Gulf War Air Power Survey; Volume II, Operations and Effects and Effectiveness

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993. Presumed first edition/first printing thus. Trade paperback. Good. Various paginations (approximately 800 pages). Maps. Illustrations. Footnotes. Some cover wear noted. Sticker residue on back cover. Each of the two reports contained herein retained pagination independent of the other. Accordingly, the table of contents for each report accompanies each report. Footnotes. Glossary. The Gulf War Air Power Survey was published as a Summary Report and five numbered volumes. VOLUME II ONLY is what is offered for sale. The Gulf War Air Power Survey is a report commissioned by the United States Air Force in 1993 to document and analyze its performance during the 1991 Gulf War. It consists of five sections each averaging over 700 pages, and a 276-page summary report. It was one of the most popular reports issued by the U.S. military at the time. On 22 August 1991, then Secretary of the Air Force Donald B. Rice commissioned an independent study "to review all aspects of air warfare in the Persian Gulf". Rather than a historical account, it analyses the operational level of the air war, in which 52,788 sorties were carried out, resulting in 41,309 strikes. The study was directed by Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, and the research and writing was carried out by teams consisting of civilians and retired and active military officers. From 16 January through 28 February 1991, the United States and its allies conducted one of the most operationally successful wars in history, a conflict in which air operations played a preeminent role. The Gulf War Air Power Survey was commissioned to review all aspects of air warfare in the Persian Gulf for use by the United States Air Force. The Survey has produced reports on planning, the conduct of operations, the effects of the air campaign, command and control, logistics, air base support, space, weapons and tactics, as well as a chronology and a compendium of statistics on the war.
The Survey was an attempt to provide a comprehensive and documented account of the war. It is not a definitive history: that will await the passage of time and the opening of sources (Iraqi records, for example) that were not available to Survey researchers. Nor is it a summary of lessons learned: other organizations, including many within the Air Force, have already done that. Rather, the Survey provides an analytical and evidentiary point of departure for future studies of the air campaign. It concentrates on an analysis of the operational level of war in the belief that this level of warfare is at once one of the most difficult to characterize and one of the most important to understand.
The Survey was directed by Dr. Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and was staffed by a mixture of civilian and military analysts. It was divided into task forces, most of which were run by civilians working temporarily for the Air Force. Throughout, the Survey strived to conduct its research in a spirit of impartiality and scholarly rigor. Its members had as their standard the observation of Mr. Franklin D'Olier, chairman of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey during and after the Second World War:
"We wanted to burn into everybody's souls that fact that the survey's responsibility . . . was to ascertain facts and to seek truth, eliminating completely any preconceived theories or dogmas."
This Volume consists of two reports. The first, Operations, focuses on the employment of air power as part of the Coalitions military efforts to destroy Iraq's military forces and potential, and to liberate Kuwait; in this framework, it examines objectives and dissects problems associated with air operations. The second report, Effects and Effectiveness, surveys the accomplishments of Coalition air power at the operational level relative to the military and political objectives for which the war was fought.