Gulf War Air Power Survey

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Development of the PGM
The unquestioned value of the precision-guided munition spurred the rapid development and successful employment of the GBU‑28. Penetration capability had long been a desired feature of air-delivered munitions. Beginning in World War II, the United States gained experience in trying to destroy hardened submarine bunkers and command posts. However, the armament developers of that period had trouble developing a hardened fuze that would survive the penetration requirements and still function. The problem remained through development of the Vietnam-era precision-guided munitions.
The post-Vietnam years saw two separate developmental tracks: developing much more sophisticated delivery platforms including the F‑16, the F-15E and the F-117A, and continued research on precision-guided munitions technology. The delivery platforms received commensurate congressional appropriations; for the most part, precision-guided munitions technology remained in the laboratory testing stage. Procurement monies for precision-guided weapons did not keep pace with the new delivery platforms being brought into the Air Force inventory.^⁴⁸⁸ The problem was somewhat rectified when specific procurement monies were made available for weapons deployed on the F-117A in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Additionally, congressional appropriations allowed for procurement of the improved 2,000-pound MK-84 weapon variant and associated guidance, fuzing, and control equipment in the mid-1980s.^⁴⁸⁹ Concerted efforts in procuring new munitions centered on the combined effects munitions (CEM) and the sensor fuzed weapon (SFW) in the late 1980s. The CEM became the “weapon of choice” in many Desert Storm operations; however, the SFW was still battling development problems as Operation Desert Shield unfolded.^⁴⁹⁰
BLU-82 (15,000-pound “Daisy Cutter”)
On 29 January 1991, the CENTAF Director of Logistics received a requirement from the Commander of CENTCOM Special Operations Command (COMSOCCENT), for ten BLU-82 weapons.^⁴⁹¹ The BLU-82 is a 15,000-pound gelled-slurry-fill bomb used in Vietnam to clear helicopter pads. [DELETED] The bomb is rigged with nylon webbing to a pallet and delivered by a C-130 using the parachute extraction aerial delivery system.^⁴⁹²
The worldwide inventory of BLU-82 bomb cases on 29 January 1991 was forty-eight. Cases are stored empty and require premix filling before they can be used. The first two bombs were filled and airlifted on 1 February 1991. The remaining eight, to satisfy the COMSOCCENT requirement, were filled by priority contract and transported to Hill AFB on 3 February. Starting 5 February, two bombs per day were airlifted to the Gulf until eight had departed by 8 February.
Anticipating future demand for more bombs, the Ammunition Control Point began making preparations to fill and ship the remaining thirty-eight empty BLU-82 cases. On 10 February 1991, COMSOCCENT directed the Ammunition Control Point to immediately ship the five available bombs (above the ten already shipped) and take actions necessary to prepare and ship the balance of thirty-three.^⁴⁹³ The five bombs were shipped on 16 February. On 13 February, USCINCCENT/J3 requested that the Ammunition Control Point ship another eleven BLU-82s. The first three were ready on 22 February, and the remaining seven were ready on 25 February for airlift to the Gulf.
A total of eleven BLU-82s were expended during the war. After the war's end, seven filled BLU-82s remained in the Gulf and eight were at Hill AFB. All the remaining BLU-82s were destroyed after the war because of concern about the stability of the explosive filler.^⁴⁹⁴
FMU-139 Fuzes
The FMU-139A/B fuze provides nose and tail fuzing for precision-guided bombs and M117 and MK-84 General Purpose bombs in high- and low-drag releases. During Desert Storm, at least fifty-one reports of early bursts were attributed to the FMU-139 fuze. [DELETED]^⁴⁹⁵
The FMU-139A/B fuze's early burst problem was not new. Similar problems had been documented in 1988 and 1989. An attempted fix involved several human factors related to properly made cable connections and a contractor rework of the FZU-48/B power cable. The contract was awarded in December 1990. Reworked cables were to be fielded in August 1991.
The reworked cables and engineering change proposals to incorporate the human factors had not yet been fielded when the war began. As a result of the early bursts in Desert Storm, the CENTAF Chief of Munitions restricted the operational employment of FMU-139A/B-fuzed munitions and recommended the substitution of other, less desirable fuzing options.^⁴⁹⁶ CENTAF also requested that all new production fuzes and modified cables be released to it as soon as possible in order to build sufficient stock levels. Motorola began surge production of the modified cables with funds provided by Aeronautical Systems Division from Eglin AFB. The Ammunition Control Point initiated follow-on support contracts with monies provided by Air Force Headquarters. The first 5,000 cables arrived in the Gulf in only forty-eight hours. However, they were never used, since hostilities ended shortly thereafter.
Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
The following was provided by Maj Doug Murray, HQ USAF/CEOR, 16 Apr 92 Nearly one-third of the active-duty Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) force, 320 personnel, were assigned to the Central Command AOR. EOD managers successfully integrated EOD personnel from many commands, sister Services, and host nations. The unit at Dhahran, for example, comprised disposal technicians from five Air Force Major Commands, Britain, and Saudi Arabia. Host nation EOD personnel required extensive war-related training.
To expand ordnance clearance operations, Central Command introduced two special types of vehicles for use at high-threat bases. The first type was a munitions clearance vehicle. Twenty M60A3 main battle tanks with M9 combat engineer blades were procured from U.S. Army European depots to clear submunitions from runways and taxi surfaces. The second type was a base recovery vehicle. Thirty-seven M113A2 armored personnel carriers, topped with .50-caliber rifles, filled that role. They served as reconnaissance vehicles and a platform from which to fire at unexploded ordnance to destroy it from a safe distance.
In response to the terrorist threat in the Gulf, additional MK32 X-ray units, protective bomb suits, shields, and bomb blankets were shipped to EOD units. Production of the Andros robot for removal and safing of improvised explosive devices was also acceleratedthe first four units going directly to Southwest Asia. [DELETED]
One EOD unit cleared an Air Force munitions storage area hit by an errant Army Hellfire missile. While thousands of pounds of ordnance were destroyed in the accident and the resultant cleanup activity, there were no injuries. The local Air Force EOD unit, teamed with a nearby U.S. Army unit, had the storage area cleared of hazardous ordnance items and ready for reuse in just four days.
During Desert Storm, EOD personnel responded frequently to weapon system emergencies involving combat aircraft, and, on other occasions, disposed of ordnance jettisoned from Coalition aircraft. At the request of Saudi Arabia, EOD units investigated Scud missile impact sites, recovering debris and sections of intact missiles. EOD technicians shipped several of these to U.S. intelligence agencies.
During the liberation of Kuwait City, Air Force EOD teams provided direct support to Central Command Special Operations Forces by clearing hazardous ordnance from Kuwait International Airport. The teams also cleared booby traps and hazardous ordnance from key government and civilian buildings in Kuwait City and were the first to enter the U.S. Embassy compound.
Two special EOD teams were organized on short notice to deploy with Red Horse personnel and deny the enemy use of two air bases in southern Iraq. After hazardous ordnance was cleared from runways to provide a minimum operating strip for C-130 aircraft, heavy equipment and demolition explosives were airlifted directly to the sites. Captured Iraqi ordnance, technical publications, and even the contents of the Iraq EOD school were eventually returned to the United States.
Despite the drawdown of U.S. forces in Southwest Asia, the EOD mission continued unabated for many months. Over a million items of U.S. and foreign ordnance were disposed of safely during the year after the close of Operation Desert Storm. Another posthostility mission was the inspection of Iraqi chemical and ballistic missile sites by United Nations personnel, with EOD technicians playing a key support role.

Munition Expenditures
The following figures display the numbers of specific munitions consumed during Operation Desert Storm. Emphasis from the highest levels of the Air Force centered on availability and consumption of those munitions. The figures show the requirement level for munitions items before the war, consumption during Operation Desert Storm, and the Gulf on-hand inventory after the war.^⁴⁹⁷
Figure 47

AIM-7M Sparrow Missile

23

Figure 48

AIM-9M Sidewinder Missile

Figure 49

MK-82 Low and High Drag 500-Pound Bomb

Figure 50

M117 (750-Pound Bomb)

Figure 51

MK-84 (2,000-Pound Low and High Drag Bomb)

25

Figure 52

AGM-65 Series Maverick Missile

Figure 53

GBU-10 (Improved 2,000-Pound Bomb)

Figure 54

GBU-12 (500-Pound PGM)

Figure 55

GBU-24 (Improved 2,000-Pound Bomb)

Figure 56

GBU-27 (2,000-Pound PGM for F-117A)

Figure 57

CBU-52/58/71 (Cluster Bomb Units)

Figure 58

CBU-87 (Combined Effects Munition)

Figure 59

CBU-89 (Gator Antitank Munition)

Observations
During the initial stages of Desert Shield, a good deal of confusion existed concerning arming the force. Munitions in Oman and aboard ships in the immediate area, provided initial support. However, they were not the latest munitions and were not appropriate for air defense, the immediate concern. The deploying units flew in armed with AIM 7s and 9s. Confusion in the early stages of an operation are normal; however, it continued to cause problems in the munitions area.
Requirements for munitions were not clear and escalated sharply as the mission and size of the force grew. There was difficulty in knowing what munitions were where, since the management information system being built to answer these questions did not perform well. The transportation system was overwhelmed because of the volume being shipped and lack of information on what assets were where. These factors contributed to the continuing confusion in arming the force.
Numerous storage depots had to be and were built. The preconflict training of the munitions people on storing and building up bombs paid dividends.
There were 48,000 short tons of munitions prepositioned for the AOR before the war; 69,000 short tons were dropped during Desert Storm. Three hundred and fifty thousand short tons available for the AOR were either in the AOR or en route to the AOR at the end of the war. The quick response to the requirements for special weapons is noteworthy. The GBU-28 was fielded very quickly for attacking bunkers, and the BLU-82 Daisy Cutters were built up and shipped on very short notice and used for clearing minefields.
In summary: there were no known instances of missions cancelled because munitions were unavailable. This record was accomplished with zero significant safety accidents involving Air Force personnel.

7

Supplying the Force
This Chapter addresses supplying the force with spare parts and fuels. The first part of the Chapter focuses on spares activities related to aircraft mission support. The second half of the Chapter addresses petroleum product support, exclusive of air refueling, which was covered in Chapter 5.
Supplying Spare Parts
The overall effectiveness of spares support during Desert Shield and Desert Storm is reflected in the aggregate aircraft status statistics recorded during those operations (Figure 60). Supply support exceeded both peacetime standards and wartime projections. This section describes how that was accomplished.
To ensure uninterrupted maintenance, operating bases, maintenance depots, and storage depots maintain stocks of consumable and reparable spares. During steady-state operation, out-of-stock conditions that can ground aircraft or cause maintenance work stoppage are held to levels established on the basis of mission and economic considerations. The basic flow is from industry to the wholesale warehouse, to the user-level supply ctivity, and finally to the maintenance technician who uses the items to fix aircraft or aircraft components. Items that can be repaired come back into the system for reuse.
When aircraft units were tasked to support Desert Shield and Desert Storm, multiple events disrupted the steady-state balance of the supply pipelines. First, the tasked aircraft moved to new operating bases; most were thousands of miles from their home base. Second, spares usage patterns changed because of changes in flying activity and location. Third, the supply and maintenance resources initially moved to the new operating location constituted only a small portion of the home base resource. And fourth, supply pipelines were interrupted or constrained. The story of supplying the force during Desert Shield and Desert Storm is, in large part, the story of how the Air Force dealt with these four events.

Figure 60

Desert Shield and Desert Storm Aircraft Status^⁴⁹⁸^,^⁴⁹⁹
Supply Concept of Operation
The basic supply concept of operations in support of air power calls for preplanned requirements determination driven by specific threat assumptions. It also calls for the use of various spares segments and packages to allocate and position available supply resources. The types and levels of support provided to particular units are tailored to their planned mission. That general concept of operations was the basis for supply preparations before the Gulf War and resulted in a spares-rich environment. As was demonstrated during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, however, some of the systems and procedures needed to manage those spares effectively according to the concept of operations were either not in place, were not well documented, or did not work.
From a supply perspective, spares were authorized, procured, and allocated to the forces sent to the Gulf on the basis of their wartime tasking and priority. Units designated for mobility tasking in the war plans would have to be moved from their home base to support a wartime operation, and were by policy authorized mobile spares packages.^⁵⁰⁰^,^⁵⁰¹ Units with documented wartime tasking to operate in place, such as most units stationed in Europe, did not have mobility spares packages. Rather, the spares required to support their day-to-day operations were augmented with additional assets to support the initial wartime period, when resupply is expected to be interrupted.^⁵⁰²^,^⁵⁰³ Since these units were not designated for deployment tasking, they did not have mobility bins to transport their spares. Their spares and equipment sizing were based upon operate-in-place assumptions that included the continuation of a full base repair capability, and their supply people did not practice deployed operations.
At the time of the Gulf War, the Air Force objective was to provide wartime-tasked units with sufficient prepositioned spares to support wartime operations for the first sixty days until wartime resupply channels could be established and operated on a routine basis.^⁵⁰⁴ In practice, however, only thirty-day prepositioned stocks of most reparable spares were authorized.^⁵⁰⁵ For units operating out of fixed bases after deployment, as within the area of responsibility (AOR), the basic supply concept of operations called for a second spares package built and deployed around day 30 of the conflict.^⁵⁰⁶ Those spares would augment the initial spares package and support continued operations, which normally included expanded maintenance capabilities, until establishment of normal, dependable resupply support from the continental United States.
Taking Supply to War
The Gulf War was not business as usual for supply. Few things happened “by the book,” or in accordance with the basic supply concept of operations. For example:
• Units that were supposed to fight in place were deployed without mobility spares.
• The mobile supply computer systems did not work well, temporarily “blinding” Air Force, Central Command, the wholesale supply system, and the major commands. As a consequence, alternative computer support capabilities were developed. Target support levels were not accepted as good enough.
• Resupply of war readiness spares kits and other spares packages commenced almost immediately and continued even after sustainment spares had been put in place and routine resupply was certain.
• Several new spares support concepts were conceived and implemented. While some adjustments to plans and planning concepts are always needed, adjustments and deviations during Desert Shield and Desert Storm were not the exception; they were the rule.
Upon deployment notification during Desert Shield, units attempted to fill shortages in existing spares packages or began assembling other types of packages.^⁵⁰⁷ Base level actions included issuing available serviceable spares from stock, moving assets among the assigned spares packages, expediting local repair, contacting the supporting wholesale sources of supply, and selectively cannibalizing aircraft not needed to support the deployment. These initiatives were generally effective, and most kit fills were over ninety percent full at the time of deployment. Although not well documented, it appears that many units unilaterally increased authorized quantities of known problem items for their spares packages, built new packages to take items they thought they would need but that were not in existing packages, or simply overfilled their packages on selected items.^⁵⁰⁸
For some units, preparing for deployment to the AOR was even more challenging. Several were tasked to deploy aircraft but were not authorized mobility spares, or at least not sufficient spares to support the number of aircraft deployed. These units had only minimum time to compute their requirements and build new spares packages to be deployed with them.^⁵⁰⁹^,^⁵¹⁰ As noted earlier, the operating convention has always been that only units authorized mobility spares were “available for mobility tasking.” The deployment of units stationed in Europe, to the AOR, and to Turkey for the Proven Force operation demonstrated that these types of units can deploy and operate effectively, albeit with some difficulty, if they can be afforded time to prepare and be assured of continuous resupply.^⁵¹¹
At the wholesale supply activities (which included Air Force air logistics centers and other Service and Defense Logistics Agency inventory control points), battle staffs, and twenty-four-hour customer support activities were set up to expedite resupply requirements and solve the ever-present problems. Similar operations were set up at the Service and Defense Agency headquarters to facilitate coordination of activities and handle unique requirements. Also, depot surge programs were initiated to accelerate repair of existing and potential problem items, and where appropriate, expedite procurement actions. Problem items were identified through supported command and Commander-in-Chief inputs, ongoing critical item management programs, and the use of capability assessment models. Additional repair resources and expedited procurement actions were taken as required to respond to mission needs.
The specific items to be surged by the air logistics centers were identified by multiple sources. The sources included various logistics information systems and recommendations from system program managers and the commands using the aircraft. Data available in the automated systems were typically current at a point in time; as such, their value was time perishable. The data from automated systems were augmented with data from several other sources, including records of recent shortages of spare parts needed to repair aircraft or aircraft components and of known shortages in spares packages that are deployed with aircraft units. Over eighty-five percent of the items identified by the using commands as needing surge were already in the Air Force Critical Item Program and being worked.^⁵¹² Air Force Logistics Command surged over 75,000 items through early March 1991 to fill spares packages and other priority spares requirements.^⁵¹³
Under the unit move concept, spares normally move forward with the aircraft. During the Desert Shield deployments, however, several decisions disrupted this integrated flow. The first reported disruptions were related to the accelerated deployment into the AOR of direct combat forces.^⁵¹⁴ To accomplish the acceleration, units tailored down their support packages. Later, priorities were realigned to give priority to personnel comfort items. As a result, the Air Force, Central Command Rear Director of Supply reported that at one point, over 100 pallets of spares were sitting on the ramps at Tactical Air Command bases waiting for airlift after the supported aircraft were already in the AOR.^⁵¹⁵^,^⁵¹⁶ Had intense combat activity started before the spares arrived, a significant number of aircraft could have been grounded awaiting parts.

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