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A story about planning for Desert Storm

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Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#31

Post by nautilius »

robonerd wrote: post #19
numlocked wrote: post #6

Wow, I have never heard this before: “Few people remember it, but Gorbachev was negotiating with Saddam and had successfully convinced him to pull out of Kuwait. The agreement they came up with would give the Iraqis three weeks to pull out. At this point, it had become a major goal to eliminate the Republican Guard and we didn’t want them to pull their head out of the noose, so President Bush turned down the compromi…

Have you heard of the 'Highway of Death' ? Iraqi forces were retreating on that highway, on their way back to Iraq. Coalition forces did not want to permit that, and slaughtered them. Thousands of vehicles destroyed, hundreds+ soldiers killed, thousands more captured. I can't say I feel much sympathy towards the Iraqis here, but it does seem a tad bit vindictive.

Human tragedy aside (and it absolutely is, no doubt about it, on all sides), it really depends on the context.

Striking the retreating army is the 'easiest' way to 'neutralize' it, Clausewitz writes about it, and I am sure it's been practiced for thousand(s?) of years before that.

For a timely comparison: would it be 'vindictive' when Ukraine strikes the retreating Russian army in the Kyiv area before they regroup and attack the Donbas? I don't think so. Seems like a good idea, actually.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#32

Post by Animats »

This reads like an ad for the QJM model. The DePuy Institute had a proprietary model for figuring out who wins a battle. This was invented by General William DePuy, one of the leading planners of the US loss in Vietnam. He came up with a Quantitative Judgement Model for evaluating military strength. It's mostly adding up weapons values (sword = 1.0), although there are other features of the model. There are tables, now used mostly by war gamers. DePuy looked at a large number of historical battles, and came up with weights which seemed to work. The result was supposedly that the side with a 2:1 advantage almost always won. Within the 2:1 range, it was a tossup.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#33

Post by buescher »

jhgb wrote: post #2

Quite interesting. I though this would be about DART ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Analysis_and_Replannin... ), but I take it that this is more about front line stuff.

I didn't know about DART. Developed and deployed in eight weeks [edit: less optimistic sources say 23 months]! Is there a good retrospective somehwere with some technical detail?

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#34

Post by 88840-8855 »

xyzzy21 wrote: post #24
numlocked wrote: post #6

Wow, I have never heard this before: “Few people remember it, but Gorbachev was negotiating with Saddam and had successfully convinced him to pull out of Kuwait. The agreement they came up with would give the Iraqis three weeks to pull out. At this point, it had become a major goal to eliminate the Republican Guard and we didn’t want them to pull their head out of the noose, so President Bush turned down the compromi…

Just google "gorbachev saddam 1991" The answer is "pretty much true".

I took now half an hour to check sources on that and it seems to be pretty much the color.

Curious that nobody asked to sanction the US to destroy their economy and to isolate them for that war... or any of the other wars.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#35

Post by joshocar »

nautilius wrote: post #31
robonerd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of the 'Highway of Death' ? Iraqi forces were retreating on that highway, on their way back to Iraq. Coalition forces did not want to permit that, and slaughtered them. Thousands of vehicles destroyed, hundreds+ soldiers killed, thousands more captured. I can't say I feel much sympathy towards the Iraqis here, but it does seem a tad bit vindictive.

Human tragedy aside (and it absolutely is, no doubt about it, on all sides), it really depends on the context. Striking the retreating army is the 'easiest' way to 'neutralize' it, Clausewitz writes about it, and I am sure it's been practiced for thousand(s?) of years before that. For a timely comparison: would it be 'vindictive' when Ukraine strikes the retreating Russian army in the Kyiv area before they regroup an…

It's how battles have been won for thousands of years. The two army's approach each other and take minor casualties until one sides moral collapses, they break, and route. 90% of the deaths happened after the route.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#36

Post by rsecora »

imglorp wrote: post #26
dayofthedaleks wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amateurs talk about killbots. Professionals train their AIs on logistics.

I think it depends, right? If you have a small number of high cost, high impact UAVs, you will target infra and supply columns. If you happen to have a cargo plane full of cheap, mass produced head-popper slaughterbots which you can dump over a town, they will remove all the humans and leave you with intact buildings, vehicles, and infra. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw

Parent comment was jokingly paraphrasing General Bradley words: “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics."

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#37

Post by chasd00 »

88840-8855 wrote: post #34
xyzzy21 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just google "gorbachev saddam 1991" The answer is "pretty much true".

I took now half an hour to check sources on that and it seems to be pretty much the color. Curious that nobody asked to sanction the US to destroy their economy and to isolate them for that war... or any of the other wars.

the coalition built for gulf war 1 was extensive to say the least. I think that was one of Bush Sr's requirements, if anyone was going to liberate Kuwait it had to be everyone. You would have to sanction the entire coalition which was basically the entire western world.

Bush Sr. convinced everyone to stop at Iraq's border and wouldn't push further to knock out Hussain's regime. Wisely, IMO for all the reasons that are clear today. However, lots of people think this is what cost him a second term and left many people at the pentagon feeling like there was unfinished business in Iraq. This "unfinished business" is what eventually led to Bush Jr's invasion.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#38

Post by mandevil »

Animats wrote: post #32

This reads like an ad for the QJM model. The DePuy Institute had a proprietary model for figuring out who wins a battle. This was invented by General William DePuy, one of the leading planners of the US loss in Vietnam. He came up with a Quantitative Judgement Model for evaluating military strength. It's mostly adding up weapons values (sword = 1.0), although there are other features of the model. There are tables, n…

Two different people with differently spelled last names: General William DePuy (who was MACV C-o-S, BigRedOne-Six and then ran TRADOC after the war, and is considered the architect of the rebuilding of the Army after Vietnam) is unrelated to Col. Trevor Dupuy. Both of them fought in the US Army in WW2, and have confusingly similar names, but Dupuy is the one who founded the Dupuy Institute to do his numerical analysis of combat with all of his models and fudge factors.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#39

Post by chipsa »

robonerd wrote: post #19
numlocked wrote: post #6

Wow, I have never heard this before: “Few people remember it, but Gorbachev was negotiating with Saddam and had successfully convinced him to pull out of Kuwait. The agreement they came up with would give the Iraqis three weeks to pull out. At this point, it had become a major goal to eliminate the Republican Guard and we didn’t want them to pull their head out of the noose, so President Bush turned down the compromi…

Have you heard of the 'Highway of Death' ? Iraqi forces were retreating on that highway, on their way back to Iraq. Coalition forces did not want to permit that, and slaughtered them. Thousands of vehicles destroyed, hundreds+ soldiers killed, thousands more captured. I can't say I feel much sympathy towards the Iraqis here, but it does seem a tad bit vindictive.

They were retreating, not surrendering. They were bringing with them all their arms and armor (literally, bringing their tanks back). We stopped them because they very well could have regrouped to when they were back in Iraq. They were not 'hors de combat'.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#40

Post by cja »

queuebert wrote: post #30
chasd00 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ordered the ground forces in as i recall, the air war was so devastating there wasn't much of a purpose for ground troops and when it came time to "order the ground forces in" most of the work was just walking across Kuwait. They even made a movie about how much of a let down the ground war was to the Marines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarhead_(film)

Generation Kill is a great movie in a similar vein about the second invasion.

It's a mini series, and yes, it's brilliant
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