Desert Storm 1991: The Most Shattering Air Campaign in History

An expert, illustrated new analysis of the Desert Storm air campaign against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which shattered the world's fourth-largest army and sixth-largest air force in just 39 days, and revolutionized the world's ideas about what modern air power can do.

The combat phase of the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, was 43 days long. This consisted of a 39-day air campaign followed by a four-day armored mechanized assault. Together they shattered what had been the world's fourth-largest army and sixth-largest air force, and overturned conventional military assumptions about the effectiveness and value of air power.

In this book, Richard P. Hallion, one of the world's foremost experts on air warfare, explains why Desert Storm was a revolutionary victory, a war won with no single climatic battle. Instead, victory came thanks to a rigorously planned campaign, which opened with a devastating night of attacks that shattered Iraq's advanced air defense system, and allowed follow-on strikes in the following weeks to savage its military infrastructure and troops in the field -- largely by destroying capabilities and equipment, without massive loss of life. When the Coalition tanks finally rolled into Iraq, to widespread Iraqi surrenders, it was less an assault than an occupation.

The rapid victory in Desert Storm, which surprised many observers, led to widespread military reform as the world's advanced militaries saw the new capabilities of precision air power. The military world that we live in today (and will in the future) reflects, to a very large degree, the transformation of military power heralded by the air campaign in the 1991 Gulf War.