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

GROUND-BASED AIR DEFENSE SINCE 1990
The coalition shooting war began with an effort to blind the
Iraqi air defense system. Task Force Normandy, nine Army
AH-64 Apache helicopters led by three Air Force helicopters,
attacked two early warning radars 21 minutes before the main
assault (H-hour). (This, in fact, may have alerted the defenders.)
Shortly after the initial assault, cruise missiles launched from
B-52s and Navy ships and laser-guided bombs dropped from
F-117s slammed into crucial targets. The stealth bombers and
cruise missiles and the suddenness, accuracy, and fury of the
assault caught the Iraqis by surprise. The coalition had lulled
the Iraqi defenders during the prewar buildup by repeatedly
flying a standard set of flights along the border. Forty minutes
after H-hour, massive numbers of coalition aircraft supported
by drones and defense suppression aircraft hit the Iraqis. 15
Within hours, the coalition had achieved air superiority, if not
air supremacy. Or, to put it a bit more elegantly, “The initial
strike delivered a paralyzing blow from which Iraq never recovered.”
16 Now the Airmen could pick the helpless Iraqis
apart at their leisure.
The Airmen used a variety of technologies and considerable
resources to combat the Iraqi air defenses. These were successful
well beyond their most optimistic hopes. In hindsight, it is
easy to forget that while there was no doubt as to the ultimate
outcome of a war with Iraq, there were questions and concerns
about its cost. As one observer wrote after the war: “It was a
war that could not be lost. The only question was the price to
be paid in winning it.” 17 Gen H. Norman Schwarzkopf writes
that some feared that as many as 75 aircraft would be lost on
the first night. Gen Buster C. Glosson, who would run the air
campaign, thought that 10 to 18 aircraft might go down, while
Col John A. Warden III, a major planner, estimated that number
might be 10 to 15. The estimates for total losses were also
varied and considerable. At the high end, one Central Command
(CENTCOM) official opined that as many as 10 to 15 percent
of the attackers would be lost. Another estimate out of that
headquarters was that the coalition’s aircraft losses could be
as high as 114 to 141 in the first three phases of the war, with
additional losses in the ground phase. Gen Merrill M. McPeak,
Air Force chief of staff, would not accept one estimate of 0.5
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