Operation Desert Storm and Beyond Modernizing

u.s. Army Field Artillery Center and ~chool Monograph Series OPERATION DESERT STORM AND BEYOND MODERNIZING THE FIELD ARTILLERY IN THE 1990s . BY BOYD L. DASTRUP Command Historian's Office United States Field Artillery Center and School Fort Sill, Oklahoma 2005 11 Boyd L. Dastrup . I Boyd L.Dastrup, a native of Ogden, Utab, received his B.S. from Weber State College, M.A,I] from Utab State University, and Ph.D. from Kansas State University and is currently th~I Command Historian for the U.S. Army Field Artillery Center and Fort Sill. He has writteJ The U.S. Anny Command and General Staff College: A Centennial History (1982), CrusadJ ] in Nuremberg: Military Occupation, 1945-1949 (1985), King of Battle: A Branch History d the U.S. Anny's Field Artillery (1992, 1993), Modemizing the King of Battle: 1973-1991 (1994,2003), and The FieldAnillery: History and Sourcebook (1994). He has also writtel articles in A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History (1998), The Oxford Companion.to American Military History (1999), and Professional Military Education in thl United States: A Historical Dictionary (2000) and served as a subject matter 'expert for the History Channel on Danger Missions: Forward Observation (2001) and for the Discovery Channel on Artillery Strikes (2005). iii u.s. ARMY FIELD ARTILLERY CENTER AND SCHOOL Major General David C. Ralston Commanding General ColonelJames M. MacDonald Assistant Commandant Dr. Boyd L. Dastrup Command Historian u.S. Army Field Artillery Center and SchoolMonograph Series Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: iv PREFACE To stay abreast of the rearmed and impressive Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military forO 1 and thelethality of modern weapons employed in the Arab- Israeli War of October 1973, thl ] U.S. Army and the Field Artillery pursued a comprehensive modernization effort in thl 1970s and 1980s. DUring those years, they revamped training, rewrote doctrine, launchd I developmental programs for new weapons and equipment, and reformed force structure b~ I made modernizing light forces for deploying in support of worldwide contingencies a lo~ I priority. Although this modernization positioned the Army for a high-intensity conflict iJ Europe against the Soviet and Warsaw Pact threat, it left the Army ill-prepared for loW' intensity conflicts throughout the world. As the Soviet and Warsaw Pact threat was declining late in the 1980s and as the risk of lOW-intensity, regional crises were simultaneously increasing, the United StateS dispatched military forces into Southwest Asia as part of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. By doing this, the United States intended to prevent further Iraqi aggression and protect American interests i~ the region. Although both operations were resounding successes, Operation Desert Storn: validated the wide-ranging modernization of the Army's heavy forces during the preceding two decades and simultaneously confirmed known field artillery materiel deficiencies that required correcting through further modernization. Working in concert, the lessons of the Gulf War, the end of the Cold War, and the escalating risk of regional crises generated greater interest in developing a strategically deployable and digitized Army that could fight across the spectrum of conflict anywhere i~ the world. Although they encountered declining financial and personnel resources as the United States reduced its military spending and force structure to shift funding priority from military to domestic programs with the demise of the Soviet threat, the Army and the Field Artillery still modernized its weapons and equipment. They modified their Cold Wat emphasis on buying new weapon systems and equipment for extending the life of existing systems by choosing to improve their capabilities through the application of advanced technology, especially information technology. In some instances, however, purchasing a new weapon system offered the only means of modernizing. As this modernization effort began prodUcing substantive results by the end of the ' 1990s, General Eric K. Shinseki who became the Chief of Staff of the Army in June 1999 introduced his Transformation of the Army vision. Critical of the Army's existing force structure as revealed by the difficulty of the Task Force Hawk deployment to Kosovo in 1999, General Shinseki stressed that the Army had to improve its strategic mobility by equipping itself with systems possessing the robustness of heavy systems of the Cold War and the strategic deployability oflight systems. The Transformation of the Army, therefore, made an explicit break with the ongoing modernization endeavor with its emphasis upon light and heavy forces and moved modernization in an entirely new direction. This study tells the story of the U.S. Army's Field Artillery in the 1990s beginning with the Gulf War and ending with General Shinseki's Transformation of the Army vision of 1999. Although the Field Artillery worked to develop strategically deployable weapons and equipment for the twenty-first century, fighting the high-intensity conflict still remained the priority through most of the decade even though the Cold War had ended with the c?ll~~se of the Soviet- Warsaw Pact threat. The Transformation of the Army changed those pnontles ~ v by causing some field artillery systems under development to be abandoned arid others to be redesigned to meet the requirements of a new world of low- to mid-intensity conflicts and the need to respond rapidly with military force. Iwould like to thank former commandants of the U.S. Army Field Artillery School, Major General (Retired) Fred F.Marty and Major General David P. Valcourt who were ~articipants in the modernization effort of the 1990s for reading the ,manuscript and making ~nsightful comments. I would also like to thank John Yager for his thoughts. They were Invaluable. Any errors in fact are mine. Boyd L. Dastrup Fort Sill, Oklahoma vi TABLE OF CONTENTS USAFACS PAGE iii Preface iv Table of Contents k vi .v I: Chapter One: The Collision of Armed Forces in the Desert 1 E I Chapter Two: Adjusting to A New but Still Dangerous World 23 \J List of Acronyms f 55 \J Select Bibliography 57 1 Index t c 61 ij. r ILLUSTRA TIONS a 1. AT ACMS Launching a Missile c 2. HIMARS 3. A Multiple-Launch Rocket System in Action Cover Photograph: The MI09A6 (Paladin) 155-mm. Self-propelled Howitzer All photographs are courtesy of the Field Artillery Magazine. CHAPTER ONE THE COLLISION OF ARMED FORCES IN THE DESERT Just as the extensive modernization endeavor that had been started in the 1970s to ~eepthe U.S. Army abreast of the numerically superi9r. and wen-equipped, Soviet-led :'"arsaw Pact threat and the lethality of the modern battlefield as demonstrated by the Arab-' 1 sraeli War of October 1973 was reaching fruition, Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. ~esponding to Iraqi aggression, the United States and United Nations initiated Operation )~sert Shield in August 1990 to defend Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi attack and to force Iraq's ~lthdrawal from Kuwait.' Over a period of seven months, the U.S. Army deployed more than lYehundred thousand active and reserve component soldiers, their equipment, and their ;veaponsto Southwest Asia as part of a massive coalition military buildup.2 After Saddam Hussein failed to withdraw his forces from Kuwait by the 15 January 1991deadline established by President George H. Bush and supported by Congress and the Jnited Nations, coalition military forces launched Operation Desert Storm to drive Iraq out' )f Kuwait. A determined air campaign began on 17 January 1991 when eight AH-64 \pache attack helicopters of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) destroyed two Iraqi .~darfacilities with Hellfire laser-guided missiles to permit allied bombers to penetrate Iraqi lIr space more easily. Lasting through 23 February 1991, the air campaign systematically ~rippled Iraqi war-making capabilities by demolishing critical targets and neutralizing ------------ IFor extensive discussion on the modernization of the 1970s and 1980s see Paul H. ]erbert, Deciding What Has to be Done: General William E. Depuy and the 1976 Edition of r:;'M 100-5, Operations (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army ~ . --?nunand and General Staff College, 1988), John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to 1lrLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982 (Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. \nny Training and Doctrine Command Historical Office, 1984), John L. Romjue, The Army )/ Excellence: The Development of the 1980s Army (Fort Monroe, VA: Office of the ~ --onunand Historian, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, and the U.S. Army ~ --enter of Military History, 1997), Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, eds. The ~hirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm ,Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1995), Robert H. Scales, rr.,ed., Certain Victory: United States Army in the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Office of the 2hief of Staff, U.S. Army, 1993), and Boyd L. Dastrup, Modernizing the King of Battle: 1973-1991 (Fort Sill, OK: U.S. Army Field Artillery Center and School, 1994, reprinted by :heU.S. Army Center of Military History, 2003). 2Thirty-six nations participated in the coalition by committing ground, air, or naval forces. Of the thirty-six nations, the Arab allies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and United Arab Emirates), the United Kingdom, France, and the United States contributed the most military forces. Turkey moved about 125,000 forces along its borders to deter a possible Iraqi attack. See Henry o. Malone, ed., TRADOC Support to Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Fort Monroe, VA: Office of the Command Historian, 1992), p. 5, and "Forces Committed," Military Review, Sep 91, pp. 80-81, for details on the composition of the coalition forces.

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