The Iraqi Army began the Anglo-Iraqi War with a force of four divisions. The Iraqi senior staff is riddled with incompetents chosen not for military prowess but for allegiance to Hussein, according to American analysts. “And a lot is generic Soviet-Chinese kinds of stuff.”. Only about a third of the huge army’s soldiers are experienced, front-line combat troops. Beneath the high-quality surface are inventories that are indisputably second-tier: for each of the fearsome T-72 tanks in Iraq’s arsenal there are five outmoded T-54s. Nerve gas, spread by bombs or artillery, became a superior form of firepower to pin down and overrun defending forces. And in its current posture, dug in around Kuwait, it is an army on its firmest ground, a force that by experience and doctrine is most formidable on defense. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000 troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the US naval fleet in the Persian Gulf was placed on alert. At Hindiyah, 3rd Infantry Division troops clashed with another Guards unit, the Nebuchadnezzar Brigade, defending the town and a key bridge over the Euphrates River. By late September 1990 Iraq had 22 divisions in the theater -- 13 light and 9 heavy. Some independent brigades were operating under corps control. "It is dangerous to draw any parallels between this and Desert Storm," Abrams said. “They are too rigid, too slow to react.”. Epic clashes saw the Iraqi army deploy as many as 1,000 tanks and 1,000 pieces of artillery--a scale of battle not seen since World War II. Persian Gulf War, also called Gulf War, (1990–91), international conflict that was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. “Up until 1988, the performance of the army left a great deal to be desired. Authors Hooton and Cooper provide some basic history here. “They may wear regular army uniforms, but they are not warriors in any sense,” Cordesman said. A sandwich improves every hike, and in L.A., you can almost always find one not far from the other. At critical points in the military are people who are there because of political loyalty.”. The Iraqi army is an experienced, highly disciplined and well-equipped force--capable even of a complex helicopter-borne assault like the commando raid … On 2 August 1990 at 2:00 am, local time, by Saddam Hussein’s order Iraq launched an invasion of Kuwait with four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions (the 1st Hammurabi Armoured Division, 2nd al-Medinah al-Munawera Armoured Division, the Tawakalna ala-Allah Division (mechanised) and 4th Nebuchadnezzar Division (motorized infantry)) and special forces units equivalent to a full division. Ever since that 1980 invasion, the Iraqi people have been made to suffer to support the dictator’s huge war machine. Once the ground war began, the Republican Guard was the primary target. Iraq's then-powerful air force of about 800 aircraft included Soviet helicopters and 500 or more French and Soviet-built fighters and bombers, fitted to carry bombs and missiles including French-made Exocet anti-ship missiles. According to a U.S. official with access to intelligence reports on the attack, helicopter-borne Iraqi special forces flew ahead of the tank attack to capture Kuwait’s international airport and clear its runways for transport planes that followed. The quality of the Iraqi army’s officer corps reportedly has increased significantly in the last three years. Gen. Nazir al-Khazraji, Chief of Staff since 1985, was replaced by Gen. Hussein Rashid, commander of the elite Republican Guards. The Iraqis are already producing a ground-to-ground missile with a 400-mile range known as the Husayn, a variant of the Soviet Scud rocket. Following the First World War, Iraq came under the British Mandate as part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein , ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves, canceling a large debt Iraq owed Kuwait, and expanding Iraqi power in the region. The seven-week Desert Storm air campaign also wrecked Saddam's air force. Cordesman traces these problems directly to Hussein. Hussein’s insistence on total allegiance also reaches down to the lowest levels of his troops. On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi military conducted a 2-day campaign to annex Kuwait and claim the natural resources and land for Iraq. Eight of the 63 army divisions were the Republican Guard, Saddam's best trained and most loyal troops. “The command and control is over-centralized,” said Cordesman, the congressional expert. The ethnic composition of the Iraqi military mirrors that of the larger society, roughly 60% Shiite Muslims and 40% from the ruling Sunni sect. “Above that, there’s what I call a ‘rubber layer'--things bounce pretty crazy. The operation, much like vanguard operations in the U.S. invasion of Panama, allowed armored vehicles and assault troops to roll onto the runway and then attack the emir’s palace long before the main tank columns reached the capital. How a commune-like encampment in Echo Park became a flashpoint in L.A.’s homelessness crisis, A homeless encampment at Echo Park Lake has become a symbolically fraught case study of the rights to public spaces, From movies to gyms to eateries, here’s what will reopen in L.A. County on Monday. The Iraqi army is an experienced, highly disciplined and well-equipped force--capable even of a complex helicopter-borne assault like the commando raid 10 days ago that seized the emir’s palace in Kuwait city long before heavy tanks arrived to secure the captured capital. Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian-born journalist working for The Observer, the London weekly, had be… Chemical weapons, first envisioned as a last-ditch tool of defense, were adapted to the attack to help overcome a lack of maneuverability. Then the first Black ‘Bachelor’s’ season unraveled. A fifth was formed in 1959. During the war, their command and control was destroyed as well as their air force was destroyed prior to the ground war. By U.S. estimates, 1.1 million of them are already in the army and another 400,000 have been called for duty and are being assigned to military units. If that dissatisfaction--and the so-called “rubber layer"--sometimes leaves Iraqi forces poorly led, its army’s steel and iron generally more than make up for it. Iraq has 2.1 million able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 49. Allied air power and tank battalions decimated the armor-heavy Tawakalna and Medina divisions in battles along Kuwait's western flank. The Iraq defensive mind-set reflects a legacy of formal Soviet training that has long left Iraqi students obedient to an extreme. That fate may befall Hussein himself if he is humiliated in the current standoff against U.S. and allied forces. But, said Cordesman, “The flush of excitement is always followed by some sober thought. Saddam's military in 1990 was a highly experienced combat force, having emerged two years earlier as the nominal victor in an eight-year war with neighboring Iran. Baghdad's 900,000-member army was exceeded in size only by those of China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam. Shafaq News / It is known that Iraq's land has embraced some of the oldest civilizations known to mankind, as well as the first armies formed hundreds of years B.C. And the French-trained air force--while “the most competent in the Arab world,” according to Benjamin Lambeth, a RAND Corp. analyst--displayed against Iran a glaring lack of accuracy in its bombing and little aggressiveness in air-to-air battle. Allied strategists at the time rejoiced over one of those decisions _ to conceal hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces in fixed positions in the Kuwaiti desert, where they were vulnerable to cruising U.S. aircraft's thermal sensors and systematically destroyed in what resembled a giant Pac-Man video game. The weakness of this formidable array was "feeble logistics and a centralized system of command and control in which important decisions, even in the heat of battle, could be made only by Saddam personally," Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Desert Storm, wrote in his postwar memoirs, "It Doesn't Take a Hero.". Estimates of total casualties range from 1,000,000 to twice that number. That debt, Iraq’s argument’s with Kuwait over oil prices, and Saddam’s desire to use his military power in the region would lead to the 1990 invasion. The invasion began in the early hours of 2 August 1990 in a two-pronged attack. In the early morning hours of 2 August 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched an overwhelming invasion of tiny, oil-rich Kuwait. Its best tanks, the Soviet-built T-72s, once compared favorably with the Americans' Abrams and the British Challenger. More than any other country, Iraq is a nation under arms--a society dominated to an unparalleled degree by a war machine that consumes fully a quarter of the country’s oil-rich treasure and half of its able-bodied men. Baghdad is working on advanced naval mines and remote-piloted “drone” aircraft for battlefield surveillance. According to 1990 statistics, Iraq has 873,000 men between 18 and 22. Iraq’s air force is large but weak, its air defenses primitive by Western standards, its navy virtually non-existent. The Iraqi defensive strategy, however, was not prepared for the Coalition's offensive strategy. Hussein personally put a bullet through the officer’s head, according to U.S. accounts. At the top, the military has serious and longstanding problems, analysts said, starting with Hussein, a self-appointed field marshal who never served in the army. Those planes remain there today, along with about 50 held in other countries. As justification for the invasion, Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was historically a province of Iraq, a dubious assertion at best. Gen. Vincent Brooks, confirmed on Monday that the Army's V Corps had attacked elements of the Guards' Medina Division south of Baghdad with air and artillery. the United States Army. British Challenger tanks swiftly destroyed several T-55 tanks, a 1960s Soviet model, fleeing from Basra last week. By varying estimates, 500 to 700 of Iraq's original 1,800 T-72 tanks remain in service _ all with Republican Guard units. It also has about 2,000 older Soviet tanks, no match for allied armor. “Up through corps commander, they’re pretty good,” said a U.S. official who monitors the Middle East. "The numbers are not as relevant because he (Saddam) appears to be using an unconventional strategy that doesn't really rely on conventional capabilities.". These poorly trained and undisciplined troops were the cannon fodder of the Iran-Iraq War. They lobbed dozens of these inaccurate but terrifying missiles into Tehran in the late stages of their war with Iran during the so-called “War of the Cities.”. On August 2, 1990, at about 2 a.m. local time, Iraqi forces invade Kuwait, Iraq’s tiny, oil-rich neighbor. Hussein tolerates some competent corps and division commanders. A part of the museum since the early 1990s, the display features multiple photos and artifacts from the Gulf War, from a U.S. Army uniform from the era to U.S. and Iraqi … Then, as now, they had the best tanks, the Soviet T-72s with 125mm guns, while other units relied on Soviet armor dating from the 1960s. (Map 1) The United States Army, reveling in the end of the Cold War and on the verge of downsizing, faced a new and unexpected challenge. Despite the agreement to reduce oil production, tensions between the countries remained high. In the early hours of August 2, 1990, Iraq’s army under President Saddam Hussein launched an attack on neighbouring Kuwait. The Soviet Union spends between 15% and 20% of its economic output on arms; the United States devotes about 6% to the military, and Israel--Hussein’s sworn enemy--just under 15%. No one, however, is speaking of trying to dislodge the 150,000-member Iraqi force now dug into fortified positions in southern Kuwait. While U.S. commanders eventually conceded that only 15 percent of Iraqi combat aircraft _ about 75 planes _ were destroyed, about 100 were flown to Iran for safekeeping, only to be seized by the Iranians. #30,000 Egyptians in Army Iraq … They will not take them out in the open as they did during Desert Storm, analysts predict. Establishing a Hashemite Kingdom under Faisal, Iraq was granted independence i… In early July 1990, Iraq complained about Kuwait's behavior, such as not respecting their quota, and openly threatened to take military action. Hussein himself shot the general responsible for botching the critical battle for the Iranian city of Khorramshahr in 1982, the last major battle of the war fought on Iranian soil, officials said. The artillery also was mostly Soviet, but included the G-5, a beefed-up South African howitzer with a 23-mile range. The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 had changed the These 300,000 first-quality troops include 20 brigades of special forces who can carry out commando raids, perform reconnaissance and sabotage behind enemy lines and pull off nighttime lightning raids like the successful assault on the Kuwaiti palace Aug. 2. This military move gave Iraq control of 20% of the global oil supply. Beyond the regular army is a group estimated at as many as 850,000 members who can be quickly formed into a People’s Militia. They have also developed indigenous radar planes similar to the U.S. airborne warning and control system (AWACS) surveillance aircraft, although the planes are said to be of questionable quality. They are producing a rocket with a 35-mile range modeled on the Brazilian Astros 2, a copy of the Soviet Frog 7, and their own 55-mile-range Liath rocket that is reportedly capable of carrying a chemical warhead. Iraqi ground forces in the KTO included elements of up to 43 divisions, 25 of which are assessed as committed, 10 the operational reserve, and eight the strategic reserve. Fighting was ended by a 1988 cease-fire, though the resumption of normal diplomatic relations and the withdrawal of troops did not take place until 1990. All agree that the seizure of Kuwait was skillfully carried out. It’s dangerous to become too good a leader. Garrett Pochert, 28, lives in Midland with his wife, Madison. But according to other analysts, the value of the weapons may be less impressive than mere numbers would suggest. By 1990, with wartime expansion, the force had grown greatly to at least 56 divisions, making the Iraqi army the fourth largest army in the world and one of the strongest in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's decision to employ guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics can be explained by his army's huge disadvantage in weaponry. They showed very little tactical flexibility; very little ability to plan blitzkrieg type operations,” Carus said. Working with Yugoslav technicians, the Iraqis are also building a 30-mile-range surface-to-surface rocket known as the Ababil, which is designed to carry a sophisticated cluster-bomb warhead co-developed with the Chileans, Carus said. Iranian commanders often sought out militia troops for attack, knowing that they would run at the first sound of gunfire. The allied coalition is seeking to destroy the Republican Guard around Baghdad with a coordinated air and ground campaign. That confidence goes to the presumed ability of U.S. forces to repel an Iraqi attack. It had 6,000 tanks, 4,000 armored personnel carriers and 3,200 artillery pieces, most of it of Soviet bloc origin. Iraq's losses in armor and artillery would have been even worse, had not Iraq withdrawn some T-72s from Kuwait before the assault, and if the allies had not halted the fighting after 100 hours, enabling a large number of Republican Guard units to escape with their tanks and armored personnel carriers. The army’s loyalty to Hussein is enforced by a code that imposes death for failure, with one sadly blundering general executed by the dictator himself in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War. It also began using medium-range rockets it had bought or developed to pulverize Iranian cities, and that missile force has grown in both numbers and quality, Carus said. “The guy is very calculating, very smart and in a way, very charismatic. Iraq attacked Kuwait in the early morning on 2 August 1990 with more than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers spearheaded by three armored divisions of the Republican Guard. In its top-line stockpile are battle-tested weapons that have earned stellar reputations in the decade’s few wars: the Soviet T-72 tank, the Chinese Silkworm missile, the French Mirage fighter and the Exocet tactical missile, which almost sank the U.S. guided-missile frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf in 1987. At 2 a.m. on August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.

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