THE THREE-WEEK AIR OFFENSIVE THAT FIGURED CENTRALLY IN THE TOPPLING OF Saddam Hussein was a testament to air power’s final maturation for the sort of high-intensity warfare that the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom represented. In both its independent strategic role and its enabling support to allied ground troops, that offensive reflected a culmination of all that the United States and its coalition partners had done by way of steady force improvement, doctrinal refinement, and realistic training since air power’s breakthrough achievement during the first Persian Gulf War more than a decade earlier.
It was my special privilege to command and lead the many fine airmen who made possible that remarkable air power success story. Notwithstanding our unmatched combat systems and technology, it is our high-quality professionals at all levels whose devotion to mission and natural adaptability to overcome any challenge have rendered the American air weapon a unique asset to our nation. Those key shapers of events were backstopped in every way by the able contributions of the United Kingdom and Australia, whose respective air contingent commanders, then Air Vice-Marshal Glenn Torpy of the RAF and then Group Captain Geoff Brown of the RAAF, were my partners from the start of our planning to the final execution of the campaign. It speaks volumes for the uncommon reservoir of talent that they brought to the fight that both of these outstanding airmen later went on to head their respective air forces.
In the years since those eventful three weeks, the United States and its allies have been consumed by lower-intensity counterinsurgency operations in which kinetic air attacks have been largely overshadowed by ground combat—to a point where some observers suggest that the sort of cutting-edge applications of air power that were so pivotal in 2003 have since been superseded by a new form of warfare in which high-technology weapons have become irrelevant. That notion could not be further removed from the realities of today’s world. The era of major wars entailing existential threats to the United States and its closest allies has not ended. Demands for the most lethal and survivable air capabilities that our nation can muster will arise again. And there is much in our experience gained from the air war over Iraq in 2003 that offers a preview of how such capabilities might be best exploited in the future.
This important book, begun under my sponsorship as the commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Air Forces, reconstructs the campaign’s air contribution in impressive depth of detail. Along the way, it weaves a gripping narrative of the air war at multiple levels of analysis, from the perspective of the coalition’s most senior leaders all the way down to individual airmen as they watched the campaign play out from their cockpits in the heat of combat. One of the many notable aspects of the air offensive explored in the pages that follow concerns the trust relationships that were first forged within CENTCOM during Operation Enduring Freedom against Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002. Those close interpersonal ties were sustained among the same top leaders as we segued into the campaign against Iraq’s Ba’athist regime the following year. They were indispensable in accounting for the campaign’s all but seamless cross-service harmony.
This assessment also explores the many challenges that those at the center of preparations for Iraqi Freedom faced, including the possibility of an Iraqi chemical weapons attack on both allied forces and civilian populations in the theater, our felt need to ensure that the Iraqi air force would not generate a single combat sortie, our determination to ensure that our air support arrangements were in closest possible accord with the land component’s anticipated maneuver needs, and our resolve to keep Iraq’s western desert free of any means for Hussein’s forces to fire missiles into Israel and Jordan.
The compression of the campaign’s phases into a concurrent air-land push into Iraq compounded those concerns. That last-minute development saddled CENTCOM’s air component with the daunting need to satisfy multiple mission demands simultaneously—establishing airspace control, finding and destroying hidden Iraqi Scud or other tactical missiles, targeting Iraq’s key command and control centers to impose rapid paralysis on the regime, and supporting the conventional land advance and associated covert activities by allied special operations forces in both southern and northern Iraq.
Finally, this book spotlights the many unique achievements registered during the three-week air offensive, such as the close integration of our naval and Marine Corps air assets into the overall campaign plan, meeting the immense challenges of securing adequate fuel supplies and tanker support, assigning a senior airman to the land component as my personal representative, and securing for the air component the all-important prerogative of approving the nomination of enemy targets without my having to defer repeatedly to higher authority for permission. It also explains the many valuable lessons that were driven home by the campaign experience, such as the importance of organizing the air component’s elements for maximum effectiveness, training those elements routinely in peacetime in a way that fully exercises the entire command and control system, and equipping our forces with the most effective and survivable aircraft and systems.
Ben Lambeth’s assessment offers an exhaustive account of the Iraqi Freedom air war in its most essential details. His adept telling of that story is conveyed with a tone of authority that will resonate instantly among the airmen who were actually there in the fight. Yet at the same time, it is written with a clarity of expression that will render it equally accessible to a wider circle of readers. I commend it highly to all who have an interest in air power and its key role in our nation’s defense, and most particularly to the successor generation of military professionals in all services who will gain much of lasting value from its many informed observations and insights.
—T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley
General, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Commander, U.S. Central Command Air Forces (2001–2003) and Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force (2005–2008)