Allies quickly achieve air supremacy

Next, F-117 Stealth attack planes carried laser-guided "smart" bombs to knock out Iraqi communications. Meanwhile, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flew at high speed toward two key Iraqi radar installations and blasted them with a barrage of rockets and missiles.

Coalition forces quickly achieved air supremacy. Though Iraq began the war with the world's sixth-largest air force, only 25 Iraqi aircraft got off the ground in the first two days of the war. This was partly due to the allies' success in disrupting Iraqi command and control, and partly due to the sheer force of the attack. In the first 24 hours of the war, allied planes flew more than 1000 combat sorties, seriously damaging Iraqi communications and anti-aircraft defenses. This paved the way for an overwhelming, sustained bombardment of Iraqi ground forces and strategic attacks on Iraq's SCUD missiles and chemical and biological weapons stockpiles.

The final phase of the air campaign targeted Iraqi ground forces in and around Kuwait, in preparation for the expected ground war. B-52 long range bombers dropped tons of high explosives on elite Iraqi Republican Guard units and attacked Iraqi heavy weapons in and around Kuwait. Allied bombardments destroyed about half of all Iraqi tanks and artillery in Kuwait and greatly demoralized the surviving Iraqi troops.

Still -- despite the overwhelming success of the coalition air campaign -- Saddam Hussein refused to budge, promising instead to defeat his enemies in the "mother of all battles" yet to come: the ground war.

Iraq Standoff Main  |  The Dispute  |  The Diplomacy  |  Military Moves  |  Inside Iraq

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