often. The problem for him was this: Colin Powell had decreed that success involved killing the Republican Guard, which for him was the Iraqis’ strategic military center of gravity. Thus, Schwarzkopf did not want the
After Horner and Glosson worked through this “movie briefing,” Glosson went back into his office, and a few hours later he emerged with the plastic overlay briefing that was to be his until the war started in January (though updated and fine-tuned constantly). This briefing in its various evolutions was given many times to General Schwarzkopf (who liked it enough to instantly make it his own), to Colin Powell on his September 12 visit to Riyadh, and to the Secretary of Defense and the President in Washington, D.C., a month later.
One change Horner added to the early briefing was to have a chart made that showed the fight taking place in phases. By phases he meant that various objectives would be emphasized at various times — that is to say, the four phases did not actually indicate separate actions, one beginning as the last ended, but levels of focus. They offered a way to communicate airman talk to non-airmen, and they were basically simple, the first phase being to gain control of the air, and the last to prepare the battlefield and support the land attack.
So:
• PHASE I — STRATEGIC AIR CAMPAIGN. To gain control of the air and hit the Iraqi leadership, NBC, Scuds, and electric and oil infrastructure. The idea was to deny Saddam supplies but not necessarily to destroy his heavy industry. That is, power and fuel would be attacked, but in such a way that facilities could be reconstituted relatively easily after the war — e.g., grids would be hit instead of generators.
• PHASE II — AIR SUPERIORITY IN THE KTO. This idea came from General Schwarzkopf, who was thinking like an army general, in terms of land area and lines on maps. Even though this phase was redundant (gaining control of the air would happen simultaneously over Iraq and over Kuwait), Horner didn’t fight him on it. It gave him buy-in to the plan (as in, “I thought of that”), so why argue with him?
• PHASE III — PREPARATION OF THE BATTLEFIELD. This included isolating the battlefield, killing tanks and artillery, and destroying morale. It was at this point that Horner and Glosson introduced into the plan the important (and later well-known) goal of destroying 50 percent of Iraqi tanks, APCs (armored personnel carriers), and artillery.
According to Army doctrine, when a land unit’s effectiveness has been reduced to 50 percent or less, then it is no longer combat-useful. At the end of the planned air campaign, the Iraqi Army would be reduced by 50 percent. Hence, in essence, when the air effort was over, the war would be over, and little would remain to be done save collecting prisoners.
To understand this goal, it is important to remember that Norman Schwarzkopf genuinely loved his troops. Their safety and ultimate survival was one of his chief passions. Thus, any air plan that ignored the troops on the ground would be dead if presented to the CINC. It is also important to understand that Schwarzkopf did not insist on a ground campaign. On the contrary, he would have been delighted if the Iraqis had surrendered before his land forces went into battle. All the same, he knew there was a 95 percent chance of land war, and he wanted to make sure air operations were conducted to maximize the survival of the men and women of his land forces. Thus, the air plan talked about “preparation of the battlefield” and attriting “50 percent” of the Iraqi armor and artillery.
Why “preparation” instead of just bombing the Iraqis into the Stone Age? Because “preparation of the battlefield” has special doctrinal meaning to the U.S. Army. If a battlefield is well prepared, few U.S. soldiers have to die. Ergo, the more thoroughly the Air Force can prepare the battlefield, the happier Norman Schwarzkopf would be.
Airmen are too often perceived as fighting some war other than the land commanders’ war. This war would be different. It would be the CINC’s war. Though it would
The CINC bought this idea, and even thought it was his. (By the by, if the Air Force actually achieved this goal, they would clearly demonstrate airpower’s decisive effect on the battlefield — perhaps for the first time. Did matters unfold that way? We shall see.)
• PHASE IV — THE GROUND WAR.
How long would the campaign take?
The truth was, no one knew, and so estimates changed and varied. When the air staff ran the original ATO through the computer, the estimate was about a week. This seemed ridiculously hopeful to Buster Glosson, and so the time grew to three weeks. By November, it was thought that the planned Phase I would be pretty well achieved in less than a week (five to six days); Phase II in two days; Phase III in two weeks; and Phase IV would take up to three weeks. Later still, in a December briefing, Horner told Secretary Cheney that the computer models showed the war lasting from one to three weeks, but that he himself thought it would last at least six weeks. (This guess actually proved substantially correct.)
As it turned out, Phase I took from ten minutes to three days, depending on how success is measured. Phase II happened during Phase I. Phase III took five-plus weeks. And Phase IV took four-plus days.
The numbers of days do not total. For example, the thirty-eight days of Phase III include strikes conducted during the three days of Phase I. The message is that the impact of airpower on the enemy was underestimated, and the ability of airpower to destroy a deployed enemy was overestimated. The airman is always too optimistic, while the landman is too pessimistic.
? Finally, it would be useful to compare the changes that took place in the air campaign from John Warden’s INSTANT THUNDER, to the September iteration of Buster Glosson’s briefing, and then to the ATO when the war started. Here are some numbers:*
This chart (a counting of the targets to be struck in the first two and one-half days) illustrates that while the first effort by CHECKMATE was commendable, it was out of date shortly thereafter. The number of targets doubled between INSTANT THUNDER and mid-September. And then the 174 targets in September grew to 218 in October, to 262 in December, and to 476 by war’s start. And as the war itself unfolded, the number of targets grew to thousands
INSIDE THE BLACK HOLE
The Black Hole started out in the conference room adjacent to the Olsen/ Horner office on the third floor of the RSAF headquarters. In November, it was moved into the basement complex of that building. In that complex was also housed the TACC Current Operations Center, the computer room, the RSAF Command Post, and other offices. A long hall connected these; the TACC Current Ops occupied the far (or south) end of the hall, while the Black Hole was at the north end. The RSAF Current Operations Center was on the left, about halfway down the hall from the TACC to the Black Hole. On the right and across the hall from the RSAF Current Ops was the Computer
