In August 1990, then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent 100,000 troops to blatantly invade Kuwait, and in less than ten hours Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait, turning Kuwait into Iraq's nineteenth province. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was actually planned for a long time. Saddam Hussein's "Baath Party" aims to unite the Arab region, build a unified League of Arab States and revive the entire Arab nation. To put it bluntly, it is to integrate the Arab region until it is unified and the glory of the Arab Empire in history is restored.
From his early life, Saddam Hussein also seems to be an absolutely strong iron fist, otherwise he would not have been able to become the president of Iraq step by step from an ordinary peasant boy. Saddam Hussein has always had a dream: to unify all The Arabic-speaking countries and rebuild an Arab Empire. Saddam Hussein's plan to realize this dream is three steps: the first step is to make Iraq a great power; the second step is to establish his absolute prestige in the Arab world; and the third step is to unify the Arab world.
Saddam Hussein first made Iraq a rich and powerful country through oil exports and used oil revenues to strengthen its military power. With the rapid improvement of Iraq's military strength, Saddam Hussein began to consider himself the world's third military power after the United States and the Soviet Union. In Saddam's view, it was time to take a second step: he chose to attack Iran first. The Islamic Revolution broke out in Iran in 1979, and the new government was formed at the beginning of the domestic political instability, and was isolated internationally by the Western camp led by the United States.
For a long time, there have been contradictions between Iran and Iraq in terms of territory, ethnicity, religion and so on, so in Saddam's view, this is a godsend opportunity to have a big reckoning with the Iranians. However, when the Iran-Iraq War really broke out, Saddam Hussein found that he had miscalculated. Although Iraq at that time was economically wealthy and militarily known as the world's third military power, Iran, with its larger land area and larger population, fought a protracted war with Iraq by virtue of its strategic depth and war mobilization ability, and the Iranian army even invaded Iraq for a time.
Iran, as a Predominantly Persian Shiite State, is a typical minority in the Middle East: the vast majority of Middle Eastern countries are predominantly Arab in their ethnicity and Predominantly Sunni in Islam in sectarian nature. Iran in this environment is actually relatively isolated diplomatically, especially after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran's export of Shiite revolutionary ideas to the outside world has intensified the contradictions between Iran and the Gulf Arab countries and the Western camp led by the United States, and finally Iraq has barely defeated Iran with the support of the Gulf Arab countries and the Western camp.
The Iran-Iraq war nominally ended in Iraq's victory, but in reality it was an uncompromising war of attrition without victory: Iraq, the titular victor, had $37 billion in foreign exchange reserves before the war, but at the end of the war it owed more than $70 billion in foreign debt, killing 180,000 people, injuring 250,000 people and losing $350 billion directly during the war, and more seriously, the war delayed Iraq's economic development plan for at least 20 to 30 years. However, Arab aid to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War was not gratuitous.
The aid was more provided on a loan-based basis, which meant saddam Hussein had to repay high loans. A war of enormous losses but almost nothing has shaken Saddam's prestige in Iraq, and if he wants to pay him back, if he can't afford it, he will shake saddam's position in Iraq. Saddam Hussein proposed that Iraq's eight-year war with Iran was fought for all Arabs and Persians, and for all Sunnis and Shiites.
Since the Iraqis were fighting with their lives, they hoped that other Arab countries would forgive their debts. However, Saddam Hussein's proposal for debt forgiveness was rejected by Kuwait, the largest creditor, and Saddam Hussein would need to repay $14 billion (not counting interest) if he repaid the debt as Kuwait had demanded. It was at this time that Saddam Hussein, who was cornered by Kuwait, began to make a big public opinion to emphasize the special relationship between Kuwait and Iraq. In Iraqi propaganda at the time, Kuwait was portrayed as a part of Iraq since ancient times, only to be later divided by the British imperialists.
Iraq's coastline is extremely short and mostly swampy, so it is not suitable for port construction. This is a serious constraint on Iraq's oil exports. Although Iraq is also a large oil country in the Middle East, compared with Kuwait, which is seriously constrained in terms of production and exports, annexing Kuwait can just get a good outlet to the sea. Annexing Kuwait in the form of war would not only allow Iraq to lose its huge debts, but would also gain a good outlet to the sea. Such a temptation is undoubtedly enormous.
At this time, a clever trick played by Kuwait led Saddam Hussein to find an excuse to attack Kuwait: Iraq and Kuwait have always had disputes over territory, water and oil resources, especially the issue of the ownership of oil fields on the border between the two countries has always been a time bomb in the relationship between the two countries. Kuwait, in order to control the international crude oil market, has joined forces with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries to reduce oil prices, a measure that is not a big problem for these countries that have no war impact. But it is fatal for Iraq: iraq has lost more than $15 billion as a result of the sharp reduction in oil prices.
Iraq, which had not yet fully recovered from the Iran-Iraq war, gritted its teeth in hatred against Kuwait. Saddam Hussein himself was a figure of great political ambition, and the result was that Kuwait caught lice on the lion's head undoubtedly greatly stimulated his determination to attack Kuwait. At that time, Kuwait was rich because of oil, but the country was too small - naturally lacked strategic depth, neither established a mature industrial financial system, nor built a strong army, belonged to the rich but not strong, and was a soft persimmon in Iraq's eyes.
Saddam Hussein did not consider Kuwait an adversary when he decided to take military action, and his real concern was whether the United States might interfere in its war with Kuwait. Iraq and the United States were allies during the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein believed that the United States could not intervene for the sake of Kuwait's projectile land, because he believed that Iraq under his leadership had greater strategic interests in the United States in the Middle East than Kuwait. Even if the United States did intervene in the Kuwait issue, Iraq, as the head snake of the Middle East, would be able to cope with it with its geographical superiority.
Iraq at the time had about 1 million regular troops and about 480,000 reserve troops, nearly 6,000 tanks, 3,700 artillery pieces, 7,500 armored vehicles, more than 700 combat aircraft, and Scud missiles. In addition, Iraq has the most complete modern integrated air defense system in the Middle East - its "KARI" air defense system includes: 4 regional air defense operation centers, 16 interception guidance centers, and more than 70 air defense command and reporting centers. Iraqi fighter jets, surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns form a three-dimensional firepower network that basically covers all airspace.
Such a huge family fortune made Iraq claim to be the world's third military power after the United States and the Soviet Union. The title of the so-called "third military power" may have been boastful, but at the time the size and armament of the Iraqi army was indeed the number one in the world. After 8 years of tempering in the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi army's actual combat experience is also quite rich. Saddam Hussein believes that the United States is indeed the world's number one power, but after all, its military strength in the Middle East is limited, and he can completely suppress it by virtue of the geopolitical advantage of local operations.
The so-called strong dragon does not suppress the head snake - before this, the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union had been defeated by small countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, using the geopolitical advantages of local warfare. The military power of the United States, a superpower, is distributed all over the world, and iraq in the Middle East has gained superiority in military strength by virtue of its advantages in local combat. At the end of August 1990, when war was about to break out, Saddam Hussein said in a meeting with foreign leaders: "I know very well the technological superiority of the United States, especially air superiority."
At the same time, however, Saddam Hussein insisted that air combat could not play a decisive role, and that the final decision to win or lose the war was based on the decisive battle on the ground, or even the street battle with a close hand-to-hand bayonet, and in such a situation, the Iraqi side's superiority in troop strength and home combat could be fully released. Americans paid particular attention to war casualties: the Vietnam War was a wave of domestic anti-war because of the heavy casualties, which eventually forced the United States to withdraw from Vietnam. Before the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein boasted: "American society cannot afford the death of ten thousand soldiers."
Speaking to the army in September 1990, Saddam Hussein said: "You know that the Air Force cannot decide on a war on the ground ... This is the law that has been proven by all conventional wars and wars of liberation, and the last one proved is the Vietnam War." During this period, Saddam Hussein repeatedly threatened to turn the Gulf region into a "second Vietnam": if the United States were to intervene in Iraq's military operations in Kuwait, then the Iraqi army would let the Us military suffer the same fiasco in the Vietnam battlefield. However, when the war broke out, Saddam Hussein found that the war was no longer the familiar model.
Saddam Hussein, who thought that the U.S. military had little military power in the Middle East, had been dreaming of "a strong dragon without crushing the head snake", but he soon found that the military power of the US military in the Middle East was expanding geometrically: more than 300 C-141 and C-5S of the US military quickly assembled into the Gulf region, landing every 7 minutes at the Saudi Dharan Air Base, and the 22-day transportation volume exceeded the 11 months of Berlin airlift in 1949. At the same time, U.S. transport ships brought supplies from strategic bases around the world, and the capacity of three ships was equivalent to 3,000 C-141s.
More than 100,000 U.S. troops have been assembled in the Gulf region 30 days after sea-air and air transports. In the next 4 months, the US military continued to carry day and night, and finally more than 500,000 soldiers and nearly 2,000 main battle tanks were assembled, transporting 12 million tons of supplies! Saddam Hussein had thought that the U.S. military had little military presence in the Middle East, but the size of the U.S. military after mobilization was geometrically expanding: at that time, the U.S.-led multinational force deployed more than 1,200 combat aircraft at the air bases in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Cartel, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Digo Garcia.
In addition, three carrier battle groups cruise on maritime positions in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Arabian Sea. By the time the war actually started, the United States had amassed a multinational force of up to 660,000 troops in the Middle East with 34 countries. Although Iraq used 860,000 troops in the Gulf War, the gap between the two sides is actually not obvious, and the factor that really determines the outcome of the war is no longer the strength of the two sides but their respective military technologies, and in the end, it is precisely the technological superiority occupied by the United States that defeats Iraq, which is slightly superior in strength.
The Gulf War was a landmark epoch-making war in the history of world wars -- the Gulf War changed the traditional mode of operation and enlightened all countries in the world in a new situation war. The biggest feature of the Gulf War is that it was a high-tech war. The U.S.-led multinational forces have widely used advanced technologies in this war. The Gulf War fully embodied the new models and characteristics of modern high-tech warfare, such as the integration of sea, land, air, and space, a high degree of informationization, and precision strikes. The Gulf War became a one-sided, crushing war under the premise of using conventional weapons.
Electronic warfare had an important impact on the course and outcome of the war: the electromagnetic superiority of the U.S.-led multinational force would be a new commanding height in the war; the Gulf War set a precedent for winning wars with air power as the mainstay. The use of a large number of precision-guided weapons in air strikes has improved the accuracy of air strikes and reduced civilian casualties to a minimum; in the Gulf War, the combat airspace has expanded unprecedentedly, the battlefield has developed in a large-depth, highly three-dimensional direction, and there is no obvious front and rear.
In this war, high-tech weapons have greatly improved their combat capabilities and enabled combat operations to develop toward high speed, all-weather, and all-time domains. Originally, people thought that the United States and Iraq had so many tanks and armored vehicles confronting each other to fight a modern version of the "Kursk Tank War", and Iraq even expected to use man-sea tactics to fight the US military in street battles, but until the end of the war, the large-scale ground war that people expected basically did not happen. Nine U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships destroyed two Iraqi early warning radar stations before the official military operation was launched.
Therefore, when the 8 F-117 fighters of the first echelon of the US military entered the empty hinterland of Iraqi airspace, the Iraqi side did not know it, thus allowing the US military to successfully carry out the "decapitation" operation of the Iraqi air defense system. At the same time, the U.S. military also used electronic combat aircraft to strongly interfere with Iraq's electronic equipment, thereby suppressing Iraq's command, radar early warning and intelligence systems. Under the tactical interference of the US military, the Iraqi army instantly became blind and deaf. The chaotic Iraqi army was left with only its share of beatings.
After the completion of the interference, the United States first came out with a series of powerful fighters, overwhelming missiles, and precision guided weapons: at about 3 a.m. on January 17, 1991, a U.S. F-117 dropped its first bomb, bombing an Iraqi interception guidance center in the south of the country. In the time since, more than 700 fighters have also carried out their own attacks on important targets such as the nodes of the Iraqi air defense system and the command structure. On the other hand, the US Navy launched a comprehensive strike against the Iraqi Navy at the same time as launching more than 50 Tomahawk missiles to attack power transmission and transformation equipment throughout Iraq.
This first round of air raids was followed by the second and third waves of F-117 air raids. Iraq's air defenses had largely collapsed by dawn the next day after a night of airstrikes. The remaining air defense units of the Iraqi army had to fight separately against the command structure that had been bombed to the ground. The troops who saw the sunrise the next day thought they could engage the Americans head-on, but they were greeted with more intense airstrikes. Iraq's radar nodes, power stations, command centers, etc. have been destroyed by the multinational force led by the United States, and Baghdad has lost contact with the outside world, and the coalition forces have firmly grasped air supremacy.
U.S. F-117 stealth fighter-bombers indiscriminately bombed over Baghdad. The F-117 is equipped with laser-guided bombs with high accuracy: one bomb can blow a large hole in a fortification; a second bomb burrows through the hole and destroys all the personnel and equipment inside. What is more crucial is that the Iraqi army can't "see" it at all, so it can only fight against the dark sky. After realizing the power of the U.S. anti-radiation missile attack, the Iraqi radar operator quickly reduced the number of radar boots, which left the surface-to-air missiles with blind launches.
Iraq's anti-aircraft missile system, two days after the start of the war, has largely ceased to function. The U.S. military then dispatched 700 conventional warplanes to bomb. The U.S. military commander was still a little nervous before leaving, after all, Iraq's anti-aircraft fire was so dense that it could be ranked all over the world. At that time, the U.S. military commander estimated that the loss rate of these aircraft would reach 10%, which means that at least 70 aircraft may not be able to return, but the U.S. military ultimately lost only one aircraft in this operation. At this time, the electronic jamming equipment of the US military has basically abolished the Iraqi radar, so the Iraqi missile radar is full of dense white spots.
After the start of the war, the US tankers alone dispatched as many as 300 times a day, refueling military aircraft day and night. In this way, the U.S. military commander also felt that the Iraqi airspace was too crowded to fly more aircraft at the same time. At the same time, U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea were not idle: 122 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired — flying at ultra-low altitudes at speeds of more than 800 kilometers per hour to evade radar detection, and after flying for an hour or two, they accurately hit targets 1,000 kilometers away. The Iraqi MiG fighters had no chance to take off under the comprehensive crushing of the sea and air integration.
The airfield was blown up, the radar was blown up, and the Iraqi fighters could not succeed if they wanted to take off into the air. Even if only one or two Iraqi fighter planes were occasionally barely lifted into the air, they could not escape the fate of being destroyed by the densely packed American aircraft. It can be said that at this time, the sky of Iraq has been allowed to soar by the US military. The US military, which holds air supremacy, carried out an unprecedented "carpet bombing" of Iraq. The Multinational Force, led by the United States, used a variety of means, including space satellite reconnaissance, aerial reconnaissance, and ground reconnaissance, to intercept Iraq's radar, communications facilities, and electromagnetic wave signals and to analyze and process them through computers and intelligence analysts.
Due to the determination of the various parameters of the Iraqi army's command center, communications and radar system, the MULTINATIONAL force led by the United States has always been able to accurately strike at Iraqi military targets. The U.S. military preemptively destroyed most of iraq's military airfields, and many Iraqi warplanes were destroyed before they could take off. Of course, the Fighter planes that have been taken off by the Iraqi Army were also quickly shot down in front of the US F-15 and F-16. As for the huge ground forces of the Iraqi army, they do not even need the coalition forces to send ground troops to engage them.
The "Apache" helicopter gunship usually fires anti-tank missiles outside the effective range of the Iraqi ground anti-aircraft fire, thereby destroying the Iraqi tank armored vehicles while ensuring their own safety. The US military's aircraft, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and even individual weapons are equipped with night vision equipment such as infrared night vision devices, laser night vision devices, and infrared thermal imaging equipment, which enables the WEAPONS and equipment of the US military to play the same combat effectiveness at night as during the day, so that the US military can fight continuously day and night, strike the Iraqi army more effectively, and promote the process of campaign and combat faster.
Throughout the Gulf War, the United States used more than 50 military and commercial satellites of various types in 12 categories to form a strategic reconnaissance network, providing 70 percent of the strategic intelligence for the multinational force. The multinational force has assembled 2,790 modern fixed-wing aircraft, more than 1,700 rotary-wing aircraft (including more than 600 attack helicopters), more than 6,500 tank armored vehicles, and a large number of self-propelled guns, rocket launchers, and engineering and technical support vehicles. During the war, multinational forces comprehensively used anti-missile warfare, electronic warfare, psychological warfare, naval warfare, and other services to coordinate operations.
In contrast, Iraq's operational philosophy is entirely a product of another era: Saddam Hussein has always hoped to save the situation through ground warfare, but the tanks and armored vehicles that the Iraqi army is proud of have been blown up into scrap iron by American fighters, bombers and attack aircraft and their conventional bombs, laser-guided bombs, infrared missiles, etc. The U.S. Air Force destroyed Iraqi ground forces with unprecedented efficiency: Iraqi ground forces lost an average of 1 armored battalion per day. At the same time, Iraq's power stations, factories, bridges and other infrastructure have been blown up.
The bombardments continued week after week, and the intensity continued unabated. The power station in Basra, Iraq, was repeatedly bombed more than 12 times. Air power, which was never favored before the war, is now the protagonist of the show, and Saddam Hussein is completely helpless about it. It took only 38 days of all-round, all-weather bombardment by the United States to inflict heavy losses on iraqi troops. After 38 days of bombardment, Saddam's long-awaited ground war finally began, but it was not a war, but more like the unilateral massacre of iraqi troops by the US military.
Iraqi ground forces, which had suffered heavy losses in the previous 38 days of continuous bombardment, now found that the U.S. M1A1 main battle tank easily crushed their T-72 tanks in both firepower and range. The U.S. military helicopter gunships cruising around hunted and killed the Iraqi army at will, and even the US tanks and helicopters equipped with night vision devices in the dark did not give the Iraqi army any chance to breathe. The Iraqi ground forces, which had been bombed for 38 days, were on the verge of collapse: Saddam's proud ground forces withdrew from Kuwait after only 100 hours.
The defeated Iraqi army fled north along Route 6 between Iraq and Kuwait, and US Air Force aircraft and naval carrier-based aircraft flocked to drop rockets and bombs: first blew up the Iraqi army's vehicles at the head and tail, cut off their paths and retreats, so that the Iraqi convoy in the middle could not move, and instantly became the meat of the knife. The cluster bombs carried by the US A-10 attack aircraft can release dozens or even hundreds of submunitions, which can penetrate 125 mm thick armor, and the fragments after the explosion can kill and injure targets within the area of a football field.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops were thus killed on the road on the border with Iko. At that time, there was a pile of smoking vehicle wreckage on the road on the border of Iko every 50 meters. Throughout the Gulf War, the U.S.-led multinational force had an absolute advantage: 223 were killed, 697 wounded, and 13 captured. Of those, 148 Americans were killed. In contrast, more than 40 divisions of the Iraqi army were destroyed, with casualties reaching 8.5 million to 100,000 people, losing 324 aircraft, 3847 tanks, 1450 armored vehicles, 2917 artillery pieces, and 143 ships.
The Iraqi Navy was completely destroyed in this war. The Iraqi army lost more than two-thirds of its overall combat capability in the Gulf War. The war caused direct economic damage of about $200 billion to Iraq. Dual-use power plants in the war were also targeted by multinational coalition forces. Only 4 percent of Iraq's power plants remained intact after the war. Post-war Iraqis once returned to the 19th century era of oil lamps. After the war, Iraq's gross domestic product reached only one-third of what it was before the war, and its per capita income fell to less than four hundred dollars.