Desert Storm 35: A Turning Point in Warfare

Watch the Video

---

Read the Transcript

---

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Man, those lights are bright. Thank you all for coming this afternoon, we’re very fortunate this afternoon to have a distinguished panel of Gulf War experts. I’d like to begin by introducing General Lord. General Lord was the former commander of Air Force Space Command. Next to him is Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, he’s the dean of the Air Force Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and during Desert Storm, General Deptula created the attack plans for each and every day of the air campaign. And last, on the far end there, is Major General Gregory Feest. Gregory was the, during Desert Storm, he was the 117 pilot who dropped the first bomb in the Gulf War. Quite a feat. And he will tell you all about that in just a little bit. I think I’d like to begin rather than any lengthy introductions, but just go right into the questions.

So, the first one is this, and it’s to the panel, but I think it’s indisputable that the first Gulf War was an unquestioned success and demonstrated the overwhelming value of air power. 35 years ago, the Gulf War proved airpower could defeat a strong enemy with minimum costs in blood and treasure for both sides. Parallel attack produced strategic and operational paralysis of the enemy in a little more than 40 days, with a loss of less than 150 allied forces killed in action. This battle space success has never been repeated. Do you believe today’s Air Force still understands the values and uses these first Gulf War air power war fighting principles to plan and execute current and future conflicts? If so, how? If not, how not and why not? General Deptula, why don’t you start?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, I thought we were going to go in sequential order.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

That’s why I told you, remember, air power, air superiority. We can do this. Flexibility is the key.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. Well, what I would tell you, the short answer is no, they do not. Now, let me be clear before I give you a little bit more elaboration on my response. But it is unquestionable today that the Department of the Air Force has the finest airmen and guardians in the world. But the fact of the matter is, without proper education, without appropriate training, without appropriate tools, in the capacity that’s necessary, their talents can’t be realized. So, let me hit upon what I believe were the three critical elements that led to the success of the Operation Desert Storm, writ large in the air campaign in particular. Three macro level points. The first one was there was proper preparation in terms of organization, training, and equipping. Number two, the leadership provided guidance, not micromanagement. And number three, an effects-based approach focused on outcomes not inputs.

Now, today, what I would suggest to you, candidly, is we fall short in all three areas. First, with respect to organization. PME today doesn’t teach the proper definition of jointness as being using the right force at the right place at the right time. Instead, jointness is too often treated as little league rules, or all domain operations, everyone gets to play everywhere all the time. With respect to combat training, it’s at the lowest state it’s ever been in terms of individual flying hours. And equipping, today, the United States Air Force is the oldest and the smallest it’s ever been in its entire history. Second, unlike General Schwarzkopf, today’s combatant commanders are not placing the most competent, supported commanders in charge of campaigns that they’re executing. In one recent case, the designated air component commander, an expert in designing and executing air operations, was sidelined in favor of a special operations commander, who in actuality was outside the theater chain of command.

Finally, the Air Force has backed away from clearly articulating an effects-based approach in its own doctrine, weakening one of the core intellectual foundations that made Desert Storm successful. So, yes, the answer’s troubling, but it’s an honest one. And I do remain hopeful that a new generation of officers will study, think critically, and rediscover the principles that once allowed America to win wars decisively. And a little bit of a plug, if you want more on this topic, I’m trying to be judicious with time, read my recent article in Forbes, on Desert Storm 35, it’s time to relearn how America can win wars.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, General Deptula, it was really useful. General Lord, Desert Storm is widely considered as the first space war, given the critical role space effects played in the conflict. Could you discuss the role space played in that conflict, and how were space forces presented and integrated within the joint force?

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

Certainly, I’d like to comment on that, and I appreciate my brother here from… Who’s as old as Billy Mitchell, so we’ll be able to take advantage of that. But we didn’t come about this very easily. I go back to being a young major in the Pentagon and the Office of the Secretary of Defense as one of Andy Marshall, who was the director of Net Assessment, one of his military assistants, and really started to think about these kinds of things in the 1979/1980 timeframe. And if you all recall in your military history, you think about Desert One, the attempt to go to Iran and try to liberate the prisoners who had been kept in there for a long time. And the fact that that military operation, Desert One, really crumbled in the desert because of a lot of things.

And it really became one of the, and at least in my mind, and I think history supports this, is one of the impetus for moving more toward joint operations in a broad sense, and working together with the other services to develop a SOCOM, a special operations command, back then it was a rapid deployment joint task force, and with Goldwater Nichols, and all the things that we did to get ready, I think we emerged in an interesting way. Now, some say that what we saw in the early days of the war that we’re talking about was the early indicators of the revolution on military affairs, when you put technology, capability, and the airborne battle management with AWACS and the joint capabilities there, we started to develop, I think, the teamwork. Space was really, I would think, was a bystander in some respects with its full involvement.

Now, that’s changed a lot in the past, or in the recent future, and we can talk about that a little more, but the absolute contribution was… Well, let’s put it this way. We went back as a result of Desert One, and what was going on, and I was given a task as a young major there in Office of Net Assessment by Andy Marshall, he said, “I want you to get all your clearances, all access to every one of the classified programs behind the green door, and write me an assessment of what US space capabilities.” This was back in 1981. And I put this paper together, and about 25 pages, summarized what I thought. But my real bottom line back to Mr. Marshall and onto the SecDef and others that got a chance to read this was there’s a lot of military operational capabilities resident in the national security, back then space architecture.

So, out from behind the green door, so to speak, and into the day-to-day applications, we developed the TENCAP program, the tactical exploitation and national capabilities, and brought some of these capabilities together. Now, the secretary talked a little bit about this yesterday, but not in any definitive terms. But I will say that that kind of push helped us start to normalize the space contribution and the partnership with the air business and others to really bring the best of space capabilities. But it’s still hampered today, and I agree with what Dave says about there’s still some bureaucratic issues related to getting through the door, so to speak. One of the things I recommended, and I know our chiefs of staff at the time had thought about getting things out and making space and the conditions in space and the competition and the way the space is evolving, not only US capabilities, but other capabilities in the world make this a competition.

And that should be a baseline in the planning. You don’t want to do a theater plan and have a space annex, what you want to do is have that as the basis of understanding what the environment is in the particular area of responsibility. So, we’ve come a long way, we’re not finished yet, we’ve got a US Space Force that I think is wrestling with these problems, and there are people in this room who take this seriously day to day. So, I appreciate the opportunity to comment on that.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, sir. General Feest, one of the other first in Desert Storm was the employment of stealth and the mass use of precision guided weapons. Could you please explain the game changing effects of that these things unleashed?

Maj. Gen. Gregory Feest, USAF (Ret.):

Well, it’s easy because you just look at what the F-117 did during Desert Storm. We flew 1,271 missions, over half of those were over downtown Baghdad, below 10,000 feet, and we never got touched. Now, a lot of that is luck. I’ll tell you that after the first night when I got home, I didn’t want to fly again the next day. And thankfully, I had to go into the mission planning cell to work with General Deptula for the next night. But after the third and fourth night, when everybody kept coming home, we thought this LO technology works, and I want to thank the engineers that developed it.

There’s probably people that work for some of these companies in this room. It worked, we were never touched, and because of the airplane, we called General Deptula the keeper of the master plan, and because of his plan, we didn’t have any air-to-air threat either. So, I think LO was proven, and I think it’s here to stay.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. I can’t help but since we’ve heard it, and I know everybody in the audience would like to hear about the story briefly of the first bomb drop and what it was like. Can you do that for us?

Maj. Gen. Gregory Feest, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, I’ll try to do it quick. So, we took off, we had been flying peacetime missions up along the Iraqi border once a week, and our goal was to desensitize the Iraqis so that when Desert Storm started, it wouldn’t be different for them to see a tanker with fighters on it. And so, we had been planning that all along. On this night, after we took off, the wing commander took in the rest of the senior leaders into the command posts and told them he anticipated losing half of our aircraft that night, and I’m glad I didn’t hear that. So, anyway, we took off, we never talked to each other, we joined in the tanker ComOut, we were able to talk to the tanker, the boomer and pilots, when we hooked up to the air refueler, because they had their intercom system, and we could talk to them.

They took us up to the border, and now we were just waiting for our time to depart the tanker, and it was all based on H-hour. And it just so happened that my target was nine minutes before H-hour, so I was going to be the first one going in. And what was different than the other missions along the border was we sucked in the antennas, we stealthed up. That consisted of the beacons were already off the airplane, they were smooth, but we had to suck in the antennas. And once that happened, we could not talk to anybody, so we could not be recalled. And we didn’t know what was going on. So, I went into Iraq, my target was a interceptor operation center, it was a buried bunker.

I hit the IP, I got to the target, I saw the target, which is a relief, because you don’t want to get there and not find your target. And then, I’m thinking to myself, ooh, do they really want me to drop this bomb and start this war? And I said to myself, what the hell? So, I dropped it and tracked the target, bunker, I knew I hit it because the air vents, you could see the smoke coming out of the air vents. So, you know that the bomb went in. And I immediately started a 180 degree turn back to the west, I was going out to H2H3, for those that are familiar, it’s the west side of Iraq that had scuds getting ready to launch at Israel. And there was a sector operation center there. So, I did this turn and I had a wing man one minute behind me. So, I thought, well, I’m going to watch his bomb hit.

And I looked back and I saw red fireworks, and I go, what the hell? What did I hit? Something’s blown up. And then I figured out what Red Flag never taught us, what AAA really looks like, and what Sams looked like. Because Smokey Sams are not Sams. And so, I figured out these were the tracers for the AAA. So, I said, “I don’t care about my wing man right now, I’m getting out of here, I’m climbing above the AAA, I’m getting out of here as fast as I can.” I got two more minutes, I guess. Then I thought, I looked to my right and I see Baghdad, sky is lit up. Sky’s lit up. And you saw that on the media, on CNN and others. And I thought, well, I’m glad I’m not going there tonight. And I looked out where I was going and it looked the same, only it was in a little shorter area because I’m just going to hit that sector operations center.

And I thought, well, maybe the threat won’t be there. No, it was there. It was there. So, again, the GBU-27 had to be dropped below 10,000 feet at the time, and that sucked because AAA all goes to 10,000 feet. And so, I made it, I came off the target and now my goal was to get home, we had to get a tanker to get home, we had to join up again as a two ship, me and my wing man. I checked him in at the appropriate time on the radio, and he answered. And I went, oh man, I thought I was lucky, he was lucky too. And we both were coming home. And then I had a knee board with all the names of the pilots that were flying the first wave, and as they checked in, I checked them off and I finally had check marks from everybody.

And we went to the tanker and went home, and on the way home, we heard about all aircraft, lots of aircraft having battle damage and diverting, and when we got home, we had no damage. And so, LO works and I think it still does in my opinion.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir, very much for that. Next question. In Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America, a book widely circulated in CCP military and political circles, and much talked about and studied, its authors, two Chinese colonels, referred to the First Gulf War as a war which changed the world and ultimately changed warfare itself. If the Chinese truly believe this, and it appears that they do, how should we prepare for possible conflict with a China that embraces these Gulf War principles and intends to use them in a shooting war? General Deptula first.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Let me just add a piece to the story there in the context of conveying the value of the F-117 and low observability in that conflict. He told you the numbers of sorties, but as a percentage basis, that was less than 2% of the sorties, and they hit over 40% of the fixed target base the entire war. So, you talk about leverage, that was pretty spectacular. Okay, back to China. I think there’s huge irony in that China, our pacing threat learned the key lessons of Desert Storm, and they’ve used them against us while we continue to ignore those lessons in our own designs to counter the Chinese anti-access aerial denial strategy. Specifically, there’s a huge reticence to plan for the kind of comprehensive and crippling offensive counter air and missile campaign that was so successful in Desert Storm. And all the indicators are, if you talk to the folks at INDOPACOM over the years, that will allow China to have a sanctuary of its homeland.

Folks, that is an approach that’s guaranteed to fail. The Chinese need to understand that we will decimate their ability to launch their volleys of missiles and that their economic infrastructure will be in ruins if they dare draw the United States into conflict, that’s where we start.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Good answer. Anybody else?

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, let me add a little bit to that because I’ve been in Beijing a couple times with the East West Institute, and faced up with our counterparts in the Chinese military, and the PLA, and others, and looked them in the eye, and at my level with those folks, after you get the obligatory face shot about, you guys are imperialists, you’re going to try to take over the world, and we know that, and we’re going to come get you… And after that, you get down to the basics of the question about how can you compete in this environment with this group of very, very invigorated warriors? Well, what we did in the space, and what I did certainly in following the footsteps of those, and taking what Chief Fogleman told us, we’re an air and space force leading to a space and air forces.

I wanted to take that operational utility and the capability of these space folks and put them in place in the AOC, in the air operations center, and create a space tasking order that would harmonize with the air tasking order so that we had space capabilities to compliment the air capabilities. So, I picked as many good operators as I could, and I brought people from the air business, Fig Leaf came and was my vice for a year or so because I wanted the operational capability. When General Horner gave me the job as Air Force commander, it was after a NRO launch failed, and he said, “The good news is you’re going to be the commander of Air Force Space Command, the bad news is your base is on fire.”

But the focus of that effort was to get air-minded people into the space business and teach the space folks what it meant to be synchronized and harmonized with the air operations. So, we put people in place. I went back in 2002, and maybe even General Mastalir was with me when we went there, back when he was one of the sharpest minds in the business, and we took a look at how we were doing integrating in that business. And I think that made a difference to do the kind of things that I think it’s important, and we would certainly contribute in a great way.

And as you’ll see, if you’ve been here this whole last day and a half, how important it is to harmonize both those businesses within the Air and Space Force. So, I think it contributes to combat lethality, it also contributes to the capability to deter, and now what we’re doing with the military capabilities, and certainly with what we can do sensing-wise, and try to be left of event, and be predictive in terms of our analysis to support the whole team as I think we’ve made amazing steps. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, sir. Okay. How about, some might call this next question inside baseball, but I think it’s extremely relevant and it needs asking. A careful study of the first Gulf War reveals how the informal overtook and ultimately drove the formal planning process in the war. Checkmate in the basement of the Pentagon, led by Colonel John Warden with no mandate or authority, amassed targeting data and other critical information from disparate agencies across the entire government, and fed them into the black hole, another informal structure created out of whole cloth by one of our panel members, then Lieutenant Colonel Dave Deptula, where he and a small cadre of war fighters turned this critical information into actionable target sets, and distributed them to combat units day after day with spectacular results. Why then was this process not codified and perpetuated in future planning staffs? Anyone?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Well, Richard, I’m going to push back a bit and tell you that actually it was. Today, checkmate is still valued as a type of organic think tank inside the Air Force, and they’re called upon for their perspectives and initiative and innovative thinking whenever something bubbles up. At the same time, just actually it was last week, we had a member of Whiteman’s B-2 mission planning cell come over and visit us at Mitchell Institute, and tell his war stories, and I’m here to tell you a lot of what happened 35 years ago is still going on today. So, while people change, organizations change, I think that while there are different aspects, a way that our organizations have evolved, and every operations can be a bit different, you still have the same processes that are in place. And I think the one that did perpetuate itself and has been codified is checkmate, and getting a group of smart people together to think about innovative ways to apply our capabilities to whatever the particular contingency of the day is.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Anybody else?

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

I’d like to talk a little bit about the checkmate process because I was in the basement of the Pentagon, in the strategic division, given my ICBM background, and we put together, tried to model the air checkmate business into a nuclear checkmate, and to try to do the end to end exercise, and think about the whole process, which led to, back then General Chain, and the folks back in strategic air command, and then later on the whole nuclear business to do an end to end exercise every year, a global look at exercising the whole business other than launching airplanes and going through that process. But we did use a checkmate framework to hone the operational and sustainment capabilities of the business. So, I liked that framework, I really did, because I think it was instrumental in helping in arguments about the high-low mix, and what we’re going to do fighter-wise as we move forward, and the stuff that we needed to do to put in the program force so that we could maintain the capability.

We locked that mindset in and we’re looking at space superiority in those kinds of ways. Space superiority, that became a dirty word. I met General Schriever right before he passed away, well, I’d known him for a long time as the godfather of our business really, in terms of space, but he whispered to me when he could barely talk, he says, “Don’t give up on space superiority.” That is really the essence of protecting ourselves in space in the future. I would argue that’s the same thing in air superiority. So, we’re a lot alike in many ways, we’re different in many, but we got one common goal, and to bring a fighter guy like Feest in that over the target without some support is absolutely… It’s terrible. It’s not like we don’t value you for your expertise.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, sir. Again, General Lord, how about a key challenge with spacepower was that it was still considered a national asset, much of it controlled by Title 50 entities and unavailable to the operational Title 10 actors. We now live in a world where space is crucial for everything. We still have competing pressures between military and national intelligence communities regarding tasking priorities, access, and collaboration. Any thoughts on how this should continue to evolve? You’ve kind of touched on it just a second ago, but perhaps you can elaborate.

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, Rich, thanks. I think we’re breaking those down. I think it’s a problem sometimes because it depends on who’s trained and where they are emerged from, and come up through the system, and don’t understand that this is a acumenical business, not a parochial business. We got to work together, and General Mastalir, who’s here with me in an operations business and space certainly understands that. But the whole idea was to break down the green door, bring those capabilities to the floor of the CAOC, and have them integrated. And we sent people down range for those purposes, and I said, “I never want somebody to say…” And I talked to the secretary about this yesterday. He was one of the technical advisors to Brian Arnold, and Brian Arnold was the commander of the Space and Missile System Center in Los Angeles.

And when I was commander of Air Force Space Command, I was the first single hat commander because of the Rumsfeld Commission that recommended and implemented, and I had my own, through a deal we made as a result of that, had my own acquisition arm in Air Force Space Command that resided with us so we were able to focus on… And sometimes we get in our own way here with all the engineering experts who are part of… I don’t mean to damn them, but sometimes I worried about, am I getting headlight metrics or I’m getting taillight metrics? Don’t come up to me after something happens and say, I wouldn’t have done that. That’s not very helpful. Why didn’t you tell me before? So, getting to headlight metrics based on the cumulative brain power of those that are part of that business, and I think they actually appreciate and approve the using their capabilities and support of the operational objectives, because after all, that’s what it’s about. It’s the operational objective.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, sir. General Feest, you’ve made a very good argument for why stealth was so important, low observable, if you will. It’s hard to believe that when you compare what we saw or we’re seeing in Ukraine-Russia conflict versus what Israeli and American forces recently executed against Iran, huge differences. Any thoughts on that?

Maj. Gen. Gregory Feest, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Technology builds on prior technology. So, the F-117 was based on 1970s, and we got the F-22 and the B-2. Newer technology. And if you remember, and General Deptula lives this, he still lives this, there are people that don’t think we need so many fighters. Why do we need the F-22 if we’re going to get the F-35? Why do we need the F-35 if we’re going to get the F-47? Why do we need this bomber if we’re getting a new bomber? And they don’t realize that if you don’t, you’re not going to have that technology to build off of. So, the F-22 was built, and we used that to develop the F-35 and make it better. And so, technology matters. And I’ll tell you what happened when we got home from Desert Storm, there was a lot of weather over there.

Well, there were no GPS bombs in Desert Storm. So, it was all laser guided. And the ROE was, if you do not see your target, you cannot drop your bomb. And so, a lot of times we didn’t drop our bombs. Now, at one point, General Glosson and General Deptula said, “Hey, if you can’t get to your real target, just find a bridge and take it out.” Okay, we can do that. Well, two weeks later, we got called and said, “Stop taking out all the bridges, we can’t get around, we won’t be able to get into Baghdad because you’re destroying all the bridges.” So, we weren’t allowed to do that anymore. So, we found other alternate targets to hit on the way home.

I told you about the antennas, and the other thing that we had was the GBU-27, which was the bunker buster built just for the 117. It had to be dropped below 10,000 feet, and I already told you what that was like. And the other thing was we could not drop two bombs at a time because the bay doors would open past vertical, and they’d have to go 135 degrees. So, the doors would hit each other, so we’d have to drop one, and if we wanted to re-attack, we’d have to go out and come back. That wasn’t fun either. But we did learn that if you went out for eight minutes, the AAA would stop. Either they ran out of ammo or their gun barrels got hot or they got bored, but they stopped shooting in the air so we could come back in.

So, after the war, Secretary of the Air Force, Donald Rice came to Nellis, and a few of us went down to talk to him, and he said, “What do you need for the next war?” We said, “We want an antenna that we can use so we can talk once we stealth up.” And that came up about being the [inaudible 00:33:03] antenna, which they got a few years later. We said, “We need a GPS guided bomb,” and next thing you know, JDAM’s there. We said, “We need better software so that those bay doors can only have to go 90 degrees, and we can dual door deliver on the same target at the same time. And we don’t want to be below 10,000 feet anymore.” And so, they changed the software. I don’t know who did it, but somebody did it. And I’ll tell you, the people that flew stealth in Allied Force… I’m sorry, what was the… Zagreb, Serbia, what was that one? Deliberate Force. Allied Force? Allied Force. Yeah, it was Allied Force.

The stealth fighter pilots that flew in there, I laughed because they talked about the AAA. They were dropping all their bombs from above 25,000 feet. And some AAA does get up there, but I said, yeah, I don’t want to hear about it. So, anyway, Rich, my bottom line is technology is good, and we need more of it, and keep making it, please.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Yes, sir. Thank you for that.

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

Rich, let me talk a little bit about GPS here just for a second, with respect to joint direct attack munitions. I said GPS and a 500 pounder with a GPS tail kit and the antenna, everything, I would remark that GPS put the dam in JDAM, dam, that was accurate. So we really were able to do some great work, working that, and that’s something that the operator said we need, like you said, and the system was able to help provide that because people were leaning forward to try to make sure that we supported the lethality of the airframe and certainly protect the pilots who were flying it. And I was proud of that moment, especially when Tommy Franks called from the AOR and said, “Get Baghdad Bob off the air, I can’t stand hearing that stuff.” So we put a 500 pounder through his antenna, worked out really pretty good.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. Thanks, sir. General Deptula, it’s hard to believe that we saw such dramatic positive outcomes in Desert Storm, but such challenged circumstances a decade later, in Afghanistan, as General Lord just talking about, and the invasion of Iraq. Thoughts on why one succeeded and the other fell short?

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Well, Richard, as you know, this could go on for an hour, but just seeing we have five minutes left, I’m going to tighten this up the best I can. In both cases, we didn’t start by defining what the desired outcomes of those conflicts were. In the case of Afghanistan, the combatant commander and US security leadership failed to recognize that we’d already accomplished our critical US national security objectives by the 31st of December, 2001. We’d removed the Taliban from governments in Afghanistan, a government was in place, it was friendly to the United States and our allies, and we’d removed the Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps out of Afghanistan. See you later, have a nice life. If you do it again, we’ll be back. But no, because the joint doctrine of the day was that it required a decisive force to lead to victory. What was a decisive force to Tommy Franks?

Hundreds of thousands of pairs of army boots on the ground. And when they got over there, they looked around and they said, well, now what do we do? Taliban’s gone, Al-Qaeda’s gone… I know let’s attack the root causes of terrorism. We can eliminate poverty and increase education for all. So, we started building schools for women and digging wells and villages, and tried to change a collection of 16th century tribes and move them into a modern Jeffersonian democracy. Folks, that is unobtainium, and it’s not a job for the United States military, and that’s why it failed. So, principles and back to effects… Effects is not tactics, techniques, and procedures, it’s a way, it’s a methodology of thinking about what it is that you want to do and then working backwards to figure out what are the best ways to accomplish those objectives. In the case of Iraq, circa 2003 + 10, 15 years, the critical decision there that was an enormous mistake was disbanding the Iraqi military because that then led to tribal reversion and the collapse of central authority. So, interest of time, I’ll stop there.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Yes, sir.

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

One comment quickly on… Because we did talk about, or at least I did, the revolution in military affairs, and as it emerges, the crossroads of technology and the capability to assess from airborne and AWACS, and our great allies, part of Article five, and the international support, and flying AWACS, and being able to see the battle from the air, and be able to make decisions as a result of that, that’s a continuous process and we’re getting better at it. We’ll be even better in the future, notwithstanding the fact that sometimes we jumble up what the objectives really are.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Because we put the wrong people in command.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Can’t argue that. Okay. Okay, gentlemen, you only have-

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Anybody say Tommy Franks?

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Exactly. Okay. Gentlemen, you have only a few minutes left, closing remarks, please, from each of you. General Lord, you go first.

Gen. Lance Lord, USAF (Ret.):

Well, the increasing competition in space, it’s no secret. Competitive, certainly congested, and in many ways, the competition, US and Russia and China, so to speak, are moving into that environment. So, space superiority for us and certainly for the air and space team is an important objective, thank you.

Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Well, I just summarized by saying, and hopefully this resonates with all of you, but the classic roles of aerospace power and land power have changed places when it comes to modern combat. Air and space power have proven themselves to be far more effective than ground combat in creating the necessary conditions for rapid offensive success.

So, students of war need to understand how to exploit the advantages of modern air and space power, because that’s the only way in which it can be optimized to meet our nation’s security challenges. And if we fail to understand how to best optimize air and space power, that’s going to have severe negative consequences for our nation. And that’s why I’m a bit passionate about when it comes to studying the outcomes and the methodologies of what led us to success in our last major regional conflict, and that was Desert Storm.

Maj. Gen. Gregory Feest, USAF (Ret.):

I just want to say it’s an honor to be on the stage with these two Air Force leaders sitting next to me. I want to thank all of you that are an industry out there that developed a capability that helps our war fighters, and for you war fighters, I wish I was younger and with you, but someday you’ll be older and you’ll be in the defense industry, building technology for the people that come after you. But thank you all for what you do.

Col. Richard Reynolds, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, gentlemen, for the great discussion. That concludes the presentation. Thank you all for coming.