From the perspective of the U.S. military, the chain of command finally seemed to work as it was supposed to—but too often previously had not. In Schwarzkopf’s words, the President had been presidential; the Secretary of Defense had concentrated on setting military policy; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had served as the facilitator between civilian and military leadership; and as theater commander I’d been given full authority to carry out my mission.
One result of this fidelity to the command structure was that, after launching the ground offensive, Powell had to wait until Schwarzkopf had the time to inform him of progress on the battlefield. At the same time, Schwarzkopf understood that he was not going to be able to track the entire battle in real time—only key portions of it:
Back at the war room in Riyadh, we were so removed from the action that all we knew was that our forces were finally on their way across the border. It might take an entire day to piece together an accurate picture of how the attack was progressing. I desperately wanted to do something, anything, other than wait, yet the best thing I could do was stay out of the way. If I pestered my generals, I’d just distract them: I knew as well as anyone that commanders on the battlefield have more important things to worry about than keeping higher headquarters informed. . . . My job was to stay in the basement with our radios and telephones, assessing the offensive as it developed, keeping the senior commanders apprised of one another’s progress, and making sure we accomplished three strategic goals: to kick Iraq out of Kuwait, to support our Arab allies in the liberation of Kuwait City, and to destroy the invading forces so Saddam could never use them again.
Nonetheless, Schwarzkopf listened attentively to the electronic “sounds” of the battlefield as events developed. At about noontime, eight hours after the initiation of the ground campaign, he received news that the Iraqis had destroyed the desalinization plant in Kuwait City by blowing it up:
Since Kuwait City had no other source of drinking water, this could only mean that the Iraqis were about to leave. And if they intended to pull out of Kuwait City, I reasoned, they intended to pull out of Kuwait.
At that point, I knew that I had to act. Timing is everything in battle, and unless we adjusted the plan, we stood to lose the momentum of the initial gains. I’d fought this campaign a thousand times in my mind, visualizing all the ways it might unfold, and from the fragmentary reports coming into the war room, I could discern that the Iraqis were reeling. If we moved fast, we could force them to fight at a huge disadvantage.
This was the only significant intervention that Schwarzkopf made during the course of the ground campaign. As a result of the evidence of the Iraqi withdrawal, he sprang the main attack (the “left hook”) approximately 18 hours early.
SCHWARZKOPF’S COMMAND CONCEPT
Although the strategic war aims of the United States were never explicitly spelled out by President Bush, General Powell instructed Schwarzkopf, in early December, to draft a Strategic Directive, which is reproduced below.
DRAFT PROPOSED STRATEGIC DIRECTIVE TO COMBINED COMMANDER
1. TASK. Undertake operations to seek the complete withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in accordance with the terms of the UN resolutions and sanctions. If necessary and when directed, conduct military operations to destroy Iraqi armed forces, liberate and secure Kuwait to permit the restoration of its legitimate government, and make every reasonable effort to repatriate foreign nationals held against their will in Iraq and Kuwait. Promote the security and stability of the Arabian/Persian Gulf region.
2. AUTHORIZATION. When directed, you are authorized to conduct air operations throughout Iraq and land and sea operations into Iraqi territory and waters as necessary to liberate and secure Kuwait and destroy Iraqi forces threatening the territory of Kuwait and other coalition states. Forces should be prepared to initiate offensive operations no later than February 1991.
At any time, you are authorized to take advantage of full or partial withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait by introducing forces under your command to secure Kuwaiti territory and waters, defend against renewed aggression, and permit the restoration of the legitimate government in Kuwait.
Pending authority to execute operations to destroy Iraqi forces and liberate Kuwait, defend Saudi Arabia. Should Iraqi forces invade Saudi Arabia, you are authorized to conduct air, land, and sea operations throughout Kuwait and Iraq, their airspace, and territorial waters.
3. OPERATIONAL GUIDANCE. The objectives of your offensive campaign will be to destroy Iraqi nuclear, biological, and chemical production facilities and weapons of mass destruction; occupy southeast Iraq until combined strategic objectives are met; destroy or neutralize the Republican Guard Forces Command; destroy, neutralize, or disconnect the Iraqi national command authority; safeguard, to the extent practicable, foreign nationals being detained in Iraq and Kuwait; and degrade or disrupt Iraqi strategic air defenses.27 Schwarzkopf’s command concept is clearly derived from and serves the strategic objectives enumerated earlier. Recast in our format of an ideal command concept, it might read as follows:
I. ABOUT THE ENEMY AND HIS PLANS:
1. The enemy [Iraq] currently has approximately 400,000 troops in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations (KTO). He expects us [the United States] to conduct amphibious and ground operations aimed at the recapture of Kuwait City and the liberation of Kuwait.
2. The enemy is expected to resist a frontal attack fiercely. Once flanked and isolated, however, resistance in the KTO should quickly collapse.
3. You should expect the Iraqis to attempt to inflict as many casualties as possible on our forces, possibly through the use of chemical or biological agents.
4. The Iraqis will likely respond to tactical surprise by attempting to preserve the “center of gravity” they have vested in the Republican Guard divisions.
II. ABOUT OUR FORCE DISPOSITIONS AND PLANS:
- We shall first attack with air power to incapacitate Iraqi command, control, logistics, and air defense systems. We shall follow this with an intensive air campaign to keep in place, disrupt, attrit, and demoralize deployed Iraqi forces in the KTO. We shall then attack with four army corps to (1) neutralize Iraq’s fielded forces, (2) liberate the country of Kuwait, and (3) destroy Iraq’s ability to conduct invasion operations in the future.
- We shall conduct this operation in four phases, the first three with air power and the last with combined forces:
Phase 1—Using strategic and tactical air assets, achieve air supremacy in the KTO and incapacitate Iraq’s command and control system.
- Phase 2—Extend the air war to destroy, disrupt, and render ineffective Iraq’s warmaking ability, placing top priority on destroying weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical), the eight Republican Guard divisions, and petrochemical facilities.
- Phase 3—Having isolated the theater, conduct an intensive bombing campaign against fielded Iraqi forces in Kuwait proper, with the aim of disrupting, demoralizing, and destroying as many of the 400,000 troops occupying Kuwait as possible.
- Phase 4—Having attrited, disrupted, and demoralized the Iraqi Army, conduct a rapid and violent ground campaign designed to surround, isolate, and defeat completely the Iraqi occupation forces in Kuwait.
III. ABOUT CONTINGENCIES:
General Schwarzkopf addresses Congress after the successful conclusion of Operation Desert Storm. Speaker of the House Tom Foley stands behind Schwarzkopf
- If the Iraqi forces give evidence of withdrawal from the theater at any time—during the air campaign or during the subsequent ground campaign—we shall accelerate our planned operations, with the aim of destroying their forces during the confusion of withdrawal.
- If the air campaign is delayed by weather or other impediments, we shall adjust our ground campaign accordingly. We shall delay our repositioning to the west until we are assured that the Iraqis have been blinded and that any countermove by their forces can be exploited by air strikes against their forces on the move.
ASSESSMENT
President Bush greets General H. Norman Schwarzkopf who leads the Desert Storm Homecoming Parade in Washington, D.C. (06/08/1991)
This modern-day blitzkrieg offers an insight from a vantage point different from Guderian’s. Schwarzkopf did not have (nor did he seek) “Guderian’s perspective”—at least not physically. Conceptually, however, Schwarzkopf clearly understood and identified the information that was essential to managing the execution of his command concept. Schwarzkopf sitting in his bunker and reacting to the destruction of the water-desalinization plant is perhaps one of the clearest examples of the theory that history offers. Unlike French Field Marshal Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre in his chateau, Schwarzkopf, although physically isolated, was mentally tuned in to the way the battle had to go. Powerful evidence of this is the minimal level of traffic over command channels between Schwarzkopf and his field commanders during the battle. Schwarzkopf essentially listened in on the command networks, mentally ticking off the progress of the battle against his own expectations, intervening when he (correctly) detected activity at variance with his expected timetable. Indeed, except for the decision to advance the timing of the “left hook,” Schwarzkopf could have left the theater to his subordinates to carry out his plans.
In one sense, Schwarzkopf can be criticized for not executing his command concept with complete success. Many have commented on Schwarzkopf’s handling of war termination in this conflict, accusing the general of having lost touch with the status of the Republican Guard divisions and recommending ending the conflict before the retreating Guard divisions were enveloped and rendered combat-ineffective. In truth, it is possible that the unexpected rapidity with which the Marines advanced on the right accelerated events beyond Schwarzkopf’s ability to precisely control them. The failure to completely destroy the Republican Guard is probably the result of this and two other factors: (1) the unexpectedly light resistance, low casualties, and obvious destruction of Iraqi forces in place, which undoubtedly made a precise calculation of when to terminate a difficult one and show Schwarzkopf’s expectations to be too pessimistic, and (2) the relatively vague political objectives set by the U.S. leaders, which never really specified how far they wanted Schwarzkopf to go beyond the liberation of Kuwait. Schwarzkopf assumed that destruction of the Republican Guard would be necessary to the liberation of Kuwait—and when it was clear that it was not, other considerations intervened (concern about Arab reaction to the wanton slaughter of Iraqi forces, for instance) to force what may have been, in retrospect, a premature termination of the conflict.
Victory Parade after the Gulf War, 1991
In that light, it is important to separate Schwarzkopf’s generalship from his articulation and management of his command concept. His failure to coordinate the planning and execution of the Marine and Army operations, noted in several of the sources, probably allowed the Marines to push the Republican Guard out of the trap before it closed. That said, Schwarzkopf’s accomplishment is nonetheless impressive. He developed a vision, communicated it effectively to his subordinates, and employed his C2 resources to give him the information he believed was necessary to make critical decisions during the war. We can also say that his C2 system fully supported his command concept—a support that might have been more obvious if the initial attacks had met with difficulty. He understood how to use his capability, and focused his ability to look “everywhere” on looking at areas that were essential to the confirmation or refutation of his plan. Given the fact that Schwarzkopf’s need to communicate was minimal because his plan was basically sound, a more difficult enemy would not have significantly altered Schwarzkopf’s ability to listen for key events and understand when it was time to make a decision.
Unlike Schwarzkopf, MacArthur did not listen for the key event; he built his plan around what he knew beforehand to be a key factor: the absolute necessity of landing at Inchon. Like Guderian, he knew that a hard drive was essential to vanquishing the enemy; unlike Guderian, he had only one month in which to practice, not five or six.
Additional Sources:
www.digitaljournalist.org
www.the-v-man.com
bushlibrary.tamu.edu
www.gisearch.com
members.aol.com/desertkate
