A Concise History of the US Air Force - Air Force Historical Studies ...

2 percent of combat sorties. Their favorite weapon was the laser-guided
bomb, which although amounting to less than 5 percent of all bombs
dropped, accounted for most of the key targets. Precision guided muni-
tions and F-117s proved their value as “force multipliers,” increasing the
impact of the bombing campaign. Their strikes were not completely free
of political interference, however, as President Bush made Baghdad off-
limits to bombing for a week after two laser-guided bombs hit the A1
Firdos Bunker on February 13, a command structure also used as an air
raid shelter by civilians. The attack left hundreds dead.
The Iraqi army mounted Scud surface-to-surface ballistic mis-
siles on small, mobile launchers. Hidden in civilian traffic, and fired at
night, the Scud counteroffensive proved nearly unstoppable, although
Iraq launched only eighty eight of these weapons during the war. One
Scud landed in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, and killed twenty-eight American
soldiers, the deadliest single action for the United States during the war.
Like the V-1 and V-2 weapons of World War 11, Scud missiles caused a
major diversion of sorties from the air offensive. The Coalition leadership
diverted 22 percent of its sorties from strategic targets to eliminate the
politically significant Scud missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia, but
the mission proved impossible.
The Gulf War demonstrated the vital importance of the U.S. Air
Force’s Space Command. Organized on September 1, 1982, it provided a
first look at what warfare would be like in the twenty-first century. The
Air Force began launching satellites of the Navstar Global Positioning
System, made famous simply as GPS, in 1973, but GPS was not fully
operational until after DESERT STORM. Nonetheless, signals from the
constellation of available GPS satellites provided Coalition forces infor-
mation about Iraqi Scud Missile position, altitude, and velocity with
unparalleled accuracy during most hours of the day. DSP satellites fur-
nished early warning of launches, while DSCS satellites ensured secure
communications between the Gulf, the United States, and facilities all
over the world. These satellite systems were controlled through the Con-
solidated Space Operations Center at Colorado Springs, Colorado, and
the Satellite Control Facility at Sunnyvale, California.
When General Norman Schwarzkopf launched the “100-hour”
DESERT STORM ground offensive on February 24, 1991, his forces met
little resistance. Air power and total command of the air made possible
the maneuver warfare of Schwarzkopf’s “Hail Mary”-the employing of
American Army and Marine and Arab ground forces in a direct assault on
Kuwait while Coalition armored units looped around it to cut off enemy
forces retreating into Iraq. Three thousand air sorties that day provided air
80