The 1991 Persian Gulf War

United States

by David Nilsen and Greg Novak

The US Army of the Gulf War was probably the best peacetime army ever fielded by any nation. That is perhaps easy to say in the absence of any way to objectively test the assertion, but it is true nontheless. There is no denying that it was one of the most professional, effective, and humane armies ever to be tested by combat. Wargamers and pundits drone on about their favorite armies: Alexander's Greeks, Napoleon's French, Wellington's British, and any of a tediously large number of collections of Germans. America shares with Russia the honor of fielding the most underrated armies of history. There is no deep-seated teutonic warrior mystique in American culture, there is simply the tradition of the citizen soldier, and a strange humility that prevents the granting of credit where credit is due. We make excuses for winning wars: we win by outproducing armies that are actually our superiors, or because the other guys really weren't that good after all. We find it hard to say that our troops are tough, and smart, and good.

While it has become widely repeated by now that the Iraqi Army was not much of a test of this American Army, there is little appreciation that there is no armed force in the world that could have stood against them. There is more and more publicly available evidence that the Iraqi Army did not just roll over and die, it maneuvered and fought and responded and redeployed and defended, but it was overwhelmed at every turn by faster, deadlier, more agile, more coordinated, mentally and technically more sophisticated forces. The American Army was not flawless--none are-but it was in a class by itself. Whether the quality of this army will be able to survive new economic and political assumptions is, for the time being, an open question. However, that army is in the care of the same exemplary officers who took it to war in the Gulf, which counts for something.

What was said above about the army can be applied to the other American services as well. The army did not win the war alone; they were never intended to. The air campaign created the battlefield on which the ground forces fought. It is a credit to both air and ground forces that each was able to make the other look so good, and it is willfully imbecilic to make claims about what the one alone could have done without the other. Nor is it profitable to detract from the sea services--the fleet is still there, still quietly fighting the sanctions war, as it did for months before hostilities began.

The US Army OB below is interesting because it shows a snapshot of a service in the midst of instituting a number of changes in equipment and organization.

The equipment stuff is fairly easy to spot: units trading basic 105mm M1s for M1A1s or -A1 (HA)s, M113s disappearing in favor of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and units trading in their early model "vanilla" Bradleys for newer versions. One of the units below (D-4 Cav) actually deployed into the theater with M60A3s, which were quickly exchanged for M1s. Other clear hallmarks of the army of the'90s are the HEMTTs, HMMWVs, Avengers, MLRS, OH58 Deltas, and Apaches.

Harder for most people to spot are the new organizational concepts that the army was working on, that they effectively had to rush into service for the Gulf War. One of these is the heavy division Combat Aviation Brigade. Ultimately each heavy (armored or mechanized infantry) division was to have a full aviation brigade including general and combat support helicopters, a cavalry squadron, a pair of Apache attack helicopter battalions, and an aviation support unit. However, when the call came to deploy to Saudi Arabia, this new structure had only been partially implemented, and divisions arrived in Saudi Arabia with ad hoc structures intended to provide similar capabilities to the full-up aviation brigades. Not all of the divisions wound up with two Apache battalions, and only 1st and 3d Armored bad the new Division Aviation Support Battalions (the others making do with the old Aviation Intermediate Maintenance companies) but each had a lashed-up aviation task force that providedthe support aviation that had not yet been formally organized.

Another notable innovation was the institution of the "E-Force"/ERI (Engineer Restructuring Initiative) concept which provided a full brigade (three battalions) of engineers to each division. Again, this application was uneven, with some divisions getting a full three-battalion engineer group, some making do task forces out of only two battalions, and one, the 1st Cavalry Division, making do with its single battalion without the E-Force structure.

The engineer battalions below are shown without their E (bridging) companies, as these had their trucks given over to the division support commands for use as simple hauling assets.

Finally, the least pleasant of the transitional organizational changes was the fact that many units deployed to the desert were in the midst of beig deactivated as part of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) agreement. With the sudden change to the post-Cold War supposedly kinder and gentler world, units had to be hastily reconstituted, or, if they were too far gone, had to be replaced with other units. Thus the 3d Armored Division deployed with three battalions of its sister 8th Mech Division, and the "Big Red One" picked up a brigade from "Hell on Wheels" to replace its brigade that was so far gone that it could serve only to operate support facilities at the Saudi ports.

AIR FORCE and NAVY

All American Air Crews should be rated as Veteran, Morale 11

More Tables of Organization: United States

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© Copyright 1994 by Greg Novak.
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