The order's maneuver portion read, 'ARCENT continues the attack with two corps attacking abreast to encircle enemy first-echelon forces in the JFNC zone and destroy the RGFC. On order, VII Corps conducts the Army main attack in the south to destroy the Tawalkana Mech and the Medina Armor; fixes then defeats the 17 AD and the 52 AD. On order, the XVIII Airborne Corps conducts the Army supporting attack in the north to penetrate and defeat the Nebuchadnezzar and the Al Faw Infantry Divisions and destroy the Hammurabi Armor Division.'
XVIII Corps was not pleased with this order. In a message to the ARCENT commander, they listed three objections to it. First, they did not like being assigned the mission of attacking the RGFC infantry divisions, since that could cause unacceptable casualties. Second, they needed more maneuver room. Third, they did not feel they had the combat power to attack through the RGFC infantry and to destroy the Hammurabi.
At 2200 on 24 February — after the attack had begun — Third Army published a change to that order that allowed for the possibility that as the Third Army attack progressed, the Hammurabi Armored Division might either end up in the VII Corps zone of attack or in XVIII Corps's. It was not clear, in other words, whether the Hammurabi would stand and defend or move. If they stayed in one place, VII Corps was to be prepared to attack and destroy them, after destroying the Tawalkana and the Medina. Meanwhile, XVIII Corps would take on the RGFC light divisions and RGFC artillery, which were in their zone, and they also would take on the Hammurabi if that division moved into their zone. Third Army believed the RGFC had artillery positioned in XVIII Corps's sector that would fire south into VII Corps when VII Corps attacked the Medina. The order was for XVIII Corps to destroy that artillery.
These discussions and subsequent planning became the basis for the Third Army's two-corps plan. This was executed following the evening of 25 February, when Franks ordered VII Corps to execute FRAGPLAN 7 and when XVIII Corps subsequently redirected their attack toward Basra.
Even though Third Army had developed a coordinated two-corps attack, there was still no agreement on those concerns that had bothered Franks as far back as the 14 November briefing. No plans existed that laid out how the forces would be disposed (now probably in front of Basra) at the end of the war. Likewise, there was nothing like a CENTCOM airground plan to isolate and then finish the RGFC units in the Kuwait theater.
It was not that Yeosock and Third Army planners did not try to get this done. Rather, they intended to adapt to circumstances and put out a new 'frag' order every twenty-four hours (which they did anyway) in order to adjust the two-corps attack. What caught them short was the timing of the end of the war.
Specifically, Lieutenant General Yeosock's intention was first to determine if the RGFC were staying in place. If so, then the two-corps attack plan would be executed. Then, based on the situation at that point, he planned to issue further orders to both corps for the final attack to complete the RGFC destruction in a coordinated air-ground action.
There had very definitely been thought within the Third Army about the war's end state, but the cease-fire preempted that final order.
THE VII CORPS PLAN
A military plan comes out of many minds working on a common problem, yet it is not a committee solution. The commander decides. How commanders decide, along with what they decide, largely determines the excellence of the final product and the confidence with which subordinates execute the plan.
The VII Corps plan had to be just that — the corps plan. Fred Franks knew from the start what he wanted to do and how he wanted to develop that plan: he had to come up with a simple scheme of maneuver that would accomplish his mission at least cost, and the way he did that had to reinforce the teamwork he was building in VII Corps. In other words, he not only had to come up with a workable scheme of maneuver, he also had to teach it, and do that in such a way that all of his leaders had internalized it, were of one mind with him, and were playing on the same team.
Someone asked Franks how much time in VII Corps he spent teaching. About 50 percent, he told them.
One might argue that in a military organization, where everyone follows orders, all you have to do is make a decision and then tell your subordinates 'This is it, go do it.' That is certainly true, and Franks did that a lot. But at the same time, a commander has the benefit of a great deal of experience in his subordinates and they also have large and complex organizations of their own, which they have to direct and move. For both reasons, they will have judgments worth listening to.
In other words, when you make military plans, you have to be aware of the human dimension. When things get tough, when opportunities and enemy actions require adjustments to the plan, and when you expect and indeed demand initiative from your subordinates, you want them to be on your wavelength and to really believe in what they are doing. Results are always better when your subordinates have been part of the plan. You form a team that way.
One of the ways Franks built his VII Corps team was to evolve the plan in such a way that all of his leaders took part in the plan building. From the start he had a good idea about what he wanted to do, but the process by which he arrived at it was a matter both of bringing the team along and convincing them that it was also their idea, and of consulting with his commanders, all savvy mounted warriors who provided valuable input. He also knew he was going to focus all VII Corps units' attack on a common corps objective, rather than assign individual objectives to individual units.
But in the end it had to be Fred Franks's plan. It had to come out of the will and mind of the commander, and not out of a patchwork of inputs from subordinates as an accommodation to all views.
In encouraging input from subordinates, he was not unlike many earlier commanders that he admired: Robert E. Lee, George S. Patton, Field Marshal Slim (the British victor over the Japanese in Burma in World War II). He did not consider it weakness or indecision. It was smart command style.
Though teaching the plan and listening to input are indispensable to the process, planning and decision making are primarily intellectual acts. They are problem solving, pure and simple — with the added dimension that the problem is two sided, and this is the tough, uncompromising arena of land war, in which the outcome is deadly and forever. In simple terms, the enemy shoots back and behaves in ways you sometimes do not want and haven't anticipated, while using the same time and the same terrain.
At the same time, the commander operates in a military and national hierarchy of ideas and policies. No military commander is a free agent — he can't do as he wants. He operates within a framework of orders and directives in a chain of command. In the United States, that means civilian control and orders issued either by the President as commander in chief or the Secretary of Defense. Those orders are translated into action at each subordinate headquarters. In Desert Storm, the orders came from President Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, to General Schwarzkopf, the U.S. Unified Command commander for the region and the commander of Coalition forces in Saudi Arabia. That meant that General Schwarzkopf had to answer both to his chain of command and to the Coalition when he was putting together his strategic objectives and the military plans to achieve those objectives. It was not simply a matter of the United States devising a plan and then executing it. Though the United States by far had the preponderance of forces, it still had to involve the Coalition nations in the decision-making process. The United States needed their forces to accomplish the mission, wanted their ideas about the best way to do that, and wanted to conduct a campaign that would accomplish the mission in such a way that it would lay the groundwork for future cooperation in this very volatile region.
When the CINC finished his briefing on 14 November 1990, Franks was crystal clear about four things: He knew VII Corps was the main attack. He knew that if, through his fault, any details of this plan got into the media, he was history. He was convinced that XVIII Corps was way too far to the west for a mutually supporting two-corps attack. And he had heard nothing mentioned about how it would all end from a theater perspective.
Following the CINC's briefing, he did not give any guidance to his own planners for the better part of two weeks. There were two reasons for this: First, before he could do any detailed work, he needed from Third Army a basic mission statement and the units to be assigned to VII Corps. At that point, it was not at all clear what additional troops would come from outside the corps. As far as he knew, he would be attacking with three divisions (1st AD, 1st ID, and 3rd AD, three corps artillery brigades, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and the 11th Aviation
