Desert Storm: How Saddam's Army Was Crushed in the Gulf War

After the dust had settled from the devastating Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein was in dire straits. Iraq had gone into serious international debt to finance the conflict, and although the fighting eventually ended in a stalemate, that money still needed to be paid back. One nation in particular that he owed a great deal to was Kuwait, which had loaned Iraq 14 billion US dollars over the previous decade.

Along with the debt, Kuwait was also producing a surplus of oil, driving down global prices and, in turn, hurting Iraq’s economy. To top it all off, Kuwait stood accused of slant drilling, allowing it to siphon crude from Iraqi oil fields. Looking at all of this, Saddam decided to take matters into his own hands, and on August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, annexing the smaller nation in just two days.

Despite Iraq’s old sovereign claims to Kuwait, dating back to the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rest of the world was not amused, and plans were soon underway to take back Kuwait by force. What would form in response was the largest military alliance since the Second World War, embarking on one of the most successful military operations of the 20th century.

This is the story of how that coalition assembled, how it broke the back of one of the largest armies in the region, and the long shadow the war still casts over the Middle East.

The Road to War

The grievances that pushed Saddam Hussein toward Kuwait were as much economic as territorial. Iraq emerged from eight years of war with Iran financially exhausted, owing enormous sums abroad, with no obvious way to repay them. Kuwait was both a major creditor and, in Saddam’s eyes, an economic saboteur. Its oil surplus drove down the global price of crude at precisely the moment Iraq most needed revenue, and Baghdad accused its southern neighbor of slant drilling across the border to steal from Iraqi fields.

Iraq layered these complaints atop an older claim that Kuwait had historically belonged to it, a claim it traced to the final years of the Ottoman Empire. When diplomacy and intimidation failed to extract relief, Saddam chose force. The invasion on August 2nd, 1990, was swift and decisive, and within two days the entire emirate was under Iraqi control. Whatever the merits of the historical argument, the international response was immediate and hostile, and the machinery of a counter-coalition began to turn.

Operation Desert Shield

The first Western move was defensive. After the annexation of Kuwait, the United States began deploying troops to Saudi Arabia under the framework of the Carter Doctrine, a posture meant to protect allies in the Persian Gulf. As American forces stacked up, the buildup took the name Operation Desert Shield, the title itself affirming that this was, at least initially, a defensive measure intended to ward off any further Iraqi aggression until the situation in Kuwait could be resolved.

That defensive premise collapsed on August 8th, 1990, when Saddam Hussein declared Kuwait to be Iraq’s 19th province and appointed his cousin as its new military governor. The annexation was now formal and, Saddam signaled, permanent. Abandoning the purely defensive idea, US President George H.W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began sending forces to Saudi Arabia and urged their allies to do the same. An anti-Iraq coalition was forming, and Washington wanted as many nations as possible inside it.

Building the Largest Coalition Since WWII

American representatives traveled across the globe on diplomatic missions to recruit for the coalition, and they had surprising success. Argentina, Bangladesh, Czechoslovakia, Niger, and a long list of others signed on. Even Afghanistan sent 500 fighters to participate. Syria and Egypt committed huge forces, eager to tame Saddam before they became his next victims. In total, an alliance of 39 nations formed the coalition, the largest since the formation of the Allies in the Second World War.

Of these, 35 would actually send troops to Saudi Arabia, while others, such as Germany, played only a defensive role in case the war spread to Turkey. Over the following months, coalition forces piled up in Saudi Arabia, and extensive training got underway. One training exercise, Operation Imminent Thunder, was so massive that it involved the aircraft carrier USS Midway, 15 other ships, a thousand aircraft, and more than a thousand marines. The scale of the rehearsal foreshadowed the scale of the war to come.

The Buildup and the Deadline

Eventually the troop buildup reached 956,000 men. About 70 percent of these were from the United States, with the other most significant contributors being the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. More than 2,000 aircraft arrived on the scene, along with thousands more tanks, five aircraft carriers with one more on the way, and dozens of other ships. It was an accumulation of combat power on a scale the region had never witnessed.

Diplomacy ran in parallel. Negotiations were tried and failed, several UN resolutions were passed condemning the annexation, and Saddam said he would leave only if a long list of political and trade demands was met. No one agreed to them.

He also pressed grievances with Israel, trying to use his position in Kuwait to negotiate for Palestine or to dismantle Israel’s nuclear arsenal, but that gambit went nowhere either. In November 1990, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 678, giving Saddam a deadline: leave Kuwait by January 15th, 1991, or face the authorized use of force. This was no vague threat.

The force in question was already on his doorstep, but Saddam was not the kind of man to back down. By December, with only a month remaining, the world held its breath. Asked whether Iraq would attack its neighbors if invaded, Iraq’s Foreign Minister answered: “Yes.

Absolutely. Yes.” War was on the horizon, and the only man who could stop it had no intention of doing so.

Phase One: The Air War Opens

When the last diplomatic efforts failed and Saddam’s deadline passed, the coalition struck exactly as promised. The Gulf War had officially begun, kicked off under the codename Operation Desert Storm. The plan involved two main stages: first, an air war to achieve aerial supremacy and strike ground targets, followed by a ground invasion. The air war would last more than five weeks, during which coalition members would fly over 100,000 sorties and drop nearly 90,000 tons of bombs.

On January 17th, 1991, Desert Storm began with a helicopter group called Task Force Normandy. Eight Apache helicopters led by four Pave Low helicopters crossed into Iraqi territory and struck radar sites near the border at 2:38 AM. These were a critical first target, slowing Iraq’s response time to the assault that was about to break over it. Minutes later, missiles and bombs began landing on air bases in western Iraq, courtesy of 22 F-15s.

No sooner were these strikes underway than Baghdad itself was already under attack. Ten F-117 Nighthawks were over the capital, their stealth technology protecting them from more than 3,000 anti-aircraft guns searching for them in the dark.

Striking from Sea and Sky

While this was unfolding, the navies got involved as well. Dozens of Tomahawk missiles were fired from coalition ships, striking targets in and near Baghdad and taking down oil refineries, power plants, and factories. Along with the missiles, naval gunfire struck targets along the Kuwaiti coast.

Several ships from the Iraqi navy tried to make a run for the open ocean during these first hours, but they were spotted by a highly advanced P-3 Orion called Outlaw Hunter, which dispatched strike units that ended up sinking 11 Iraqi ships. Outlaw Hunter was so capable that at one point it used infrared imaging to detect Iraqi markings beneath a recent coat of paint that showed Egyptian markings on one vessel.

Alongside airfields, bases, factories, and energy infrastructure, one of the main targets on the opening day was Iraq’s air defense system. Iraq fielded an extensive anti-air network, consisting of thousands of surface-to-air missile systems, mobile anti-air units, and fixed anti-aircraft guns. Taking these out was of the utmost priority to secure the skies. On day one, the coalition air force consisted of more than 2,000 fixed-wing aircraft, and in just the first 24 hours they ran 2,775 sorties.

Shock, Awe, and Iraqi Resolve

Perhaps the most remarkable single mission was a group of seven B-52 bombers, which flew all the way from Louisiana to launch 35 cruise missiles before heading back home. Their trip was 35 hours of non-stop flying and covered more than 14,000 miles, or 22,500 kilometers. The air war demonstrated, in just a few hours, how incredibly powerful the coalition was, and this was one thing the alliance was banking on.

If they could overwhelm the Iraqi defenses and convince them that they were hopelessly outgunned against a superior, almost futuristic enemy, the thinking went, they might give up the fight. This was the whole idea behind the iconic concept of “shock and awe”: break the enemy’s will in the opening battles, and the ones down the road become far easier.

It did not exactly work, at least at first. Despite the immense damage they were taking, Iraqi resolve remained strong, aided especially by the belief that this was a war of destiny, a final battle with the West. Just five hours after the airstrikes began, Iraqi state radio announced: “The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins.”

But the showdown was seriously one-sided. Iraqi aircraft stood no chance against coalition forces, scoring only one kill while losing 36 in the first few days. Recognizing they could not fight in the air, Saddam ordered most aircraft moved to hardened bunkers, and some fled to Iran.

The Missile War Against Israel

Iraq still fought back. On the second day of Desert Storm, Iraq fired eight ballistic missiles at Israel, and over the following weeks fired a total of 42. There were only two direct casualties from these attacks, though a number of elderly people died of heart attacks during them. But casualties were not the real purpose of the rockets.

What Saddam truly wanted was to provoke Israel into joining the conflict. If Israel entered the war, there was a chance the Arab nations in the coalition would withdraw, or even switch sides, and a chance it could drag previously neutral countries onto Iraq’s side for a shot at striking Israel.

It was, honestly, a sound strategy, and it nearly worked. After the first missiles hit, Israel had already scrambled fighters and was preparing to retaliate. Just in time, President Bush convinced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to hold back, promising to send missile defense systems. Israel cooperated, though fear lingered that Iraq might load its missiles with chemical weapons, as it had done against Iran the previous decade.

For this reason, Israeli citizens were issued gas masks and the drug atropine to counteract nerve agents. Fortunately, such an attack never came.

Hunting Scuds and the Wider Missile Threat

Israel came very close to joining the war over the following weeks, at one point even loading helicopters with special forces and preparing to fly into Iraq before being convinced to stand down at the last moment. To minimize the ballistic missile strikes, US and British special forces infiltrated Iraq on Scud-hunting missions. This, combined with an increased focus from the air, drastically decreased the rocket attacks.

Israel was not the only target. Iraq also launched 47 Scuds at Saudi Arabia, one at Qatar, and another at Bahrain. The deadliest single strike hit US army barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 Americans and injuring more than 100 when missile defense systems failed to detect the incoming rocket. It was the worst loss of American life from a single enemy action in the war, and a sober reminder that even a degraded Iraqi military could still inflict serious harm.

The Battle of Khafji

On January 29th, Iraq lashed out again, this time by launching a ground attack into the Saudi city of Khafji, which sits right on the border with Kuwait. The attack involved around 60,000 troops organized into five divisions, with a few hundred tanks. The more advanced mechanized divisions had Soviet-made T-72s, but the rest made do with older T-62s and T-55s.

Many of these older tanks had been upgraded with modern armor, but it would not save them from the coalition air force. The four-pronged offensive had three goals: capture Khafji, inflict heavy casualties on the coalition, and take as many prisoners of war as possible, which Saddam hoped to use as a bargaining chip later.

At 10:00 PM on January 29, Iraqi forces moved into Saudi Arabia and quickly reached Khafji, where they engaged US Marines stationed there. The marines had only a few anti-tank weapons and barely held their position, slowly retreating while they waited for air support. It came in the form of F-15s, A-10 Warthogs, and Harrier jets. Due to tragic miscommunication, these air strikes resulted in 11 friendly fire deaths at the first point of battle, but they succeeded in repelling the Iraqi advance.

False Surrender and the Fall of Khafji

A couple of miles from Khafji, a column of Iraqi T-55s rolled up to the border, signaling their intention to surrender to coalition troops. When Saudi troops responded and began making their way to the tanks, the Iraqis revealed their true intention and opened fire. This caught the attention of a nearby AC-130, which quickly moved to cover the Saudi troops and destroyed 13 Iraqi tanks in the process. For the rest of the night, coalition air strikes pummeled Iraqi columns, but driving them out of Khafji proved difficult, as the buildings obstructed views of the tanks and there was a large risk to civilians.

Coalition ground forces moved in. The fighting in the streets was intense, and a couple of Americans were taken prisoner in the chaos. By the next day, the city was soon to be recaptured, and Iraqi forces were on the run. Reinforcements were on the way in the form of an Iraqi amphibious assault, crossing the Persian Gulf and hoping to catch the enemy by surprise, but they were spotted, and US and British aircraft sank 90 percent of their boats.

By February 1st, Khafji was retaken. The battle cost the coalition 43 fatalities, one downed aircraft, and two destroyed Saudi tanks. The Iraqis lost nearly 100 tanks, almost entirely to air strikes, showcasing the deadly potential of air supremacy and just how powerful ground units become when supported from the sky. Despite the retreat, Iraqi morale was still boosted by the momentary occupation of Khafji, which was heavily broadcast back home.

The Air War’s Toll

Meanwhile, the air war ground on. Iraqi infrastructure had been decimated, and the destruction of roads prevented an estimated 400,000 more Iraqi troops from reaching the frontlines. Hundreds of vehicles, missile sites, and military bases had been turned into dust. This was not without collateral damage.

In the five weeks of bombing, around 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, often in brutal circumstances, such as when a British missile originally fired at a bridge malfunctioned and struck a busy marketplace, or a US bombing of an air raid shelter with more than 400 people inside.

The deaths of civilians only served to invigorate the Iraqi cause, and they grew even more determined to hold their ground against the coalition. But soon, the true test of their army was arriving. After more than a month of air strikes, the air war was finished, and the ground invasion was about to begin.

Phase Two: The Ground Invasion

Just as before the air war, the coalition sent Saddam an ultimatum: withdraw from Kuwait by February 24th, 1991, or face a full-scale invasion. Saddam treated this demand exactly as he had the previous ones. He ignored it. The assembled coalition forces were colossal. Organized into five corps, the coalition was bringing every available man to the fight.

The center of the line held the heaviest of the allied forces: US and British armored divisions consisting of more than 1,400 main battle tanks, ready to thunder deep into enemy territory with overwhelming force. To their right was an assortment of Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Saudi, and Syrian tanks, and on the right flank were Saudi and American units. The left flank held multiple French divisions, including the French Foreign Legion, hundreds of American tanks and armored vehicles, 16,000 paratroopers, and more.

In total, more than 700,000 troops were ready to move in, not counting the naval assets offshore and the hundreds of aircraft that would provide close air support. Facing them were around 200,000 Iraqis who were not only outnumbered and outgunned, but starting to go hungry as their supply lines had been ripped to shreds.

The Plan and the Opening Assault

The plan was for the flanks to advance first and draw in the bulk of Iraqi fire. As they pushed forward, paratroopers would land far behind enemy lines to set up a forward base for the rest of the coalition. Next, the center formations would advance, spearheading the main assault directly into Iraqi lines. Once accomplished, the whole operation would shift west into Kuwait, where the final showdown would decide the war.

On February 24th, Saddam’s deadline passed and the ground war began, originally nicknamed Operation Desert Sabre. The advance was preceded by an overwhelming artillery barrage, which fired more than 90,000 rounds at the Iraqi lines and caused immense damage. The marine advance on the right flank did not hesitate to follow, overwhelming the first line of Iraqi defenses so quickly that no US losses were taken.

While they cleared minefields to enter Kuwait, more than 100 helicopters began airlifting paratroopers deep behind enemy lines, flying just above the sand to avoid detection. Wave after wave of transport choppers took thousands of troops just south of their target, a base codenamed Objective Cobra. As the men jumped into the sand, more helicopters arrived with artillery and ammunition, and within minutes they were blasting Iraqi fortifications.

Combined with air strikes, particularly strafes from A-10s, the Iraqis started to surrender.

Collapse on the Flanks

A similar story played out on the far-left flank, as the French and American divisions thundered into Iraq and smashed through the western defenses, though a nasty sandstorm slowed them considerably. When they reached their first objective, led by French attack helicopters, the Iraqis there also surrendered en masse. The Arab forces advancing had the same fortune, taking thousands prisoner while suffering minimal losses. Overall, the Iraqi forces across the frontline were hungry, tired, and starting to lose hope against the superior coalition.

It seemed that “shock and awe” was doing its job.

But this success came with a drawback. Despite having the worst equipment of the whole coalition, the right flank advanced so quickly that it was hours ahead of schedule. Because the center was not going to advance until the following day, this rapidly advancing flank would be vulnerable to Iraqi counterattacks. For this reason, the center advance was pushed up a whole 15 hours, and the troops there were given just two hours’ notice to prepare to move.

Another massive artillery bombardment prepared the way for the center units, who crossed into Iraqi territory at 3 PM on February 24th.

Burying the Frontline

The units the center encountered were some of Iraq’s best, and although they did not surrender like their peers on the flanks, they still did not stand much of a chance. Hiding in trenches they had dug into the sand, they watched with horror as a horizon of enemy vehicles moved steadily toward them. Instead of engaging in the conventional sense, the coalition simply used armored bulldozers to push sand into several of the trenches, allowing tanks to drive right over them and leaving hundreds buried alive beneath them. The frontline had been pulverized with little to no casualties on the coalition side, but the real challenge came the next day as Iraq moved to counterattack.

The trench-clearing tactic remains one of the war’s grimmer episodes, a stark illustration of the lethal asymmetry between the two forces. Where Iraqi units had expected a costly assault that might inflict the casualties Saddam was counting on, they instead faced an enemy that could neutralize fixed positions almost mechanically, without ever entering close combat.

The Last Great Tank Battles

What followed in the center advance are arguably three or four of the largest tank battles in American history, often referred to as the last great tank battles of the 20th century. First was the Battle of 73 Easting, fought by around 300 British and American tanks against 400 or so Iraqi tanks. As the coalition tanks moved through the desert, they engaged a couple of lone targets, such as a cluster of bunkers and a few scout vehicles, when suddenly they were faced with a huge armored force.

Without hesitation, the coalition tanks formed up and opened fire, making excellent use of TOW missiles, which they guided into Iraqi tanks with deadly accuracy. By the time the smoke had cleared, only a single coalition vehicle had been destroyed, an M2 Bradley. Six people had been killed and 19 wounded. On the Iraqi side, 160 tanks had been destroyed, along with 180 other armored vehicles, amounting to more than 1,000 casualties. In addition, more than 1,300 prisoners were taken in the aftermath of the battle.

Medina Ridge and Norfolk

The next day saw the Battle of Medina Ridge, when once again hundreds of tanks faced off against each other. This time, the coalition lost four tanks, a few armored vehicles, and two helicopters, but Iraq lost nearly 200 tanks and more than 250 other vehicles. These were simply unsustainable losses, and then it happened again. The Battle of Norfolk, fought on February 27th, was unbelievably massive, with more than 550 Iraqi tanks destroyed along with more than 400 other vehicles.

You might think that by now there would be literally nothing left in the Iraqi army, but there were still a few thousand vehicles rumbling around. These, though, were retreating out of Kuwait. Knowing the war was a lost cause, Iraqi armored divisions began the drive back to Iraq on Highway 80, the same highway they had used to invade Kuwait in the first place. The retreat would turn that road into one of the most infamous scenes of the entire conflict.

The Highway of Death

When the coalition noticed this escaping convoy, they struck immediately, using airstrikes to disable the lead and rear tanks and trapping the rest in between. A traffic jam of thousands of military vehicles had been turned into nothing more than sitting ducks for coalition aircraft. Between February 25th and 27th, dozens of bombing runs blasted the convoy, shredding it with every munition available. The results were so gruesome that the road earned the nickname the Highway of Death: nearly 3,000 destroyed vehicles and well over a thousand casualties.

Eyewitnesses reported scores of charred corpses, blood covering the sides of the road as people were hit trying to flee, and stolen Kuwaiti goods littered about as the occupiers tried to carry home some of what they had pillaged. It remains an incredibly controversial attack, with some calling it a disproportionate use of force, or arguing that the column was retreating in accordance with the original UN resolution. The US military stood by its actions, saying there was a great deal of military equipment destroyed and that there were no signs of refugee casualties as posited by some journalists. The casualty numbers may also not be as high as originally thought, as post-war investigations found that most Iraqis had learned to simply flee their vehicles the moment they heard aircraft overhead.

Saddam’s Defeat

On the 28th of February, just four days after the start of the ground war, Iraq surrendered, and a unilateral ceasefire was signed in coalition-occupied territory. The coalition had suffered just 292 deaths, half of which were due to either accidents or friendly fire. Iraq, on the other hand, had suffered as many as 50,000 deaths, 75,000 wounded, and more than 100,000 prisoners of war. The disparity was so stark that it defied historical comparison among modern conflicts.

Not only had the coalition shown the power of a modern, well-organized force, the United States and the United Kingdom were able to flex their muscles. The US obviously dominated, constituting the bulk of the operation, but the British showed up with the Challenger 1 tank, which destroyed several hundred Iraqi tanks and did not suffer a single loss. The Challenger is also credited with the longest-range kill not just of the Gulf War but perhaps in history, when it struck a T-72 from around 5,000 meters away, a little over three miles.

This absolute power displayed by NATO’s top dogs left an impression that is still around to this day, especially when one considers the possibility of a war with the likes of Russia or China, who have not come close to displaying such prowess on the battlefield. After all, this was the US and its allies fighting a war on the other side of the globe, while Russia, by comparison, has struggled in its own backyard.

An Ideal War and Its Long Shadow

It was a modern war that, apart from the civilian casualties, did not really attract many critics as a whole. Public support across coalition nations was incredibly high, and the conflict seemed to come to an ideal end by achieving the liberation of Kuwait, immediately ending the fighting, and withdrawing from the region just a few weeks later. It was at the time considered an option to continue the advance to Baghdad and occupy Iraq, but this was dismissed as too dangerous, both for the troops and for public image.

Iraq, on the other hand, was on a steep downward spiral following the war. Saddam tightened his grip on his people, killing as many as 100,000 civilians during a series of uprisings against his regime later that year. This came on top of the at least 3,000 civilians killed during Desert Storm, in a country so war-torn that the UN described it as having been “bombed into the pre-industrial age.”

Widespread international sanctions cut Iraq off from global trade in several sectors, and the debt problem only worsened. Anti-American and anti-Western sentiment skyrocketed as a result, likely contributing to the hasty decision a little over a decade later to invade Iraq once again and take down Saddam Hussein for good. But that war would not go nearly as well as Desert Storm had, and the idea of a successful and justified war in the Middle East would be tainted forever.