Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air ...

Chapter 6
Ground-Based Air Defense since 1990:
The Gulf, the Balkans, and Afghanistan
In the half century since World War II, the US military has
been designed to battle masses of communist ground and air
forces on and over the plains of Central Europe. Many believed
the military could operate as well in other locales against lesser
threats; and since it could fight and win a large war against a
major foe, surely it could fight and win a small one against a
lesser one. But the conflicts in both Korea (1950–53) and Vietnam
(1965–72) demolished this assumption, as air units there
had at best mixed results. Some would even insist the Airmen’s
efforts in Vietnam were both expensive and counterproductive.
The American military’s next major combat test would come
within months of the fall of the communist empire and the end
of the Cold War. Like the previous two wars, this one would
also be thousands of miles from Europe, against a foe mainly
equipped with Soviet materiel, and fought with a force configured
for the NATO defense of Western Europe. However, unlike
the conflicts in Northeast and Southeast Asia, after more than 40
years, the US military would finally fight its kind of fight. 1
War in the Persian Gulf
The Iraqis had just fought a long, bitter war against the
Iranians (1980–88). They survived that costly war, and arguably
won it, or at least did not lose it. During that conflict, air operations
were secondary, with both sides preserving rather than
employing their air forces. Apparently, the Iraqis intended to
repeat that strategy in the Gulf War, that is, to preserve their
air force and rely on ground-based air defenses to protect them
from coalition air power. As one commentator so well put it: the
Iraqis were “prepared to refight their last war while the coalition
prepared to fight the next [one].” 2 The Iraqis failed to recognize
that the coalition was a far different foe than the Iranians.
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