fight.  But even if Market Garden had worked out as planned, there wouldn't have been any pre-arranged supplies waiting for Guards Armoured when (if) they'd arrived at Arnhem.

However, students of the Peninsular War might identify an early C19th parallel.  For some time Wellington operated from secure bases in Portugal, with relatively straightforward replenishment by sea.  In 1812 he won the critical battle of Salamanca, followed by some messing around before winter set in.  As the 1813 campaigning season commenced, he pretty much had the French in reverse gear; but his lines of logistics were inevitably going to be strained significantly if he intended to clear the French from Spain entirely.  Which he did.  The French, by contrast, enjoyed interior lines of communication, as retreating armies generally do

Always one to think things through ahead of time, Wellington's strategy was masterly.  As part of a specific diversion campaign along the north coast of Spain and the French coast on the Bay of Biscay, the Royal Navy captured Santander on the north coast, then opened up Bilbao.  For the decisive battle at Vitoria (in the north east of Spain), by using Santander as FOB his overland lines of logistics were 400 miles shorter than had he continued to be supplied from Portugal.  (The sea passage from Britain was 400 miles shorter, too.)  A prototype FOB Cobra.

He didn't have helicopters, though ...

ND

_________________

Footnote: for those whose attention tends to wander, this is Gulf War ONE we are talking about.  1991.  Bush Senior.   John Major as PM ...  OK?

Desert Storm (6) - The Air War

This was essentially the first war played out in realtime on our TVs.  There is tons of excellent stuff on the air campaign to be found easily on t' www (see footnotes), so after a few openers I'm not going to do more than hit a few headlines that I consider interesting, either from the perspective of high-level conclusions, or personal reminiscence.

Many of us will recall all manner of really memorable aspects, generally with the force of vivid graphical portrayal: 'Shock and Awe' impacts being captured live by CNN; Tomahawk cruise missiles spotted by Baghdad correspondents "flying up the street and turning left at the traffic lights"; grainy b&w film coverage of impressive detonations and other incidents, often with individual human beings clearly discernible; captured Coalition aircrew paraded for the cameras bruised and bleeding.  Prime-time newsworthy, or what?

The air campaign was of course the first significant element of the whole Coalition response to Saddam's seizure of Kuwait the previous summer, being the quickest and most intimidating to deploy.  A non-shooting aerial campaign had been building steadily over the months and by January 1991 was already at an epic scale before a single shot had been fired.  This was for several purposes:

• show of force, and of intent;
  
• defensive cover for Saudi Arabia, and a general deterrent against who-knew-what (as already noted several times, Saddam was capable of springing surprises);
• training for what was to come: the US, UK, French, Canadian and Italian elements were already fully NATO-indoctrinated of course - a massively sigificant factor - and the Saudi airforce, fairly much a US/UK construct (with a lot of US/UK expat pilots, too) was easily knocked into the same shape.  Even so, the sheer scale of the anticipated air war meant that no ring-rustiness could be tolerated;
• maskirovka for what was to come: Iraqi air defence radar had been totally saturated with traffic for many weeks before the Go button was pressed;
• recconnaisance for what was to come: to some extent obtained directly overhead of Kuwait and Iraq, but also a huge amount of material (not least, AA radar locations and frequencies) safely gathered obliquely from within friendly airspace by various highly effective high-tech means.   
  

It was always pretty obvious that the Coalition was going to lead with its incomparable air assets.  Achieving and exploiting total air superiority was a central tenet of Allied doctrine from WW2 onwards, and of course central to AirLand Battle, the NATO doctrine of the time.  The sheer number of Coalition aircraft deployed (wiki says more than 2,780 fixed-wing; and many of the vast fleet of helos were armed to the teeth), from in-theatre including aircraft carriers and of course US bombers and recce aircraft flying from much further afield, was astounding.  If we add in cruise missiles - which also clutter the skies - that's a bunch of aggressive airframes aloft.

They (we) weren't unopposed - at least, not at the outset - for Saddam had a sizeable airforce of his own and substantial anti aircraft resources; and they (we) weren't without casualties (wiki says 75 Coalition aircraft lost & 46 aircrew killed, though a large % was down to blue-on-blue incidents and outright accidents - always a big risk when the air was so densely packed with friendly aircraft).  Ironically, dumb AA artillery around targets like Baghdad city, firing almost randomly en masse, can be an even bigger problem than carefully suppressed AA missiles for large-scale airborne flotillas.  As you'll read & watch from the accounts given in the footnotes and elsewhere, huge early emphasis was - of course - put on defeating Iraq's anti aircraft assets (note particularly the mass use of sacrificial drones); after which matters became a great deal simpler. 

So, some random notes.

1. Iraqi Airforce Flees    One of the surprises I've mentioned before: almost immediately the shooting started, the Iraqi airforce attempted to de-camp - to Iran! (as did some of his naval resources.)  A number of his aircraft made it, after which a Coalition aerial blockade was mounted.  This totally unexpected strategy had us really on the hop for a couple of days:  this bloke is clearly thinking ahead, and has more options than we necessarily anticipate.  What's next?

2. Live on CNN    Last time, we looked at the media aspects of Desert Storm.  CNN and others had the Middle East well staked out - an entirely private-enterprise initiative - and let me tell you, we had it all streaming into every HQ.  (I might add, we also had a few facilities not available to domestic TV viewers.)  This, alongside technology like the real-time Scud Alerts I've mentioned before, gave us the bizarre facility of knowing what was sheduled to happen after buttons had been pressed, ours and theirs, then leaning over to the big monitors to watch it actually happen.  That can't regularly have been available to wartime commanders since they were last mounted on horseback on a prominent hill overlooking the battlefield with their own telescopes.  

Repeating myself yet again, this also must have presented dreadful temptations, particularly for George Bush Snr, to meddle minute-by-minute.  Glory be, he didn't.

3.  Recconnaissance     We were deploying for the first time in earnest a tremendous new airborne technology: moving target indication radar (MTI).  There's a limit as to what I can say about this (albeit loads of stuff you can find online, some good & some less so) but it will crop up again in this blog series.  Anyhow, I think you will readily guess that the ability to track individual vehicles / vessels, in real-time, as a dot of light (whenever it moved) on a dark screen with a map overlaying it, could be kinda valuable ... and even more so when it was ten dots moving in formation!   The sort of cover that radar had long given us as regards aircraft, but now for surface movements too.

4.  Russia and AirLand Battle    The Russians were deeply interested spectators at this military extravaganza (as they had been with the Falklands a decade earlier), with enough regional assets to obtain a fairly good ringside view.  This is still 1991, so the Cold War is barely over.  They knew a lot about the theory of NATO's AirLand Battle (in fact they had a slightly differently-oriented version of their own) but their overall position was one of scepticism that it could be made to work, based on the extraordinary complexity of managing the sheer weight of air movements in a (relatively) confined space.

To their utter horror, it worked near-perfectly.  More than 100,000 sorties ...

ND

_____________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRgfBXn6Mg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_target_indication

 

Desert Storm (5): Managing Media - & Politicians

Mr BQ raised an interesting issue BTL last time: 

... a question for Mr Drew. We recall how Norman used the media. Smart bombs and footage we’d never seen before. 'Luckiest guy in Iraq’ crossing the bridge before it was destroyed seconds later. Did Mr D have any involvement with the media? Contrasted with the Vietnam catastrophe of open media. The very closed Falklands war coverage, gulf war press coverage at the time, was seen as a triumph for all sides. Did the coalition deliberately feed the MSM leaks? Or was it just a lucky happenstance?

 The lucky aspect was the leadership that was in place at the top.

• George Bush Snr, whom I've lauded before.  Genuine military experience; an intelligence insider; hands-on (and wise) as regards policy; hands-off when it came to execution; reasonably media-savvy and, like the whole of the US side, determined to remember the lessons from Vietnam.
  
• Schwarzkopf, Powell: perfect for their jobs.  (They'd been given the freedom to choose their subordinates - and they did that well, too.)
  
• John Major: no military experience, but had been Foreign Secretary.  Struck a most un-Thatcher-like tone but it worked brilliantly.    
  

As I've noted before, there was a real danger: our comms were so good, and so much info was available real-time, that meddlers at the top (as many politicians are) could have wreaked havoc.  Bush and Major weren't having any of that.  (I might add that certain politicians amongst our allies were agitating for access to the real-time stuff.  They were not indulged.  I have a strong feeling that Thatcher herself, by 1991, would have been a nightmare.  But we shall never know, because she too was not indulged over her request to "let me stay on until Kuwait is re-taken".)

Concomitantly, the meejah had a lot of excellent resources of their own: commercial satellite comms had reached a fairly advanced stage by 1991 (even if the US could shut them down in the blink of an eye); and after all, this story was a media-magnet nonpareil.  So there was no point in doing anything other than co-opting them wholesale via "embedding" of correspondents at selected points at the sharp end, and giving them a fair amount of access and reporting freedom.  And an embedded correspondent is not entirely a free agent ...

They revelled in it - almost everyone is much taken by the military when they meet it in person - and of course were soon in love with their minders.  (I might add that some of the minders were soon in love with Kate Adie, who is a very game lass; and can take a joke, too - quite important with the soldiery.)  We'd learned this with the Falklands - you might add WW2, for that matter - and instincts in the USA were the same.   So we were all officially up for providing and facilitating prime-time visuals. 

The media angle was, in fact, central to what we did, not just a bolt-on extra.  To illustrate.  In the twice-daily live-streamed tele-briefings for the War Cabinet, there were four parts: Operations (including meteorology, always critical for the military); Intelligence; Diplomatic; and Media - what was being covered and commented in the press etc.

I'll end with a funny, and deeply revealing story.  Items 1, 2 and 4 on that running order were prepared and presented by the military; item 3 by the Foreign Office.  We knew we had to get these briefings just right - to obtain what was needed from the War Cabinet, and to give them enough (but not more) for what they needed in turn.  Being simple soldiers, we reckoned it was best to leave nothing to chance; so we rehearsed the material meticulously, and asked non-specialists in beforehand, to tell us if we were using too much jargon or skipping points that needed more explanation.  It worked really well (and again I give credit also to Major, who chaired things brilliantly).

But not the w*****s from the FO, who fancied themselves as being able to wing it.  On the very first briefing, their man just had a few notes instead of a proper script.  He made an arse of himself.  The difference between the stumbling *smart* FO man and the crisp simple soldiers was rather stark.  

They had a different frontman next time.  And the new chap had a script.

ND

Desert Storm(4): the Scud Attack on Israel, and after ...

Last time, we saw how the cornered Saddam didn't take things lying down, but embarked on bold 'surprise' initiatives at the outbreak of the shooting war 30 years ago.  

It was a creditable effort to redress the balance a bit in his favour.  Both the invasion of Khafji and the Scud attack on Israel can be seen as attempts to provoke the start of a ground war on terms of his own choosing, i.e., before the Coalition forces had fully lumbered into their desired state of readiness.  

Not a bad line of thought on Saddam's part, because it was indeed only after more than a month of offensive air operations Jan-Feb 1991 that Norman Schwarzkopf felt ready to pull the trigger on the ground war.  And the onset of hotter weather - not to mention political impatience - was giving his vast, unwieldy logistical undertaking as much of a hurry-up as could possibly be imagined.  So, yes, the Coalition might have been thrown off kilter if Saddam's surprises had provoked ill-prepared ground operations ... and heavy casualties ... and adverse public reaction ...

Regrettably, the Scud aspects of Desert Storm (and after) are one area where I can't recount everything I know.  However, there are still several interesting aspects that don't stray too far from what's in the public domain if you know where to look.  (Hint: the fulsome websites of the US military and CIA, where paranoia about the past is not much in evidence.)

Firstly, we knew what we were worried about and had established a very excellent monitoring system that gave us real-time 'Scud Alerts' - real-time notification of missile launches, and very fast (and accurate) calculations on the trajectory and predicted target.  Such was the state of development of satellite TV at the time, spookily we could often tune in to live broadcasts from Israel and watch the buggers landing, as it happened.

We therefore instantly knew that Israel was a primary strategic target.  (Other Scuds landed on Saudi targets, too.)  We also had rather good coverage of the whole region, of course** and immediately noticed Something Else.  Upon the Scuds hitting home, some 50-60 Israeli aircraft took to the skies.  And you didn't need to be a genius to guess what some of them were carrying under the fuselage.  On the one hand, they would have wanted to keep their weaponry safely off the ground.  On the other, they may well have decided to deploy said weaponry somewhat further to the east ...

The red telephones were buzzing off their hooks.  Manifestly, wise counsels prevailed, and Israel decided to take it on the chin - and not without casualties.  As with several self-denying actions of both the Russians and the USA over the nuclear decades (and probably India and Pakistan, too), you have to say this speaks well for the maturity of international statesmanship when the chips are down.  It's not comfortable to think what might have happened if Saddam had gone for chemical warheads.

Scud-hunting thereafter became even more of a preocupation than it had been before - which is saying something.  Anyone who is interested in these things will doubtless already have read the various first hand accounts of in-country SAS operations.  There was a lot more besides.  How do you hide a Scud launcher?  They are mobile, but really quite big.  Answer: there are cunning places you can use like underneath bridges over roads.  Also, Iraq itself is really quite big, too.  And, as mentioned before, even if you've spotted something on a satellite image, in those days the 100% computerised, 100% accurate locational techniques we now enjoy were not available.

We definitely didn't find them all during the 1991 conflict itself (though we did find all the superguns - a tale for another day).  The Scud story, of course, moves seamlessly on from Desert Storm into Operation Rockingham, and thence into the whole WMD saga that still rumbles to this very day.

ND    

_________

** As often mentioned hereabouts, the significance of Cyprus to UK foreign policy cannot be overstated

Desert Storm (3): Saddam could still SURPRISE

There's an old military precept**, expressed in various ways:

There's no such thing as strategic surprise - but there can always be tactical surprise

This is generally taken to be a memo item for commanders (particularly those many who are somewhat lacking in native creativity) to incorporate in their plans a carefully thought-through surprise for the enemy.  Just because it's clear to all that you are poised and ready to attack, doesn't mean you should simply blow the starting whistle and advance in a line on the obvious axis (think Normandy 1944).  It's all closely bound up with deception, another strongly advisable tool for every commander to pack in his kit - and much emphasised in British military doctrine, often to the bewilderment of more linearly-thinking allied leaders.

But it's also good advice for commanders who are themselves the ones mostly obviously holding the initiative on the battlefield.   Maybe the other side isn't going to take your next powerful move lying down: perhaps something really unexpected is going to come flying over the battlements in your direction.  No plan benefits from being thrown even a little off-balance before you've got properly started.

By the January of thirty years ago, it was pretty obvious to Saddam that he was about to face a formidable aerial bombardment.  Far from concealing it, Bush's coalition had been keen he should understand the sheer might of the aviation they possessed - not least to deter a further invasion, into Saudi Arabia, before coalition ground forces were ready.  Enough, you'd think (or indeed hope), to cow even a tooled-up maniac like Saddam, who'd had his share of setbacks against a much lesser foe in Iran.  

But, just as we'd been surprised by some of the military innovations the Iraqis had come up with over the course of that earlier conflict, we had to cater for several initiatives we hadn't necessarily, errr, expected in detail...

1.  The Scud campaign

We knew he had Scuds, including some with chemical warheads.  We'd deployed very advanced kit to detect their launches, and accurately predict their trajectories (all of which worked very well, incidentally).  We were searching diligently for the launchers as best we could, across the whole of Iraq.

What we hadn't banked on was an immediate Scud assault on Israel, as soon as we opened hostilities at the end of Desert Shield / start of Desert Storm, on 17th January 1991. 

I mean: Saddam had seen the world's response to his attack on modest little Kuwait.  Who, in his shoes would choose to open a new front against Israel ?   But he did.  I'll be writing more about Scuds in future installments.

2.  Iraqi airforce decamps to ... Iran!

Yup, as Desert Storm commenced a large number of Iraqi planes headed immediately eastwards over the Iranian border, and landed there.  To be fair, this is nowadays mostly attributed to individual (albeit clearly pre-planned) defections rather than a cunning ploy to preserve the Iraqi airforce.  Still, it didn't half give us pause for thought.  In conjunction with the attack on Israel ... does he have an *understanding* with Iran ..?

3.  The attack on Khafji (Saudi Arabia)

Now this really is a classic.  The defender makes the first move, catching the attacker unawares.   As Wiki has it: 

Saddam Hussein, who had already tried and failed to draw Coalition troops into costly ground engagements by shelling Saudi Arabian positions and oil storage tanks and firing Scud surface-to-surface missiles at Israel, ordered the invasion of Saudi Arabia from southern Kuwait. 

Yes, that was the point: still, in January, we weren't ready for ground fighting.  The aerial phase was always going to come first, but ideally we might have moved to ground ops rather sooner: as mentioned before, the logistical challenges were great, but the weather would soon be heavily against us.  The shelling was no great surprise, but Khafji was.  I leave you to refresh your memory on that episode on Wiki. 

Gotta have realistic respect for the other side.  He was making a proper fight of it -  and not everyone thought he would.  Surprise, eh?  Catches you every time. 

ND

_____________

** not just military in its application, of course.  Just because I know I'm going to die, doesn't necessarily mean I won't be caught out when it actually happens 

Gathering Intelligence: Desert Storm (part 2)

Iraqi artillery position: too neat for its own good

30 years ago, Desert Storm was raging.  There had been a fairly lengthy build-up period since George Bush Snr declared for unconditional eviction of Saddam from Kuwait, and it had been a period of frenetic and growing activity on a vast scale.  The Iraqi army was big, battle-hardened and on home territory.  The ostensibly impressive coalition Bush had assembled was diverse and for the most part playing away from home.  

There were other problems, too.  It wasn't just an away fixture, it was the desert: and desert warfare is a specialised business.  The sand is a challenging medium; and the relative lack of readily discernible topographic features across very large areas made aerial reconnaisance more difficult, too.  Then there was the heat, which was really giving us the hurry-up during our "winter" of preparations 1990-91.  The prospect of fairly intolerable temperatures once winter was over was troubling for the great preponderance of US, UK and French forces: and staggering amounts of bottled water were procured.

However, there were some very important pluses.  The aforesaid US / UK / French** forces (and a handful of other 'western' allies) all operated under NATO doctrine, meaning that a swathe of practical operational and inter-operability challenges had long-ingrained solutions.  AirLand Battle as a doctrine was a well-practised reality - albeit never yet tested in action.  

And, above all (quite literally) was the near-certainty of air superiority - the quickest and easiest component to deploy, given the many existing airfield facilties enjoyed by the USA and the UK in the Gulf and Eastern Med^^, plus of course US aircraft carriers.  It was early air deployment that also started fixing some of the initial problems around shortage of good intelligence.  Stand-off air recce was able to be mounted quickly; and ultimately a superb new asset was deployed - the E-8A J-STARS, the capabilities of which we will come to later in this account.  For now, suffice to say that the daily sorties were bringing back 2 TB of high-quality data of considerable value.

In my earlier series of posts on Desert Shield and how I came to be involved, I noted that we'd been gratified to find some of our lamentable initial ignorance on Iraq's army was fixed by the convenient fact of Iraq's adherence to Soviet doctrines in many respects (where they hadn't innovated), as well as using Soviet equipment.  Us old Russia hands were pretty good on all that, of course: we'd been working on little else for a long time.   

In fact sometimes it was even easier than we first realised.  The Iraqis were fairly slavish adherents to those precepts, an example being the Russian principle of deploying artillery in threes: three guns to a platoon, three platoons to a battery, three batteries to a batallion, etc - all in neat triangles.  The thing is, in northern Europe, these triangles would be loosely and flexibly deployed, for reasons of terrain and concealment.  In the open desert, the Iraqis went for neat equilateral triangles ... you spot one, and you know exactly where to look for the rest (see pic above).  Kinda handy for finding and plotting them!

It all helped: 2 TB per sortie was a helluva lot of stuff to go through - and computerised imagery analysis was in its infancy.  Also, we were looking for more important things than anti-tank batteries - things that were better hidden, where the lone and level sands stretch far away ...  (to be continued)     

ND

_______________

** French / NATO?  Oh yes: even through the long years of  De Gaulle's stand-offish policy, the French military quietly made sure to keep fully up-to-date with NATO STANAGS

^^ Turkey wasn't as *helpful* as it might have been 

'Desert Storm' - Kuwait, January 1991: the backdrop

The politics of the Middle East is something we don't tend to stray into around C@W, there are too many obvious beartraps (not to mention lurid conspiracy theorists).  However, salient headlines on the high-level situation at the time when Saddam made his ill-fated 1990 move on Kuwait can readily be assembled - see also my previous series of posts.  (BTW, I'm not aiming for my doctorate on late 20th C geopolitics here ...)

• Iran and Iraq had been hard at it for the best part of the preceding decade.  Early successes for Saddam had not been capitalised upon, leading to bloody stalemate - but also resulting in a very large, battle-hardened Iraqi army that at the tactical level was well led, and could even make some claims to strategic competence - below the political level, that is.  (The earlier posts covered aspects of this in some detail, if you're interested.)
  
• Western feelings about this were generally "it's a pity they both can't lose"^^.  For the most part, however (and certainly from the US perspective) the attitude towards post-Shah Iran was so negative, there was a tendency sometimes to view Saddam as something close to "an SoB, but our SoB" - and there had clearly been some maladroit (to put it mildly) high level contacts with his regime along those lines.  Many commentators suggested Saddam even believed he'd been given the green light on Kuwait.
  
• Middle Eastern oil loomed larger in 1990-net-importer America's thinking than - thanks to its recent shale-based exporter status - it does today.  Kuwait mattered; and Saudi mattered a lot.  And Israel ... well, let's just say that if Saddam felt his illusory "free pass" extended one inch further than Kuwait's borders he was truly, barking mad.  Oh, and the UK had (and still has) a very significant strategic presence in the area, too.
  
• China counted for rather little on the world stage in those days (Tiananmen Square was 1989); and the Soviet Union, which (formally speaking) still had more than a year to run at the time of the invasion, was already an utterly busted flush, the Berlin Wall having fallen also in 1989.  But Russia was a very interested spectator, with a ringside seat. 
  
• Saddam had gone a little way towards emollient PR following his invasion, but it was to absolutely no avail**: Bush reacted strongly and quickly, and the battle-lines were drawn very early in the piece.
• Mrs Thatcher was first on board, naturally; and the coalition assembled by Bush Senior (making military and/or financial contributions) was large and impressive.   

Incidentally MrsT was, in domestic political terms, in a real mess at the time (Poll Tax & generally declining authority), which became steadily worse as the weeks from the invasion went on; and concluded badly for her long before the end of 1990.  She desperately wanted to reprise the 1982 Falklands triumph++ and begged Tory MPs to let her stay on until the job in Kuwait was finished ...  

No such luck, she was well gone before the fighting started - on 17th January 1991.   

To be continued.  Perversely, it may take me longer to recount the tale than the actual fighting lasted ...

ND

__________

^^ attributed to Kissinger, but surely some American isolationist must have said it about Germany & Russia before the USA came into WW2?

** to be fair, it's entirely possible Jeremy Corbyn bought it

 ++ she'd been hankering after a re-run ever since: subject of another History Corner story I may feel able to recount one day...

Desert Storm: 30 Years On

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the conclusion of Op Desert Shield in Kuwait / Saudi / Iraq (etc) and the start of Desert Storm.

I haven't forgotten that I said I'd write about the fighting phase, too.  Am a bit tied up at the moment, but it's on the list ... watch this space.

ND

Saddam's Sortie (Pt 6) - President Bush the Greater

Reading a philosophy blog the other day, I found the following sentiment:  "George H. W. Bush was a temporary throwback to an earlier era of responsible conservatives".  Maybe not exactly how I'd have phrased it, but he was certainly the right man for the job in 1990, when Saddam Hussein made his land-grab for Kuwait.

Bush Snr was of course the consumate professional politician / administrator who'd done a string of top jobs before succeeding Ronald Reagan at the very top in 1989 - one helluva juncture in world history at which to take over.  I doubt if anyone would make a case for his having been a top-10 president overall: appointing Dan Quayle as VP, and losing (to Clinton) after one term, don't feel like qualifications for the shortlist.

But he had a couple of vital qualifications for the job in 1990: he'd been Ambassador to the UN; Director of the CIA; and he'd been on active combat service as a naval pilot in WW2 - 58 missions, DFC.  One way or the other, he'd learned some very significant lessons that were to prove extremely important for the conduct of the (First) Gulf War, both before and during the fighting.

The one that's relevant to our curent narrative on the build-up phase, 30 years ago today, is his enthusiam for building a substantial anti-Saddam coalition of nations.  We could all make the case as to why that would be a clever way to go, in terms of global politics - not least because, well, Middle East.  And then there was Russia, hovering to the north, with more than a passing interest in what was to transpire.

But it's not a no-brainer - particularly when his concept of the coalition extended to asking other countries to contribute troops on the ground.  Getting the UK onside was one thing - trusted ally, Security Council member, useful capabilities (Cyprus was vital, as we've discussed before; and all three services had plenty to offer in those days), on the same NATO doctrinal wavelength, part of the same intelligence community, fought alongside the USA in the Pacific theatre (inter alia) where Bush himself served.  But - as was later to be proved to be all too true - making use of, errr, Egyptian forces always seemed like a difficulty one could do without.  

Still, Bush insisted on it, and there was a motley feel to the eventual lineup in the desert.  We'll maybe get to that next year, when the 30th anniversary of the actual fighting falls.  Apparently he very much whipped in this coalition himself, making many a 'phonecall to monarchs and presidents around the world, doubtless making good use of the contacts he'd made over the preceeding decades.  And a strikingly large number of nations joined the party  - Wiki lists 34 - with additional players like Germany and Japan contributing $$$, on top of the huge financial contribution made by Saudi Arabia for obvious reasons of self-interest.

Bush also had a fine team to execute his orders (this does not include Quayle).  James Baker was a competent Secretary of State.  Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was and is very well-regarded.  And the appointment of General Norman Schwarzkopf to lead the mighty alliance on the ground was an excellent choice.

Next time:  the geo-political context.

ND

Saddam's Sortie (Pt 5) - Where Are We Going?

30 years ago, the USA having determined that Saddam was to be booted out of Kuwait, Drew had rejoined the Colours and was busily participating in the effort to bone up on two areas of lamentable ignorance on the part of the Staff:  (a) the surprisingly impressive Iraqi Army (see the last three episodes); and  (b) the likely battlezone itself.  

So: break out the maps!  - the "Going Maps", the ones showing all the obstacles and bridges and tracks; and which of them were unsuitable for tanks etc etc; i.e. the state of the "going".   

Hmm.  There were none.  The MoD had none.  How come??

It's interesting.  From the very start of WW2 this became a major issue for the British Army across much of North Africa where Britain found itself heavily engaged, first against the Italians and then of course the Afrika Corps.  The situation was more-or-less OK in a large swathe of Egypt where extensive aerial photo-surveys and subsequent detailed ordnance mapping had been conducted during the interwar years (at the expense of the Egyptian government!) for the twin puposes of irrigation planning and, as a simple subsidiary task, archaeological exploration.  But other areas gave a lot of grief - all the way across Libya, Tunisia - where French pre-war mapping proved inadequate - AND (amazingly) much of Sicily and Italy!  The requisite high-grade mapping needed to be done almost from scratch in many areas of that conflict, which necessitated a highly unwelcome diversion of aerial recce resources from their primary purpose of intelligence-gathering.

AND: there had been almost no WW2 fighting in and around Kuwait, or even the Persian Gulf at all.  Britain had invaded, firstly Iraq and then (in combo with Russia from the north) Iran, for the triple aims of (a) securing oil; (b) establishing a safe route for supplying war materials to Russia;  (c) both Iraq and Iran were deemed to be Axis-leaning.  But both these actions were rather to the north of Kuwait, and were all over in just a few days.  So there hadn't been any need to conduct military-grade mapping of the area we were now interested in.  Just a couple of years later (1992, from memory), the military forerunner of a Google-Maps type system came into use.  But in 1990 we were stuck.

Fortunately, the cavalry was at hand: the CIA came up with excellent Going Maps of the entire area for us - I think they had the entire planet covered.  

Amusingly, for those of an historical bent, there was in fact a precedent in the shape of some earlier military maps that could be laid alongside the modern American ones for comparison.  From somewhere in the depths of the archives the MoD did turn up British maps of the area - dating back to the 19th Century, the work of intrepid explorers of what was then known as the Great Sandy Desert** of what we now call Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. 

In those C19 volumes were to be found Going Maps of a different era:  "Track, ten miles, almost straight but soft going and gravel, passable for pack mules but not wagons or artillery ... bridge, suitable only for crossing on foot".  The modern version would make equivalent comments - but for trucks and tanks ...

Fortunately we had several months to lay our plans.  And the Royal Engineers are very good at preparing maps.

ND  

Next time:   the coalition of George (HW) Bush

__________________

**There is another desert region that goes by the same name nowadays - it's in Australia.  

Map: Jeff Dahl / wikimedia

Saddam's Sortie (Pt 4): More Iraqi Military Innovations

Back this weekend to the situation where thirty years ago, Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and the US-led, NATO-based effort to evict him was only just starting.  First things first; and we needed to acquaint ourselves with the military doctrine of the numerically strong and highly exerienced Iraqi army that we'd never before given a second thought to.  We'd quickly established they had incorporated quite a lot from the Soviets, as well as being largely equipped by Russia; and there were even some faint echoes of British influence (see below) dating to the 1950s.  In our arrogance and ignorance, though, we weren't expecting them to have developed some home-grown innovations, that had been amply tried and tested in a decade of all-out conflict with Iran.

Last time we described one of these - switching between specialist generals to lead different phases of the same operation.  This weekend we look at two more: one of less novelty but notable for its very extreme manifestation; the other of genuine, eye-popping novelty and not a little ghastliness.

The first was, as just suggested, really only an extreme implementation of a well-known principle, namely, that you don't ask tanks to drive very far on made-up roads.  (a) They ain't designed to run on hard flat surfaces, resulting in more maintenance outages; (b) they are not very fast; (c) their fuel consumption is truly appalling, particularly if you do take them up to full speed; and (d) they don't leave the road behind them in very good condition for any other purpose - e.g. bringing up troops and supplies by truck, a rather important consideration in a campaign.

Additionally, tanks are capital assets and not to be wasted - even if the Iraqis had quite a lot, and the Iranians not so many.  This final consideration led to the Iraqis seeing a powerful requirement for being able to switch their tanks rapidly from one front to another:  use them for a breakthrough operation at point A, then switch them swiftly to point B for further service.   Bottom-line?  You need a vast fleet of tank transporters.      

And that's what they'd acquired: by some estimates, the world's largest - to go with the world's largest combat-experienced army!  It thereby facilitated a major part of their operational doctrine: switching the location of tank forces in a trice between different phases of the same operation - rather like switching generals, in fact.

This was not wholly unprecedented in military logistical thinking, of course.  We could note:

• WW1, where the Germans planned a lightning-fast knockout blow against France, to be followed by rapid redeployment across the entire continent for an assault on Russia by the same forces  (even if it didn't quite work out that way, of course).   In that case it was the railway network that needed to be carefully developed in preparation.
• Israel's strategy for dealing with its equivalent frontal duality, Egypt to the west and Syria et al to the east.  Israel, too, has a large fleet of tank transporters to achieve the same effect. 

Nevertheless, the Iraqi version was impressive.  It was also more tactical in its nature than the two parallels I've offered above: both Germany and Israel saw their use of the same thinking essentially as being for a one-off, one-two combination punch of the highest strategic import - not really for day-to-day tactical deployment, which is what the Iraqis were capable of.  

*   *   *   *   *   *

I've kept you waiting for the gruesome one ...

Saddam's intended lightning strike against Iran in 1980 had, in the finest military traditions, become bogged down into a costly war of attrition.  The Iranians had resorted to human-wave tactics using the berserker-fanatics of the Revolutionary Guard, and Saddam didn't have any intention of trading numbers in that fashion.  So, unsurprisingly given what we know about the man, his mind turned to chemical warfare.  (Russian antecedents here, of course, and equipment also.)   

But there's a problem, as anyone who's ever donned a 'noddy suit' and/or respirator will know.  It ain't half hot, Mum.  And in temperatures of 40 degrees plus?  Not just uncomfortable: actually and literally unbearable for more than a very short while.  And Saddam was on the offensive; so he wasn't just going to use the chemicals for area-denial, he was intending to have his troops fight through the chemicals directly following their deployment, to capture the ground.  They had to be fully kitted-up.

Solution?  Big blocks of ice (and all the logistics required to make and distribute them).  In a front-line tent, a platoon of noddy-suited men would all huddle around a block to keep cool, until the last moment when, thus refreshed, they would be hurled into short, sharp action through the contaminated area, their ability to function fully-suited for at least a short while thereby greatly enhanced.  Clever, huh?

The gruesome bit?  Iraqi losses in some of these operations were very considerable  (Really? - ed).  Now, stemming from their pre 1960's British influences, they raised infantry regiments on a territorial basis; and so from time to time, as for the Brits in WW1, they stood to lose a very large number of young men all from the same town or region, all at the same time.  Iraqi tradition, as with many nations since time immemorial, is to recover bodies from the battlefield for burial at home.  So they'd potentially be in the awkward position of returning hundreds of bodies for hundreds of funerals to the same town, all at the same time - and Saddam was by no means wholly secure in his political grip on the country.  Not a happy political prospect.

So they used the ice on the return journey, so to speak, to preserve the bodies in order to get them back into morgues, whence they could drip-fed them back into their towns and villages over a prolonged period.

And the precedents for that?  I rather doubt it ...

ND 

Saddam's Sortie (Pt 3): Iraqi Military Innovations

In 1990 the determination of the USA - and the UK as its sidekick - to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait by force if necessary, necessitated a rapid learning curve for those of us on the staff, to get to grips with the large, potent and battle-hardened Iraqi army.  Which we'd never even given a passing glance to, being 99% focussed on Russia.  

Iraq, it turned out, was indeed influenced by Soviet military doctrine - its weapons being largely supplied from Russia at that time - but mostly at the tactical level.  When the shooting started (in early 1991), this turned out to be handy: but we're getting ahead of ourselves: thirty years ago today, we were at the start of a sustained period of planning and buildup.  The really interesting stuff was what we were learning about how, over the long years of intensive fighting against the significantly greater numbers of the Iranian army, they'd innovated militarily - not necessarily something that (in our arrogance) we'd have given them credit for.  In this post I'm going to recount one of these innovations - and there will be a couple more novelties to describe next weekend.

Advanced students of world military history may tell me there's a precedent for what I'm relating here; but I'm only aware of a rather limited forerunner.  The Iraqi army operated on the concept of specialist generals for different phases of a battle.  So: if there was to be a major offensive, typically there would be an initial preparatory logistical phase; then the assault; then (if all went more or less to plan) the follow-through/consolidation on the objective; and the preparation to receive, and deal with, a counter-attack.  Etc.

The Iraqis had formed the view that it might take a different man to lead each phase.  It's actually quite logical: why would planning expert General al-Logistics be as good at directing the assault as General bin-Bloodandguts?  So that's how they organised their affairs.

This strikes the 'western' military mind as very odd - mainly, of course, our conservatism coming through, reflecting the approach we were accustomed to since time immemorial, of having a single supremo commander on every front.  How, otherwise, is the handover managed between the sequence of generals involved?  What if things aren't going precisely to plan? (vide, almost every battle in recorded history).  Who can delineate distinct phases with such precision? - or rather, what do you lose by way of continuity and effectiveness if you do deliberately divide operations up in that modular way?  Had they never heard of the drawbacks of 'silo' thinking, nor the benefits of 'fusion', and seamless, integrated operations? 

(It also occurred to me:  given Saddam's lethal intolerance towards failure ... how did they come up with this doctrine?  Trial and error?  Who survived the errors to impement the lessons?) 

In favour of this approach, well, they'd had a lot more recent experience of fighting full-scale pitched battles than any army on earth - latterly against a numerically superior army spearheaded by human-wave tactics from the fanatical Iranian Revolutionary Guard.  And it seemed to work for them.

Precedent?  The Athenians in Thucydides' time seemed sometimes to pick and choose a handful of generals at a time (sometimes even on a democatic basis) for their major, set-piece annual campaigns against the Spartan alliance during the Peloponnesian War, and they seemed to divide up the duties between them according to what they were known to be good at.  But not always; and it didn't seem to be a positive doctrine, just an outworking of the rather 'open' way they conducted all their affairs.  Anyone know of a more compelling precedent?  

Next time:  more Iraqi innovations, including one that's truly bizarre (not to say gruesome ...)

ND    

Saddam's Sortie (Part 2): The Iraqi Army of 1990

Armies, it is said, prepare to fight the previous war.  Well, the British military in 1990 wasn't exactly primed for WW2 or Korea**, but it was pretty much characterised by its Cold War stance - and not unreasonably so, seeing as the Wall had only come down the year before and the Soviet Union was still intact.  No apologies, then, for (almost) all our studies being directed towards the Russian military, which we felt we understood pretty well.

When Saddam made his move on Kuwait 30 years ago, with the UK squarely alongside the USA in plans to send him back home with a size-10 Boot DMS in his arse (and Drew back in the Queen's pay to do his bit), we Russia specialists had quickly to get to grips with two new subjects for rapid study: a new geograhical theatre, and a huge, combat-tested army that frankly we'd never given any real attention to.

Saddam's substantial army had been engaged, more or less non-stop, since he invaded Iran in 1980 (he had form as regards invasions).  Wiki has it that the Iraqi army numbered some 200,000 at the outset, and lost "150,000 - 500,000" over eight years of attritional conflict.    Whatever the precise facts behind these arm-waving numbers, by the time of his Kuwait adventure Saddam had at last half a million men in arms, very many of them with combat experience and not a few with genuine, local, hard-bitten war-fighting expertise - a pedigree not to be dismissed out of hand.

So what did we know about them in August 1990?  Clutching at straws, we knew they had some fairly strong British Army organisational antecedents and traditions (directly so, up until their revolution of 1958); and that they were largely equipped with Russian kit.  So maybe they used, errrr, a combination of the British and Soviet military doctrines in which we already considered ourselves well versed? 

Yup, clutching at straws.  There was nothing for it but to knuckle down to some serious study of the Iraqi Army in the salient period 1980-1990.

And we quickly discovered that, whatever were the inputs from more prominent modern armies (happily, Russian doctrine well to the fore), there were a number of Iraqi specifics to be learned about.  Under the intense Darwinian pressures of that formative preceding decade of life-and-death conflict with Iran, the Iraqi army had come up with some genuinely interesting military innovations ...   (TBC)

ND 
_________
** Mrs T, of course, was dead keen to re-fight the Falklands war

Saddam in Kuwait, 30 Years On

This month sees the 30th anniversary of Saddam Hussein's lightning invasion of Kuwait.  You won't find much mention of that in the MSM, but I haven't forgotten ...  and I'm rather hoping the 30-year rule will see a deluge of official material being released and declassified at Xmas.  Because unless that happens, I'm a bit limited in what I can write about it.**  

Back then, it quickly became evident the US under Bush Senior was wholly determined to retake Kuwait, by force if necessary; and that the Brits would pitch in strongly  -  Mrs T, beleagured by the Poll Tax fiasco (Michael Portillo, where are you now?), was still PM and had long been looking to replicate the Falklands Factor.++   

In 1990 I was a reservist.  The rules for mobilisation of reserves in those days were very restrictive (the later conflicts of the 1990s saw them greatly "relaxed", if that's the right word) - it could only be ordered if the UK itself or NATO was under a concrete military threat to its own territory.  However, I was a specialist and the rules had long since been waived for us, on a volunteer basis (I have no idea whether ministers had been informed ...).  And the cause was just.   

Also, at the time I was working for a US oil company(!) who were, *ahem*, entirely supportive of releasing me for a while.  There was an immediate ramping-up of UK crisis plans, which called for the rapid build-up of various normally dormant HQ operations.  Partly this could be achieved by switching regular officers out of their peacetime roles: but it was also handy to have suitably qualified reservists available.  I had the experience - and a high security clearance.  So, back to the Colours I went ...   (TBC)  

ND  
 ____________
** The UK is considerably more paranoid conservative in these matters than the US - tons of juicy stuff has been declassified on their side if you know where to look:  but we're not allowed to confirm it

++ History Corner has another story to tell on that front ...