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Allied operations during the Gulf War were not the technical watershed that
some US generals have claimed. An independent assessment of the conflict,
commissioned by the US Air Force, argues that if a revolution in military
technology is under way, ‘it is only in its early stages’.

The Gulf War Air Power Survey was intended to examine the effectiveness of
allied bombers, fighters and their weaponry. It was similar in design to the
Strategic Bombing Survey carried out by the US after the Second World War.
‘The Gulf War demonstrated both the potential of air power and some of its
limits,’ says the study’s chairman, Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University.
A summary of the classified report was released last week.

In 43 days during 1991, the allies conducted 41 309 air strikes. Those
attacks destroyed or disabled much of Iraq’s armour. But, according to the
study, there is ‘no hard evidence’ that the allies destroyed even one mobile
Scud missile launcher. Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme was merely
‘inconvenienced’ by air strikes, with most nuclear facilities surviving the
war.

Technology also showed its limitations when judging the success of bombing
raids. In bomb damage assessment, or BDA, intelligence analysts scrutinise
photographs of targets after an attack taken by spy satellites or
reconnaissance planes.

There were, however, too many air strikes going on to keep up with damage
assessments. In addition, some questions simply cannot be answered by a spy
satellite. For example, the allies directed some 200 air strikes against
bunkers where Iraqi leaders were thought to be located, but US officials
have no idea whether or how the Iraqi leadership was disrupted as a result.
‘The BDA problem demonstrated some intrinsic difficulty in finding out what
one has destroyed,’ the report states.

In the wake of the war, some US generals have argued that the conflict
proved the effectiveness of high-technology devices such as satellite
navigation systems. ‘Were we to remove space assets from our military
arsenal, as a nation we would be relegated to employing war fighting tactics
much like those of the Second World War,’ says Air Force General Charles
Horner, commander of allied air forces in the Gulf and now
commander-in-chief of US Space Command, which operates military satellites.

Cohen says his study shows that such grandiose claims are premature. ‘There
are glimmerings of something very different ahead,’ Cohen acknowledges, ‘in
the role played by space-based assets, the unified command and control
apparatus, and the routine precision of air attacks.’ But the military’s
organisation and war fighting strategies must be revamped ‘to make the
promise of such a revolution a reality’.

The study identifies several developments that made the Gulf War stand out
compared with other conflicts. Devices such as secure telephones and
facsimile machines, capable of carrying conversations and documents in a
form meaningless to eavesdroppers, ‘subverted traditional hierarchies’. They
allowed rapid dissemination of information within the military, bypassing
superiors, the report concludes.

Laser-guided bombs ‘made routine accuracy possible’ it says. And the
High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile, which homes in on electromagnetic
transmissions, destroyed Iraqi radar installations. This reduced Iraq’s air
defences to relatively ineffectual weapons such as anti-aircraft guns.

The report also singles out for mention the F-117 stealth fighter, which is
virtually invisible to detection by radar, and in-flight refuelling for
aircraft. ‘Routine refuelling was essential to operations over vast
distances. Sixty per cent of all combat missions required it.’