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A story about planning for Desert Storm

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Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#41

Post by matusp »

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 is obviously a matter of context. Russian army in Kyiv is indeed able to regroup and attack again. Iraqi army was by all means a defeated force that was running for its life into Iraq where civil war just started. The risk of it attacking Kuwait again was zero.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#42

Post by twic »

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…

Reminds me of the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War. The story at the time was that the Belgrano, an Argentinian warship, was leaving the Falklands to return to Argentina, when a British submarine sunk her; there were many in the UK who considered this an outrage, on the grounds that she was no longer contributing the occupation of the Falklands, so should have been left alone.

That analysis never made much sense to me, and apparently it later came out that the Belgrano wasn't leaving the Falklands anyway, and much later on the captain of the Belgrano said he thought that the British were quite right to sink it [1]!

[1] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-was-right-to-sink-th...

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#43

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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…

Well, it probably saved Kurdish lives to some degree. Remember that Iraq is a British Empire construction of three opposing ethnic groups (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) and Saddam was a Sunni oppressing the other two.

Wiping out his best soldiers may have reduced his ability to suppress the other two ethnic groups.

Or it made Shia and Kurds more active and sowed MORE conflict. Who can predict such things.

But from realist international puppet string wannabes, it neutered Saddam's military and ability to threaten Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The US was just a mercenary army for the Kuwait and Saudi royal families in this "war".

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#44

Post by oh_sigh »

matusp wrote: post #41
nautilius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is obviously a matter of context. Russian army in Kyiv is indeed able to regroup and attack again. Iraqi army was by all means a defeated force that was running for its life into Iraq where civil war just started. The risk of it attacking Kuwait again was zero.

A defeated force can still regroup in, say, Baghdad and make the city much harder to take.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#45

Post by AtlasBarfed »

deburo wrote: post #18
techdmn wrote: post #8

I'm shocked at the lack of humanity in this story. Every once in a while an "enemy" will start a war, and we'll get a bunch of coverage about orphans and mothers and fathers and horror, and I think maybe just maybe people will realize that all wars are terrible. Except when we start them, then I guess it's mostly kind of funny because our intelligence wasn't as great as it could have been?

All wars are bad and the US doesn't go to war because it thinks it's funny. Unrelated people may joke about it, as usual.

Why were we in Iraq the second time?

Why were we in Vietnam?

Why did we stay in Afghanistan for so long?

The military industrial complex does indeed find war funny. It's called laughing all the way to the bank.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#46

Post by Animats »

mandevil wrote: post #38
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 analys…

Oh! Thanks.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#47

Post by monkeybutton »

buescher wrote: post #33
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?

Seconding. I'd be interested in reading more into it.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#48

Post by libraryatnight »

gumby wrote: post #17
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)

I think you mean Hollywood filmed a book written by one of those marines.

I think he said what he meant. But, I think you meant "I know you linked a wiki that explains the film is based on a memoir in the first line, but you've already exposed yourself to the 'It was a book first!' attack, and I don't want to have to turn in my 'Ackchyually Guy,' membership card." Since we're speculating.

A more charitable reading would be that you simply meant, "Yes, that movie is based on a book by one of those marines." Maybe with some added opinion on whether you enjoyed it or found it equally as enlightening.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#49

Post by cafard »

chasd00 wrote: post #37
88840-8855 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

What cost him the second term was the economy.

Re: A story about planning for Desert Storm

#50

Post by SubjectToChange »

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.

Do you think the Ukrainians were in the wrong when they killed Russians during their withdrawal? Or are rules different for the underdog?
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