Introduction
In this paper it is argued that the First Gulf War was a successful joint operation, and that the “jointness” was organized according to the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. To justify this thesis, the historical events that lead to the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act are explained, and the Act itself is described. Next, the history of the First Gulf War is briefly recounted. The war is examined through the lens of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, and we see that it was executed in the manner prescribed by the Act. Finally, the connection between successful execution and successful joint operation is examined, and the thesis is thus supported.
Background
The concept of joint operations has been present in US military thought since at least 19051, but it came to the fore with the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, and eventually became part of doctrine2. The Act streamlined the military hierarchy while allowing different branches to work better together. There were two small military operations during the Carter Administration whose outcomes led to the passage of the Act.
The first was the attempt to rescue the hostages taken from the US Embassy in Tehran by followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The operation, called Operation Eagle Claw3, began on 24 April 1980 with eight helicopters. The helicopters encountered severe dust storms which disabled two of them. After refueling, one of the remaining helicopters was found to be faulty. This brought the number of helicopters to five, below the minimum viable number needed to complete the rescue and so the mission was aborted. As the helicopters were refueling for departure, one of them crashed into a C-130 tanker, killing eight servicemen.
An analysis of this incident, the “Holloway Report”, found twenty-three issues4, which included problems with command and control, coordination of joint training, and a lack of weather reconnaissance. From these recommendations, the Joint Special Operations Command was established in December of 1980.
The second military operation was the liberation of Grenada in October 1983. On 13 March 1979, the Marxist New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation Movement, also called the New JEWEL Movement, or the NJM, seized control of Grenada, and formed the People’s Revolutionary Government. This happened when Eric Gairy, the prime minister, was out of the country.
The United States recognized the new government on 22 March 1979. The American ambassador promised aid projects, but a US-backed coup d’état led by Gairy seemed imminent. Grenada broke-off relations with the United States and formed relations with the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
Reagan won election in 1980, and in response to the growing relation between Grenada and Fidel Castro as well as concerns for the safety of 600 American medical students on the island, an invasion of Grenada, called Operation Urgent Fury, was planned. The operation began on 25 October 1983. The People’s Revolutionary Government was toppled, Soviet and Cuban forces were expelled, the students were rescued, and a new government was installed. The operation ended after 8 days, on 2 November 1983.
The operation, while a military success, exposed problems that would later be addressed by the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Intelligence was lacking. In particular, the 600 medical students were located at two different campuses, and American forces took 30 hours to reach the second campus. The maps used were not topographic maps but rather tourist maps with hand drawn MGRS lines5. Communication systems used by the US forces were incompatible between the branches and this hindered the coordination of operations6.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act
The Goldwater-Nichols Act had made several changes to military structure, and therefore operations and planning7, the most relevant being:
First, it created the position of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This position is the principal military advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense. This arrangement allowed the chairman to choose overall strategies while giving command authority to joint combatant commanders. However, the chairman “may not exercise military command over the Joint Chiefs of Staff or any of the armed forces.”8 9
Second, the various branches were to use combined procurement to not only share the latest technology but also to ensure communication interoperability.
Finally, the service chiefs no longer had any operational control of their forces. This role was taken over by combatant commanders, and those commanders were responsible for either geographic regions or specific functions. Since multiple branches were involved in all the regions or all the functions, combatant commanders are inherently joint commanders.
The First Gulf War
The first major test of the Goldwater-Nichols Act was the First Gulf War of 1991. The issues prompting that war were the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait starting on 2 August 1990 and fears that Iraq would next invade Saudi Arabia.
This invasion prompted immediate and universal condemnation. Included in the reaction was UN Security Council Resolution 660 which demanded the immediate withdrawal of all Iraq forces from Kuwait, and Resolution 661 which imposed international sanctions against Iraq.
The US and UK deployed forces into Saudi Arabia to deter Iraq movement into Saudi Arabia as well as to force Saddam Hussein to follow Resolution 660. Meanwhile, President George H. W. Bush began building a large coalition of nations, encouraging them to either contribute their own forces or provide support.
Among the nations to join the coalition were many Arab/Muslim nations including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the Kuwait government in exile. Of those, Saudi Arabia and Egypt provided considerable support to the coalition - Egypt would commit 35K to the operation, while the Saudis not only hosted coalition forces but provided troops and air support.
The final ultimatum, Resolution 678, came from the United Nations, giving Iraq until 15 January 1991 to withdraw from Kuwait. They didn’t withdraw, and Operation Desert Storm started the next day.
In an attempt to fracture the coalition, Iraq launched missile strikes on Israel starting on 17 January 1991, hoping that an Israeli response would alienate the Arab nations and cause them to drop out. At the urging of the Americans, Israel did not retaliate, and the coalition mostly held throughout the war.
The Gulf War was fought according to the AirLand Battle doctrine10. In this, land and air forces collaborate with the air forces depriving the enemy of air and logistical support. Ground forces then performed rapid and aggressive maneuver warfare to dominate enemy targets. To do this, a large amount of materiel must be pre-positioned, say in Saudi Arabia.
The air campaign lasted from 17 January 1991 to 23 February 1991 - 42 consecutive days and nights. It consisted of over 100,000 sorties, performed primarily by the US Air Force, with the Navy and Marine Corps also contributing. The other coalition partners, even Middle Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE), also supplied aircraft.
Immediately prior to the start of the ground campaign, an artillery barrage was used to weaken or defeat any Iraqi defensive positions that survived the air assault. Performed by the Army’s 1st Infantry Division Artillery, 90,000 artillery rounds were fired in a period of 2.5 hours.
The ground campaign involved infantry and armored divisions from the US Army, the USMC, and the British 1st Armoured Division. Four of the largest tank battles in America’s history were fought during this phase of the Gulf War.
American and British forces crossed from Kuwait into Iraq on 24 February 1991. Saddam Hussain ordered that his remaining forces in Kuwait to withdraw on 27 February. Iraqi troops stationed at Kuwait International Airport didn’t get the memo, and their defeat was the end of combat operations within Kuwait. The next day, Iraq’s foreign minister announced that Iraq would accept the UN Security Council resolutions against it.
The First Gulf War as a Joint Operation
The above recounting of the history of the First Gulf War illustrates the influence the Goldwater-Nichols Act had on military operations. Operation Desert Storm was not only a multinational operation, it was a joint operation: the US military branches had to collaborate with partner nations, but more importantly the US military branches had to work in a coordinated manner11.
This was possible primarily because the Joint Chiefs of Staff were given a Chairman. This position, then held by General Colin Powell, is purely advisory but it ensures that the separate combat commanders have a central point of contact. This allowed the branches to operate in a coordinated fashion.
The combined procurement required by the Goldwater-Nichols Act ensured that communication breakdowns seen during Operation Eagle Claw and Operation Urgent Fury would not happen again.
Finally, the Goldwater-Nichols Act encouraged interactions between the services in that combatant commanders were joint commanders that had operational control over their forces, not service chiefs. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr, the combatant commander of the First Gulf War thus had control over multiple military branches.
Success Factors
The First Gulf War was indeed a military success, and it was indeed a joint operation executed in a manner prescribed by the Goldwater-Nichols Act, as argued in the previous sentence. Was that success due to it being a joint operation?
It may be attempting to attribute the victory to the fact that it was a multinational operation, but other multinational operations were failures.
It is more reasonable to attribute success to the use of the AirLand Battle doctrine under a brilliant and experienced combat commander in pursuance of finite and delineated goals. This theory is ruled out because AirLand Battle doctrine explicitly requires control of the air and land dimensions of the battlespace. While this doesn’t necessarily imply that multiple branches of the military must be involved, the combined air and land capabilities of a single branch may not have been sufficient alone.
Conclusion
The First Gulf War was thus a successful joint operation, but there is one problem…
The only point of fault of this joint operation was the lengthy time needed to form a coalition. The people of Kuwait were living under the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party for almost 7 months, from 2 August 1990 to 27 February 1991, and socialists can do considerable damage in that period of time. The presence of Middle Eastern nations in the coalition may have prevented the war from expanding should the United States acted alone, however.
Barring this, the First Gulf War must be classified as a tremendous success for modern joint strategic planning and warfare. It demonstrated that while individual military branches are themselves powerful, they are even more powerful when they are used in a collaborative manner.
Footnotes
[1] Crosbie, “Getting the Joint Functions Right”[2] JP 3-0: Joint Operations.
[3] Morrow, “Operation Eagle Claw remembered 40 years later.”
[4] Holloway, Final Report of the Special Operations Review Group.
[5] Bolger, “Operation Urgent Fury and its Critics.”
[6] Nightingale, “How Grenada Changed How America Goes to War.”
[7] Cook, “The Importance of Joint Concepts for the Planner.”
[8] PUBLIC LAW 99-433-OCT. 1, 1986, 10 USC 152c.
[9] Here’s looking at you, General Milley.
[10] King & Boykin IV, “Distinctly Different Doctrine: Why Multi-Domain Operations isn’t AirLand Battle 2.0.”
[11] Marquis et al. “The Advent of Jointness During the Gulf War: A 25-Year Retrospective.”
Bibliography
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Cook, J. “The Importance of Joint Concepts for the Planner.” Joint Force Quarterly 99. National Defense University Press. 19 November 2020. Retrieved 4 October 2024 from https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2421455/the-importance-of-joint-concepts-for-the-planner/
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Holloway, J. Final Report of the Special Operations Review Group. July 1980. Retrieved 5 October 2024 from https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/19709-national-security-archive-doc-10-final-report
Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 3-0: Joint Operations. 11 August 2011. Retrieved 6 October 2024 from https://www.moore.army.mil/mssp/security%20topics/Potential%20Adversaries/content/pdf/JP%203-0.pdf
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Marquis, G., Dye, D., & Kinkead, R. “The Advent of Jointness During the Gulf War: A 25-Year Retrospective.” Joint Force Quarterly 85. National Defense University Press. 1 April 2017. Retrieved 5 October 2024 from https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/Article/1130670/the-advent-of-jointness-during-the-gulf-war-a-25-year-retrospective/
Morrow, K. “Operation Eagle Claw remembered 40 years later.” U.S. Army, 24 April 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2024 from https://www.army.mil/article/235436/operation_eagle_claw_remembered_40_years_later
Nightingale, K. “How Grenada Changed How America Goes to War.” Small Wars Journal, 23 October 2013. Retrieved 5 October 2024 from https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/how-grenada-changed-how-america-goes-to-war
PUBLIC LAW 99-433-OCT. 1, 1986. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. https://history.defense.gov/portals/70/documents/dod_reforms/goldwater-nicholsdodreordact1986.pdf
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