Technologies deployed during Desert Storm play key role in creation of Space Force
APOGEE STAFF
Long before the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act established the United States Space Force, seeds were being sown during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 for the military’s sixth branch.
Satellite communication, GPS and precision-guided munitions all played a prominent role in what many historians refer to as the United States’ first space war, launched as a prolonged air assault to drive invading Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The U.S. and its coalition partners flew more than 116,000 combat sorties and dropped 88,500 tons of bombs in preparation for a ground campaign that would last a mere four days. By February 28, the last of Saddam Hussein’s army had fled the country.
Though overwhelmed by the sheer number of air attacks, enemy forces were likely also unprepared for the ability of coalition forces to accurately and continuously track them even at night through sandstorms and across the region’s vast, featureless terrain. Desert Storm marked “the first time that we integrated strategic space capabilities into the theater for operational advantage,” said now-retired Gen. John W. Raymond, the U.S. Space Force’s first chief of space operations.
The war, in fact, marked several firsts, including the introduction of the Patriot missile defense system to intercept and defeat Scud missiles and the deployment of stealth technology under extended battlefield conditions. GPS let commanders observe enemy movements under nearly any battlefield condition — something they could not have done during previous conflicts, then-Space Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, who is now chief of space operations, said in a 2021 discussion at the Brookings Institution.
GPS, which uses satellites to pinpoint location, also enabled the use of precision munitions, which produced a devastating effect on Iraq’s army, “both physically, because we were hitting the enemy, and mentally because they had no idea how we were able to track them through the weather, through the night,” Saltzman said.
Although blindingly quick, the legacy of Operation Desert Storm would reverberate for decades, prompting new warfighting strategies and tactics that would capitalize on new technologies. As a result, precision-guided systems, GPS and satellite communications would command an increasingly important role in the nation’s arsenal, a prominence that continues to grow to this day.
“If there’s a missile launched on the surface of the Earth, we know about it,” Saltzman said.
During Desert Storm, about half of critical command and control networks relied on satellite communications. Since then, space-based capabilities have been dramatically expanded and improved.
“The seeds of an independent Space Force were absolutely sown during Desert Storm,” said now-retired Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, according to a February 2021 retrospective article by Charles Pope, secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs.
“Up until Desert Storm, most people thought of space as an add-on,” Hinote, then deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, said. “It became such that nobody ever again wanted to fight without those things.
“It took a long time, but I think you can trace the appreciation inside the Pentagon and inside the Joint Force for space … back to Desert Storm. We wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had it not been for the space assets we had.”