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With the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a great confrontation began as a host of forces from around the world were deployed against the Iraqi army.
This video ordinance program looks at the weapons of Operation Desert Shield.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait pitted the largest army in the Persian Gulf against one of the smallest.
The Iraqi army, hardened by a decade-long war with neighboring Iran, numbers over 650,000 men against a Kuwaiti force of only 10,000.
Even the vast kingdom of Saudi Arabia has only 95,000 troops in its army and National Guard.
It was the threat that Iraq might extend its invasion beyond Kuwait into the oil-rich Saudi lands that prompted the anti-Iraq coalition to deploy in Saudi Arabia, codenamed by the United States Desert Shield.
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But just how good is the Iraqi army? Seth Karas, a noted specialist on Mideast military issues, describes the performance of the Iraqi army in the Iran-Iraq war waged from 1980 to 1989.
The Iraqis showed a very mixed picture during the war. They sometimes did very well, they sometimes did very badly.
They had a lot of problems. One of them was political interference. When Saddam Hussein interfered in military operations, things often went extremely badly.
When he kept hands off and left things in the hands of the professional soldiers, they often did quite well.
In addition, it depended upon the circumstances.
The Iraqis were never extraordinarily good at mobile warfare, but they did learn during the course of the war, and by the end of the war they were much better at it than they had been at the beginning of the war.
They also learned over the course of the war a whole lot about fighting defensive operations, so that by the end of the war they were very good at building fortifications and equipping them and manning them with troops.
The Iraqi army is organized into about seven tank divisions, three mechanized divisions, and 50 infantry divisions.
During the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqis shifted their military might away from their former Iranian foe and into a southern direction facing Saudi Arabia.
According to intelligence sources, by the end of 1990 the Iraqis had moved their 25 best divisions, over 350,000 troops, into the Kuwaiti theater.
They had moved over 3,000 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 2,000 artillery pieces.
The shock force in these actions was the elite Republican Guard.
The Republican Guard started totally as a defense of the regime type force.
They were used for political reasons, and that reflected the fact that essentially every government in Iraq has changed because of a coup, so that there's a tremendous desire on the part of the current regime to have means of keeping the military under control.
For most of the time in the last 20 years, the Republican Guard has been a fairly small force, growing over time, but never that large.
During the latter part of the war, however, especially in the last few years, it was greatly expanded.
So it now is a multi-divisional force, including armor, infantry, commandos, that in fact is the elite shock part of the army.
It still has a political role of defense of the regime, which is why the Iraqis kept portions of the Republican Guard sitting in Baghdad even as they were invading Kuwait.
But it also has this critical military role.
It's the best part of the army, even though there are other parts of the armed forces which are good.
There are some good mechanized armored units in the regular army. There are some good commando units in the regular army.
But the core strike force is the Republican Guards.
Iraq's military equipment is nearly as diverse as that of the forces facing it.
During the mid-1980s, Iraq purchased $30 billion of arms from abroad.
By far the largest share came from the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.
France was the second largest supplier of arms, with much smaller amounts coming from NATO countries such as Germany, Italy, and Britain.
China sold Iraq over $3 billion of weapons.
Countries new to the arms trade flocked to Iraq to sell their new military products.
Brazil, North Korea, and Yugoslavia sold $5 billion of weapons to the Iraqi armed forces.
American arms sales to Iraq were nearly non-existent.
To counter the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and to prevent further Iraqi aggression,
a multinational force led by the United States began deploying in the Gulf region.
The largest contingent is from the United States, including over a quarter of a million army and marine troops.
Syria has pledged 19,000 troops, with similar numbers coming from Egypt.
European contingents include about 30,000 British troops and over 15,000 French.
Other contingents were deployed from over a dozen other countries.
Desert Shield is the largest massing of land, naval, and air power ever seen in the Gulf region.
The Iraqi Navy is small and does not compare to the sizable forces deployed in the Persian Gulf by the navies of the multinational force.
The sea has been the primary means of supplying the armies of the multinational force.
The navies are also countering any attempt to resupply the Iraqi army by enforcing the United Nations economic embargo of Iraq.
A merchant vessel, this is U.S. Navy warship, channel one six.
Captain, request you shift to channel one zero. Over.
One needle open.
Here we see an American warship in the Red Sea conducting a boarding of a grain freighter, the Baltic Mermaid, headed for the Red Sea port of Aqaba in Jordan.
The warship hails the freighter and inquires about its cargo.
Captain, I also need to find out what your cargo is.
Our cargo is found in bulk. Found in bulk grain.
Captain, I understand that you're a freighter.
The captain decides to send a boarding party onto the freighter.
We're going to load the motor whale boat.
The train is over.
The cargo is loaded onto the freighter.
You know, right, if you open some cargo hatches.
You can't open all the cargo hatches.
The next hardest thing is making sure the paperwork is legitimate and matching the manifest documents and the bills of lading of their cargo with the actual cargo.
And we inspect the decks and the cargo holds.
Besides their utility in waging economic blockades on Iraq, the naval forces in the Gulf add considerably to the military might of the Desert Shield Coalition.
What navies give you in general is mobility so they can strike from directions other than the ones that he may be prepared to handle.
The effect of naval forces is to increase the number of possible strike options, all of which he has to meet, that thins him out.
Incidentally, it probably helps thin him out on the ground as well.
So first of all, there are strike options and that will mean Tomahawks and also aircraft.
Then in addition, there will be options for amphibious operations, probably helicopter landings.
And it's not just our navy, but also remember the French have a carrier there with the helicopters on board.
So what it presents him with is a more complicated defensive job.
Now in addition, remember that there are carriers in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
They can launch airstrikes. There are probably also ships with the carriers, with the Tomahawks on board.
The Tomahawks can come in from unexpected directions.
If we're able to map his airfields and his radar stations in advance, then presumably we can hit them.
That helps pave the way for the airstrikes that follow in.
The navy can influence the land battle with air power from its carriers, missiles from its warships and submarines,
and with marine amphibious forces from its assault ships in the Gulf.
Navy assault ships like this one carry not only the marine ground forces, but their air support as well, such as the AV-8B Harrier Jump Jet.
The offensive punch of the Iraqi army comes from its tanks.
This is one area in which the Iraqis have a numerical preponderance over the forces in Saudi Arabia.
But the allied forces have a qualitative superiority.
A third of the Iraqi forces made up of the older Soviet T-54, T-55 tanks and their Chinese equivalent, the Type 59 and Type 69.
This tank type dates back to the 1950s and is armed with a conventional 100mm gun.
The Iraqis have developed their own improved version of the T-55, including an up-armed version with a 125mm gun and a type with advanced armour.
The single most numerous type of tank in the Iraqi service is the Soviet T-62 and its North Korean copy.
The T-62 is very similar to the older T-55, but it is armed with an improved 115mm gun.
Some North Korean and Chinese supplied tanks have improved gun accuracy due to a laser range finder.
The most advanced tank in the Iraqi arsenal is the T-72 tank, which amounts to about 30% of the Iraqi tank force.
This tank is used mainly by the elite Republican Guard units.
The T-72 is armed with a very powerful 125mm gun and is considerably improved over the older tanks in Iraqi service with better armour and superior gun accuracy.
Although Soviet tanks and their copies make up most of the Iraqi tank force, there is a hodgepodge assortment of other tanks captured during the war with Iran, including a few dozen American and British tanks.
The Iraqi tanks look very good on paper.
If you take a look at the key characteristics of main battle tanks, the gun performance, the thickness of the armour, the mobility of the tank,
the Iraqi tanks seem to stack up pretty well against American or British or French tanks.
But you have to take a look a little bit deeper than that, for example, the issue of the durability of the vehicle.
The Iraqi tanks, mostly coming from the Soviet Union or China, are relatively inexpensive tanks that aren't very durable.
As an example, the gun barrel on a Soviet or an Iraqi T-72 tank is good for about 100-120 rounds before it gets worn out.
On a comparable tank, an American or British or European tank, the barrels tend to last 500 rounds, 1,000 rounds.
That wouldn't seem to make much difference in battle, but it has a lot to do with training.
It means that the Iraqis can't train with their tanks as much as the Americans or the British or the French because their barrels run out, their tracks eventually wear out, the engines wear out.
So as a result, the Iraqis don't train as hard, they don't train as often, they don't train as long as the tankers on the other side of the potential battle.
What this means is that the Iraqi tankers have less skill in many of the basic combat skills, such as the accuracy of their fire.
Another factor to keep in mind also is that many of the Iraqi tanks are very heavily worn out from the last Gulf War, from the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted almost a decade.
So I don't think that we should be misled by the simple numbers, by the fact that the Iraqis have more tanks.
The bottom line is that numbers alone don't tell the whole story, that there's other factors that certainly have to be kept in mind.
The multinational force in Saudi Arabia is equipped with an equally diverse selection of tanks.
The tanks of the American and European units are generally superior to those fielded by Iraq.
The mainstay of the United States Army units is the M1 Abrams and its improved variant, the M1A1.
The M1 Abrams tank is armed with a 105 millimeter gun, which is fully stabilized, allowing it to fire while moving.
The improved M1A1 Abrams tank has a larger 120 millimeter smoothbore gun and is fitted with a new generation of laminate armor.
U.S. Marine units use the older M60A1 tank, which was developed in the 1960s.
Many have been modernized with additional applique armor to protect themselves against Iraqi anti-tank missiles.
British forces, including the famous 7th Armored Brigade, known as the Desert Rats, are equipped with the Challenger main battle tank.
It is a new design, similar to the American M1 Abrams in size and performance.
The Saudi Arabian Army is equipped with the American M60 tank, and both Saudis and French units in the Gulf also use the French-built AMX-30 tank.
Although the Iraqi tanks have outnumbered the Allied tanks, the multinational units have enjoyed a distinct technological edge.
Take the two top tanks as an example.
The Iraqi T-72 is about 40 tons in weight compared to 65 tons for the M1 Abrams.
The M1 Abrams tank is heavier than the T-72 due to its thicker armor and larger interior, which allows more ammunition to be carried.
This overhead view of the turrets of the T-72 and the M1 show the real difference.
The M1 turret is wider and larger due to its thick layer of advanced laminate armor.
The frontal armor of the M1A1 will stop nearly any existing anti-tank missile or projectile.
Another difference is that the T-72 has a three-man crew compared to the four in the M1 Abrams, since the T-72 has an auto loader instead of a human loader.
The interior of the M1 tank is more spacious than the T-72, making it more suitable for prolonged combat operations in difficult desert conditions.
Most Iraqi T-72s are older models, which do not have advanced laminate armor in the turret, so they are more vulnerable to many types of anti-tank missiles and larger tank guns.
Although the basic gun performance of the T-72 and the M1 is very similar, the Abrams has distinct accuracy advantages due to superior gunfire controls.
The T-72 can only fire from the halt or while moving at very slow speeds.
The fire control system is excellent. Shooting on the move is better than the T-60.
The faster the tank goes, the more stabilized the gun is. You can smack targets. You can ask my gunner. He can hit targets moving at 30-35 miles an hour without a problem.
One of the unique advantages of the more advanced tanks of the multinational forces is their thermal night sights, a far more versatile sighting system than the types employed on Iraqi tanks.
These sights can also be used during the daytime to see through smoke that would blind Iraqi tanks.
The Iraqi Tank Force is not as experienced as other branches of the Iraqi Army.
Its performance during the Iran-Iraq War was lackluster.
Because of the fact that the Iraqis did not face a serious armored threat, there really was not the need for them to develop the kinds of equipment and the kinds of tactics and capabilities that they would have needed if they were fighting somebody with a real armored force.
If there is a war between the US and Iraq, the US is going to have real armored forces and they are going to have no experience in dealing with those kinds of forces.
So I think this really reflects one of the disadvantageous results of their experience in the war with Iran. If you are just going up against infantry, even a T-55 is fine.
Tanks are not the only armored vehicles on the modern battlefield and in fact are outnumbered by a wide variety of light armored vehicles.
For example, armored attacks are often preceded by armored scout units which hunt out the weak points in enemy defenses.
The Saudi National Guard has used the American manufactured V-150 Commando armored car.
Its wheels give it very good speed in areas of hard desert.
The French Army has a larger and more powerful type in the Gulf, the AMX-10RC armed with an impressive 105 millimeter gun.
The US Marine Corps uses a family of light armored vehicles called LAV.
The basic LAV-25 is used in the scouting role and is armed with a rapid fire 25 millimeter Bushmaster cannon.
The Iraqi Army uses several different types of wheel scout vehicles including the Soviet BRDM-2, the Brazilian Cascaval and several different types of French armored cars.
Infantry is very vulnerable to artillery fire and machine guns on the modern battlefield and so often rides into combat in armored infantry transporters.
The US Army uses the M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle which is the most heavily armored infantry vehicle in service anywhere in the world.
The British Army uses the Warrior which is very similar to the Bradley in most respects.
Because of their possible role in naval landings, the US Marine Corps uses a very specialized type of infantry carrier, the AAV-7 amphibious assault vehicle which has far superior swimming capabilities than conventional infantry vehicles.
The Iraqi Army is not well equipped with troop carriers. Only a small fraction of its infantry forces have such vehicles.
The best Iraqi armored infantry vehicle is the Soviet BMP which comes in two varieties.
The BMP-1 with a 73 millimeter low pressure gun and the improved BMP-2 with a 30 millimeter automatic cannon.
The BMP-2 is lighter than the American Bradley at 15 tons versus 22 tons for the Bradley.
Mobility of both vehicles is similar though the infantryman in the Bradley is better cushioned from the shocks of high speed cross-country travel than in the less robust BMP.
The firepower of the Bradley and the BMP is similar both having an automatic cannon and supplementary anti-tank missile launcher.
The Bradley weapon system is more accurate at long ranges and the vehicle carries more ammunition.
The infantry squad of both vehicles is usually six men plus a crew of three men in the vehicle itself.
Iraq's advantage in land power really is more in the area of the numbers of armored vehicles, the number of artillery pieces, the number of troops, certainly not in quality.
And so that raises the question is it numbers which really determine the outcome of the war.
If you take a look at the lessons of recent wars in the Mideast, for example the war between Israel, Egypt and Syria in 1973,
it's quite clear that the numbers weren't really the determining factor in the war, rather it was the skill and determination of the troops.
And that is certainly likely to be the case in the Gulf as well.
Air power is one of the areas where the multinational forces have unquestioned superiority.
The Iraqi Air Force, although equipped with some first-rate aircraft, faces the most technologically sophisticated array of warplanes ever amassed in the Mideast.
The Iraqi Air Force is structured to assist the ground forces in combat.
It has over 950 combat aircraft, about 500 of which are attack aircraft and bombers.
The remainder are mainly fighters, but many older Iraqi warplanes are in poor repair.
The most numerous Iraqi fighter is the Soviet MiG-21 and its Chinese derivatives.
This 1960s vintage fighter makes up nearly 70% of the Iraqi fighter strength, but it does not compare favorably with more modern fighters.
The Iraqis possess a small force of MiG-25 Foxbat high-altitude interceptors and are rumored to have a few of the more advanced MiG-31 Foxhound.
Iraq uses a small portion of its excellent French Dassault Mirage F-1 fighter bombers in the interceptor role.
By far the most capable fighter in the Iraqi infantry is the Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrum.
The MiG-29 is technically similar to newer generations of American aircraft such as the American F-16 and F-18 Hornet.
Soviet-supplied aircraft make up about 75% of the
Iraqi strike aircraft.
This includes the older Tu-16 Badger and Tu-22 Blinder medium bombers.
Sukhoi Fitters are the most numerous attack aircraft in the Iraqi Air Force, ranging from the older Sukhoi 7 to the more modern Sukhoi 17.
Ground attack versions of the Soviet MiG-23 Flogger make up another quarter of the force.
These aircraft carry a wide range of conventional bombs as well as new laser-guided missiles.
Recently the Soviets have provided the Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack aircraft, an effective close air support aircraft that saw extensive combat in the skies over Afghanistan.
The Frogfoot is similar to the American A-10 Tank Buster.
The Iraqis recently acquired a handful of sophisticated Soviet Su-24 fensers, which give them long-range attack capabilities similar to the American F-111.
One of the most capable Iraqi strike aircraft is the French-built Mirage F-1.
The Iraqi Mirages are equipped with the Exocet anti-ship missile, making them a significant threat to surface warships.
It was an Iraqi Mirage that damaged the U.S. destroyer Stark in the Persian Gulf in 1987.
Thirty-two tankers and other ships were damaged or sunk in the Persian Gulf by Iraqi Exocets during the war with Iran.
Though Iraq possesses a sophisticated arsenal of modern combat aircraft, its past combat record has been notable for its lack of success in employing these aircraft.
It was a mixed picture. There were some things that they did relatively well in the air.
There were some rather effective long-range strike missions against tankers in the Persian Gulf, for example.
They were able to mount some raids on Tehran with their aircraft, which is a long way to go carrying even a small payload.
So that they were able to do some things relatively effectively.
The problem is that the Iraqis really were reluctant to put their air force at risk.
They conducted, by and large, operations that there was little chance that the planes would get shot down.
And that meant, of course, that they never really learned how to do all the important things that air forces do.
They didn't let them do close air support. They turned that over to the helicopter forces and the Army.
And they didn't really do a lot of heavy, effective attacks of the kind that other countries with similar size air forces could undertake.
I suspect the real problem is that they don't understand what air forces can do and what they're for.
Even with the kinds of equipment they had, even with the desire to minimize losses, they still could have accomplished a whole lot more with the equipment they had.
You know, you put that same air force in the hands of even some other Middle Eastern countries, like the Jordanians or the Israelis.
And it would have actually been a very effective instrument.
So I think the fundamental core problem is that they really don't understand what air power is all about.
The unwillingness of the Iraqi Air Force to commit its precious strike aircraft to the close air support missions shifted the burden to the Army's small force of attack helicopters.
The Iraqi helicopter force uses a diverse selection of Soviet and European helicopters in this role.
The Gazelle and BO-105 helicopters were used against tanks with hot guided missiles.
Facing the Iraqi Air Force is a formidable array of the best warplanes developed in Europe and the United States.
The Saudi Air Force flies the American F-15 Eagle.
Compared to the Iraqi MiG-29, the F-15 is a larger aircraft with greater range and a heavier weapons load.
The F-15's radar can acquire the MiG-29 at long ranges before the MiG-29's own radar can see the Eagle.
The F-15 Eagle is backed up by the E-3A AWACS, a long range radar and command center.
It can track Iraqi fighters from the moment they take off and coordinate interceptions by friendly fighters.
Command and control is a critical but little known ingredient in modern air combat.
U.S. Air Force squadrons in the Gulf are equipped with the F-15 Eagle as well as the smaller F-16 fighter bomber.
The F-15 is a high performance interceptor which combines sophisticated avionics with excellent maneuverability.
Another highly capable interceptor is the British Tornado F-3, flown by the Royal Saudi Air Force and the British Royal Air Force.
It is armed with Skyflash and Sidewinder missiles.
The small Kuwaiti Air Force operating from Saudi bases is equipped with the A-4 Skyhawk and small numbers of Mirage F-1 fighters.
Besides land-based squadrons, the U.S. Navy provides additional air power from the decks of its aircraft carriers offshore.
The Navy's principal interceptor is the F-14 Tomcat.
The Tomcat is an air-to-air fighter, so its draw would be strike escort or protection of ships in the Gulf.
Its disadvantage is the ability to handle several enemy aircraft at one time, the ability to distinguish many aircraft at once on its rather elaborate radar.
Possibly it would also provide some kind of forward air control in a combat situation because there is some command and control capability in the airplane.
Bridging the gap between interceptors and bombers are dual-role fighter-bombers, such as the Air Force's F-16 and the Navy's F-A-18 Hornet.
These can serve as dogfighters to supplement the interceptors or can carry out ground attack missions in concert with a more specialized attack aircraft.
The multinational forces in the Gulf placed considerable emphasis on ground attack aircraft.
The Saudi Air Force employs the British aerospace Tornado GR-1 strike fighter.
Compared to the Iraqi Sukhoi 17 fitter, the Tornado GR-1 has a heavier bomb load, 8 tons versus 5 tons, and greater range.
More importantly, the Tornado's sophisticated radar navigation attack system allows it to operate day or night in nearly any weather, while the fitter is limited to fair weather daytime missions.
Royal Air Force squadrons in the Gulf include both Tornado GR-1 and Jaguar units.
The Jaguar is in the same size and range category as the Iraqi Mirage F-1.
The Jaguar can carry up to 4.5 tons of bombs compared to 4 tons for the Mirage.
French forces in the Gulf have also deployed the Mirage F-1 interceptor, making it one of the most common fighter types in the region.
The U.S. Air Force's principal close-range tank buster is the A-10.
The A-10 is armed with a potent 30-millimeter cannon, as well as precision-guided Maverick missiles for attacking hardened targets such as tanks and armored vehicles.
The Air Force's deep interdiction mission is performed by sophisticated attack aircraft such as the F-15E Eagle and the F-111.
These aircraft have advanced terrain-following radars, which permit fast, low-altitude attacks to better evade enemy air defenses.
They can carry out their missions in all weather and at night.
The Navy's equivalent of the F-111 is the A-6 Intruder.
The most exotic strike fighter in service in the Gulf is the F-117 Black Jet, which is designed primarily for pinpoint nighttime attack of critical, high-value targets.
The main threat to the aircraft of the multinational force is more likely to be the numerous anti-aircraft weapons of the Iraqi Army rather than the opposing fighters of the Iraqi Air Force.
If you look at the Iraqi air defenses, you're immediately struck by one thing, and that is that they have a large number of pretty much obsolete or obsolescent medium-range surface-to-air missile systems.
Even in third world standards, that equipment is probably pretty marginal.
At the same time, they've got this incredible array of short-range air defense systems, large numbers of guns, a lot of decent quality short-range surface-to-air missiles.
The disparity suggests two things.
First of all, that the threat that they faced was really one that was best dealt with by low-altitude systems, so that they put all their effort into this large mass of short-range systems.
Second, I think it also reflects the fact that a lot of that equipment had a dual purpose.
A lot of the anti-aircraft guns were used for things other than just shooting at aircraft.
They were also used to support the ground forces in defensive operations,
so that there was a practical value in having a gun that could be used for dual purposes.
This emphasis is going to really come back to haunt them if they have to fight the U.S. Air Force,
because we're going to be able to strip away their medium-range SAMs without that much difficulty.
As a result, they're going to just have to fall back on their short-range systems,
and we can exploit that tactically to operate pretty effectively against their forces.
The missile threat can be countered by a combination of anti-radar missiles, electronic jamming, and stealth technology.
Aircraft such as the EF-111 Raven blind opposing air defenses by jamming their radars electronically.
Anti-radar missiles such as the HAHM destroy the radars that guide the anti-aircraft missiles.
Stealth technology camouflages strike aircraft from radar.
Close air support of Army units is the specialty of attack helicopters.
In the helicopter arsenal, the closest equivalent of the Iraqi Hind helicopter is the U.S. Army's AH-64 Apache.
Both aircraft have two-man crews and are armed with traversable automatic cannon in the nose,
as well as anti-tank missiles and rockets on the side winglets.
The Hind is faster than the Apache, but the Apache offers heavier firepower and greater accuracy.
As in the case of the tank balance, the Apache enjoys the advantage of a night attack system,
which allows it to operate 24 hours a day.
It is armed with a 30-millimeter cannon and laser-guided hellfire missiles,
which can destroy tanks at ranges of over two miles.
The Iraqis have shown a special interest in secret weapons,
running the gamut from ballistic missiles and super-artillery to chemical and nuclear weapons.
The Iraqi Supergun Project, codenamed Operation Babylon,
was never completed because of the assassination of its inventor, Dr. Gerald Bull, in 1990.
Although there is no doubt that the Iraqis are working on an atomic bomb,
there is little firm evidence how soon such a weapon would be ready.
But the Iraqis have had more success with their long-range missile program.
It started out in the 70s, before the war, that the Iraqis received Frog 7s from the Soviets,
a small battlefield missile.
Later on, as the war grew, they obtained some Scuds from the Soviet Union,
and they realized that they needed something to reach Tehran,
which is at a greater range than any of the missiles that they had.
So they possibly approached the Soviets first, and the Soviets refused to give them the assistance,
or did not give them the assistance that they wanted.
And then they approached the East Germans, who did provide some limited assistance,
and then they went to the Western countries, where they did receive assistance from, like, West Germany, Italy.
But while they were doing that, they also pursued a South American Egyptian option,
where, with the help of Argentina and Egypt, they pursued a project known as Condor,
which eventually was canceled because they were able to develop indigenous capabilities.
Involvement in the Condor project ended when the Iraqis succeeded in modifying their Scud missiles to give them greater range.
They wanted a quick and dirty capability to strike Tehran with Scuds.
Since the normal Scud-B, which they were using, is of a shorter range than the distance to Tehran,
they cannibalized, basically they took three Scuds, cut them up,
and made one long-range Scud by enlarging the fuel tanks, some minor, you know, structural modifications,
and reducing the size of the warhead.
It decreased the overall accuracy of the missile, but they did get the range which they were looking for, and it was quick and dirty.
That was called the Al Hussein.
And there are two versions. There was the cannibalized one, which I just mentioned,
and eventually it appears that if they developed, using components purchased abroad,
the capability to produce an entire Al Hussein from indigenous sources or bought-in components, as opposed to cannibalized.
And from that they developed another rocket called the Al Abbas,
which has greater range and is indigenously produced or produced through components that are imported.
The 1988 War of the Cities between Iran and Iraq was one motive for the Iraqi interest in missiles, but other factors were involved.
There's also another reason, possibly of more importance in the long run,
is the fact that Saddam Hussein believes that he is the person to unite the Arab world.
It appears if he has those aspirations, and developing ballistic missile capability
would give him that much more prestige and that much more persuasion capability.
The increasing range of Iraqi missiles has created a greater and greater threat to neighboring countries in the region.
The SCUD has real limitations when being used against military targets, especially with just a conventional high-explosive warhead.
The Soviets developed the SCUD back in the 1950s to carry a nuclear warhead.
So of course with a nuclear warhead the accuracy really isn't that important because the nuclear warhead's blast area is so large.
In contrast, the Iraqi SCUDs are fitted entirely with high-explosive warheads, and so accuracy means quite a bit.
The accuracy of the SCUD is about one kilometer. It has a CEP, a circular error probability, of about one kilometer.
And what that means is that when you fire the missile, only about half of them are going to strike in an area about one kilometer around the target.
So it means that if you're attacking a pinpoint military target, for example an air base,
it's going to require quite a few missiles to do any significant damage to the target.
Now if you also take into consideration the fact that these missiles cost about a million dollars apiece,
it really means that missiles are in a very effective way to attack many types of military targets,
and the type of targets you would expect missiles to be used against.
The effectiveness of the Iraqi SCUDs is undermined even further by the fact that U.S. forces in the Gulf
have deployed the Patriot air defense missile system.
The Patriot missile has the capability to shoot down missiles like the SCUD in some cases.
So this whole issue of accuracy is one of the reasons that the Iraqis have been very interested
in developing chemical warheads to place on the SCUDs.
A chemical warhead has a larger footprint, meaning that it covers a much larger area
than a conventional high-explosive warhead would.
Now the problem is that the Soviets haven't been willing to sell the Iraqis.
The basic structure of a chemical warhead, even though the Iraqis have the chemicals themselves.
And it's not at all clear that the Iraqis have the technological capability
to develop the proximity fuses and other sensors that are needed to make an effective chemical warhead for a missile.
In contrast to the inaccurate SCUD, American forces in the Gulf have long-range missiles
such as the land-based Army Tacoms and the sea-based Tomahawk cruise missile, which offer far greater accuracy.
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The great advantage of Tomahawk is it's fairly stealthy and it's fairly cheap compared to an airplane.
Plus it should be quite accurate. So the stealthiness means that it probably wouldn't be detected coming out.
Unlike an airplane launched from even a carrier, Tomahawk is launched from a surface ship or a sub,
which the Iraqis may not be tracking all the time, especially if it's a sub.
Therefore it can arrive from an unexpected direction and probably won't be detected through most of its travel because it's so small.
So what you have is a weapon coming in, they probably don't expect, coming in to attack a target from an unexpected place,
like say from the rear, so the target probably isn't protected in any way.
Now the downside of it is that Tomahawk is not that large a missile, so it doesn't have that large a warhead.
So maybe you're talking about 500 pounds of warhead, something like that.
But on some kinds of targets 500 pounds is quite enough to ruin them, say a radar station, an airplane in a revetment, something like that.
Also some versions of Tomahawk carry bomblets which they can screw over an area,
or they can be programmed to drop bomblets at intervals, say to destroy airplanes on the road with their revetments.
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One Iraqi weapon which has caused great alarm is the chemical warfare threat.
The Iraqis have used chemical weapons on a scale not seen since the First World War.
Iraqis have been interested in chemical weapons for a long time as part of an overall program of searching for unconventional weapons.
I mean, they're developing nuclear, they're developing biological, and they're developing chemical.
That tendency got reinforced by the need to rely on any kind of weapon available against the Iranians in the early stages of the war.
After the Iranians recovered and started pushing the Iraqis back, the Iraqis were desperate.
So they looked for any means possible to try to halt these mass infantry assaults that the Iranians were putting together.
And chemical weapons looked like a very useful way of dealing with that, especially since in the beginning the Iranians didn't have the defenses necessary to protect against chemical attack.
They continued using chemicals during the war. The intensity would vary from time to time.
By the end of the war it appears as though the Iraqis viewed it as just another weapon that was part of the overall arsenal.
So in that sense I don't think they differentiate it the same way we do.
For us it's a special weapon. For them it's something that is potentially available at the Army and maybe even division level without any problem.
The opposing forces in the Gulf are armed with a remarkable assortment of high-tech weapons.
Yet in the end the outcome of modern warfare depends as much on the training and determination of the soldier as on the deadly new weapons of desert warfare.
Thank you.