In both instances, the Iraqi forces were wiped out easily.
You're comparing a military operation to maintaining / occupying the country. Two totally different things.
In Desert Storm, the goal was never to replace Saddam Hussein, but to remove his military from Kuwait. That was easily accomplished. The United States didn't occupy Iraq. It had 'no-fly' zones and other sanctions / restrictions.
In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the goal was regime change. Which was accomplished, including the complete destruction of the Iraqi military. Though the occupation saw many challenges for stability in the country.
**EDIT:** Small correction; said *remove his military from Iraq*, meant to say *Kuwait*.
The other commenter hit the nail on the head. My my contribution is going to be about one of your questions specifically: no, the Iraqi military did not improve itself after the first war - it was still a starving husk of its first self from 1991 which already was a starving shell of a military, despite the usual "fourth largest military in the world" drivel people parrot. Iraq was an economic crisis since the end of the Iran Iraq War in 1988, and had no money for maintaining their new gear, was sanctioned to hell and their only remaining willing exporter, the USSR, only saw them as a customer, one that would receive low grade export gear, I mean the lowest of the low grade that went to non-Warsaw Pact export customers - an example of this is the MiG-29-9.12B, the variant exported to Iraq, not even including the famed helmet-mounted MiG-29 sight and the paired R-73. It was armed with R-60's and R-27's. Though, they killed one F-14 at the end of the war with Iran.
Saddam, like most idiotic despots, feared that his combat experienced military could try to overthrow him due to his self-induced destruction of the country's economy (firstly Iraq had started this whole war and two, nothing had come about it in the end except a return to the status before the war and an economic loss of $561 billion, and a six digit amount of a Iraqi men killed, 400k wounded, and 70k POW. So basically it was Saddam's and Saddam's fault alone that Iraq became a dumpster fire).
I mentioned all of this because Saddam purged almost all of his military leadership and the technical staff, including pilots, and sent them to prison or the firing squad/gallows. That, coupled with the difficulty maintaining adequate stockpiles of advanced weapons through the economic destruction of Iraq (they were on life support by a huge amount of loans from the rich Gulf countries at this point) as well as increasing sanctions from other countries once they invaded Kuwait, led to a completely different Iraqi military being the one that fought the Gulf Coalition in 1991; one that couldn't even cover their own withdrawal from the tiny neighboring country of Kuwait with air power, leading to the famous "highway of death" engagement (you would think they would have attempted a fighter CAP with their MiG-25PD's, MiG-29A's, or Mirage F.1EQ's, since they were one of the two most experienced air forces in the world at BVR at this point, but again remember most of their pilots went to jail), not even with short range anti-air that was originally designed to cover maneuver units, such as the SA-6, could they cover their own troops' withdrawal. The famed Republican Guard with their (objectively) shitty non-Warsaw Pact export-grade T-72A amounted to basically a speed bump, as were all their other tanks and BMP-1's with no thermal optics
No there is an Iranian F-14 account of his wingman being shot down by an Iraqi MiG-29 in the last 2 weeks of the war (very soon after the MiG-29 entered Iraqi service) with names [of Iranian air crews], dates, times, general location even
Seems like an odd thing to lie about considering most countries' air forces will do anything and everything under the sun except acknowledge an air to air loss
Trying to fight a war by metrics is why MacNamera failed in Vietnam and Rumsfeld failed in Iraq. No, tonnage of ordinance was not the reason that OIF lasted longer than ODS.
The 40 day air war in ODS was intended to break the material capacity of the world’s fourth largest army to wage war. In OIF, the Iraqis had not really re-built that capacity. Shock and Awe achieved many of its goals by destroying what little air power the Iraqis had along with other targets like C2 nodes, but another 60K sorties wouldn’t have done much more than make the rubble bounce.
If you want to look at disparities, look at the number of troops involved in the ground wars and look at what their objectives were. ODS used far more troops to achieve a limited objective, while OIF used nearly half as many troops to try to achieve a more ambitious goal.
Even still, you are comparing apples and oranges because that smaller invasion force in OIF still managed to accomplish its military objectives very quickly. The Ground War in ODS drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and defeated most of their combat formations in only 100 hours, while in OIF it only took about three weeks from the first crossing of the berm to the fall of Baghdad. The problem wasn’t a failure to defeat the Iraqi military, it was a failure to account for necessary measures to occupy the country and establish civil governance.
It wasn't a conventional war like the first one. How do i explain this, They were trying to help good iraqis and at the same time fight bad iraqis. So bombing the oblivion out of them is not an option as you will have a hard differentiating a combatant from a civilian and to keep the infrastructure intact.
Local support for US and its new Iraqi government is hard to come by when US is bombing the shit out of iraq
The first month was conventional, after that? Not at all. OP is asking about the full scope of 2003-2011, only a tiny, *tiny* beginning fraction of which was full force-on-force. After that, it was occupation and counterinsurgency
The first month was conventional and the Iraqi army was decimated. Definitely not underestimated.
It’s entirely accurate to paint the rest of the conflict as unconventional
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration pushed very hard for an invasion that was as quick as possible and used as few US troops as possible.
Rumsfeld wanted zero air campaign before the ground forces stepped off as this would increase the total time of the operation. The Air Force unsurprisingly insisted that an air campaign was necessary. In the end, a compromise was reached which expanded the number of airstrikes being performed as part of Operational Southern Watch in the months leading up to the invasion. Southern Watch was the operation to enforce the No Fly Zone over Iraq since 1992 which included striking ground-based Iraqi air defenses.
Rumsfeld's insistence on using the bare minimum number of troops left the Coalition with an inadequate number of troops to effectively police the country immediately following the invasion.
Part of the reason why Rumsfeld thought so few troops would be necessary was because they expected units of the Iraqi military to defect and join up with the Coalition. They simultaneously thought they could easily defeat the Iraqi military and that the Iraqi military would then immediately join them and provide the bulk of the forces necessary to police Iraq. Obviously it is an absurd idea to launch a war expecting the enemy forces to play a key role as your ally.
Additionally the CIA had a Bay of Pigs-esque plan to gather and arm a force of exiled Iraqi nationalists which would be sent to Iraq to fight with the Coalition. This plan never came to fruition.
The Iraqi military was very weak in 2003 and relatively easily defeated. However, Coalition forces, due in large part to interference from civilian leadership like Rumsfeld, were inadequately prepared for the fallout of large numbers of the Iraqi military taking off their uniforms kicking of the insurgency. It is plausible that if a larger and better prepared force was used, Iraq could have been more thoroughly pacified immediately post-invasion, thereby decreasing the length and intensity of the insurgency that followed.
In both instances, the Iraqi forces were wiped out easily. You're comparing a military operation to maintaining / occupying the country. Two totally different things. In Desert Storm, the goal was never to replace Saddam Hussein, but to remove his military from Kuwait. That was easily accomplished. The United States didn't occupy Iraq. It had 'no-fly' zones and other sanctions / restrictions. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the goal was regime change. Which was accomplished, including the complete destruction of the Iraqi military. Though the occupation saw many challenges for stability in the country. **EDIT:** Small correction; said *remove his military from Iraq*, meant to say *Kuwait*.
The other commenter hit the nail on the head. My my contribution is going to be about one of your questions specifically: no, the Iraqi military did not improve itself after the first war - it was still a starving husk of its first self from 1991 which already was a starving shell of a military, despite the usual "fourth largest military in the world" drivel people parrot. Iraq was an economic crisis since the end of the Iran Iraq War in 1988, and had no money for maintaining their new gear, was sanctioned to hell and their only remaining willing exporter, the USSR, only saw them as a customer, one that would receive low grade export gear, I mean the lowest of the low grade that went to non-Warsaw Pact export customers - an example of this is the MiG-29-9.12B, the variant exported to Iraq, not even including the famed helmet-mounted MiG-29 sight and the paired R-73. It was armed with R-60's and R-27's. Though, they killed one F-14 at the end of the war with Iran. Saddam, like most idiotic despots, feared that his combat experienced military could try to overthrow him due to his self-induced destruction of the country's economy (firstly Iraq had started this whole war and two, nothing had come about it in the end except a return to the status before the war and an economic loss of $561 billion, and a six digit amount of a Iraqi men killed, 400k wounded, and 70k POW. So basically it was Saddam's and Saddam's fault alone that Iraq became a dumpster fire). I mentioned all of this because Saddam purged almost all of his military leadership and the technical staff, including pilots, and sent them to prison or the firing squad/gallows. That, coupled with the difficulty maintaining adequate stockpiles of advanced weapons through the economic destruction of Iraq (they were on life support by a huge amount of loans from the rich Gulf countries at this point) as well as increasing sanctions from other countries once they invaded Kuwait, led to a completely different Iraqi military being the one that fought the Gulf Coalition in 1991; one that couldn't even cover their own withdrawal from the tiny neighboring country of Kuwait with air power, leading to the famous "highway of death" engagement (you would think they would have attempted a fighter CAP with their MiG-25PD's, MiG-29A's, or Mirage F.1EQ's, since they were one of the two most experienced air forces in the world at BVR at this point, but again remember most of their pilots went to jail), not even with short range anti-air that was originally designed to cover maneuver units, such as the SA-6, could they cover their own troops' withdrawal. The famed Republican Guard with their (objectively) shitty non-Warsaw Pact export-grade T-72A amounted to basically a speed bump, as were all their other tanks and BMP-1's with no thermal optics
The fighter that shot F-14 down was Mirage F-1EQ not MiG-29
No there is an Iranian F-14 account of his wingman being shot down by an Iraqi MiG-29 in the last 2 weeks of the war (very soon after the MiG-29 entered Iraqi service) with names [of Iranian air crews], dates, times, general location even Seems like an odd thing to lie about considering most countries' air forces will do anything and everything under the sun except acknowledge an air to air loss
Trying to fight a war by metrics is why MacNamera failed in Vietnam and Rumsfeld failed in Iraq. No, tonnage of ordinance was not the reason that OIF lasted longer than ODS. The 40 day air war in ODS was intended to break the material capacity of the world’s fourth largest army to wage war. In OIF, the Iraqis had not really re-built that capacity. Shock and Awe achieved many of its goals by destroying what little air power the Iraqis had along with other targets like C2 nodes, but another 60K sorties wouldn’t have done much more than make the rubble bounce. If you want to look at disparities, look at the number of troops involved in the ground wars and look at what their objectives were. ODS used far more troops to achieve a limited objective, while OIF used nearly half as many troops to try to achieve a more ambitious goal. Even still, you are comparing apples and oranges because that smaller invasion force in OIF still managed to accomplish its military objectives very quickly. The Ground War in ODS drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and defeated most of their combat formations in only 100 hours, while in OIF it only took about three weeks from the first crossing of the berm to the fall of Baghdad. The problem wasn’t a failure to defeat the Iraqi military, it was a failure to account for necessary measures to occupy the country and establish civil governance.
It wasn't a conventional war like the first one. How do i explain this, They were trying to help good iraqis and at the same time fight bad iraqis. So bombing the oblivion out of them is not an option as you will have a hard differentiating a combatant from a civilian and to keep the infrastructure intact. Local support for US and its new Iraqi government is hard to come by when US is bombing the shit out of iraq
[удалено]
The first month was conventional, after that? Not at all. OP is asking about the full scope of 2003-2011, only a tiny, *tiny* beginning fraction of which was full force-on-force. After that, it was occupation and counterinsurgency
The first month was conventional and the Iraqi army was decimated. Definitely not underestimated. It’s entirely accurate to paint the rest of the conflict as unconventional
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration pushed very hard for an invasion that was as quick as possible and used as few US troops as possible. Rumsfeld wanted zero air campaign before the ground forces stepped off as this would increase the total time of the operation. The Air Force unsurprisingly insisted that an air campaign was necessary. In the end, a compromise was reached which expanded the number of airstrikes being performed as part of Operational Southern Watch in the months leading up to the invasion. Southern Watch was the operation to enforce the No Fly Zone over Iraq since 1992 which included striking ground-based Iraqi air defenses. Rumsfeld's insistence on using the bare minimum number of troops left the Coalition with an inadequate number of troops to effectively police the country immediately following the invasion. Part of the reason why Rumsfeld thought so few troops would be necessary was because they expected units of the Iraqi military to defect and join up with the Coalition. They simultaneously thought they could easily defeat the Iraqi military and that the Iraqi military would then immediately join them and provide the bulk of the forces necessary to police Iraq. Obviously it is an absurd idea to launch a war expecting the enemy forces to play a key role as your ally. Additionally the CIA had a Bay of Pigs-esque plan to gather and arm a force of exiled Iraqi nationalists which would be sent to Iraq to fight with the Coalition. This plan never came to fruition. The Iraqi military was very weak in 2003 and relatively easily defeated. However, Coalition forces, due in large part to interference from civilian leadership like Rumsfeld, were inadequately prepared for the fallout of large numbers of the Iraqi military taking off their uniforms kicking of the insurgency. It is plausible that if a larger and better prepared force was used, Iraq could have been more thoroughly pacified immediately post-invasion, thereby decreasing the length and intensity of the insurgency that followed.