![\"Fox\u2019s](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Fox-prelaunch-1500x1200.jpg.jpg\")
Pretty quickly, Fox realized things would be rough all day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we were going into Iraq, it was clear there were Iraqi air force airplanes airborne,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His group came in from south to north, and they had four F-14 Tomcats to handle any air-to-air threats. Prowlers flew alongside, with electronic countermeasures officers working to keep the Hornets safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
High-speed anti-radiation missiles started coming in behind Fox and the other pilots and going over the top of their planes, looking for radar-equipped defense systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fox had his bombs, but also air-to-air ordnance. The Tomcats did not have the benefit of the jamming aircraft, so they were flying tangentially, staying outside the missile engagement zone while providing a less-important target than the F-18s to the Iraqi radar operators on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the meantime, we\u2019re coming straight up,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The E2 Hawkeye pilot\u2014who flew high above for traffic control and to watch for problems\u2014warned the jets they had company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHey, they\u2019re bandits!\u201d Fox heard through his headset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Known hostile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The E2 guided the pilots with the use of a \u201cbullseye\u201d\u2014that day, it was called \u201cManny,\u201d and it was an airfield about 15 miles from the bigger air base, H3. Everyone flew relative to Manny, and that\u2019s how the Hawkeye let the pilots know where the bandits were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2018Bandits, Manny, one-eight-five, 25 southbound,\u2019\u201d Fox said. \u201cWhich means, \u2018OK, there are bandits\u2014known bad guys\u2014south of H3 northwest heading 25 miles.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which meant they were close. But the pilots hadn\u2019t trained much on the bullseye concept in the 1980s, Fox said. Instead, they had used their ship\u2014referred to as \u201cZulu\u201d\u2014as the bullseye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re doing this kind of mental math, this mental basketball, \u2018OK, where are those guys?\u2019\u201d Fox said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s the first day of war. Pucker factor is pretty high.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air War<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
People tend to remember Desert Storm as a short, easy war\u2014and compared with the \u201cforever\u201d wars that followed, that makes sense: a 100-hour ground war blip in the annals of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the people who lived through it remember it differently: Months of preparation preceded a month-and-a-half-long air war that left 33 American pilots and their crew members dead. Iraqi pilots had trained with Soviet pilots, as well as fighting in an eight-year war with Iran, leaving them better prepared to fight than anyone expected. And complications in the Middle East\u2014from dust storms to pitch-black nights to unfamiliarity with unstudied territory\u2014presented constant challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The air war lasted from the day of Fox\u2019s encounter with the bandits, Jan. 17, until Feb. 28, 1991, with coalition forces dropping 88,000 tons of munitions during more than 100,000 sorties. They decimated Saddam Hussein\u2019s air force, bombing shelters Hussein thought would be impervious to attack. The pilots proved to Hussein that he couldn\u2019t win in the air over Kuwait, took out key defenses and command-and-control centers, ensured troops on the ground wouldn\u2019t be hit by enemy aircraft, and then supported the ground war from Feb. 24 until Feb. 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without constant training, U.S. pilots say they would have accomplished none of that. But without the benefit of combat-experienced service members after years of peace, there was no one at the unit level to prepare them for the momentum of war, as well as the heartache that followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hussein invaded Kuwait Aug. 2, 1990, and within days, President George H.W. Bush deployed U.S. troops, ultimately more than 500,000\u2014including hundreds of pilots\u2014to move into the Persian Gulf for a six-month build-up of a tank war built upon Cold War training for the Fulda Gap and an attack from the Soviets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was known as Desert Shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as it turned out, the Iraqi military had been trained by and gained equipment from the Soviets, including an array of helicopters and jet fighters. Iraq had invaded Iran in 1980, using Soviet-era equipment, but as the country gained support in its fight against the Ayatollah Khomeini\u2019s hardline government, the United States under President Ronald Reagan supported Hussein with money and equipment, such as howitzers and Huey helicopters, sold through Jordan and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Iran-Iraq war ended in a ceasefire negotiated by the United Nations Aug. 21, 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of the United States\u2019 involvement, the warfighters going into the Persian Gulf to fight Hussein had a pretty good idea of what they were up against\u2014and they had trained against Soviet tactics for generations. Still, Iraq had the fourth-largest army in the world, and Iraqi pilots had years of combat experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the Americans hadn\u2019t trained for everything: Smoke from oil fires lit by Hussein grew so thick that the sun disappeared and pilots had a hard time seeing past the beaks of their planes. The sand hindered helicopter landings as it rose up in gritty, blinding clouds. And the Iraqi pilots turned out to be much more advanced than anyone expected\u2014working in coordinated attacks to trick American pilots into dangerous airspace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Hussein missed the deadline to pull out of Kuwait, Desert Shield became Desert Storm on Jan. 16, 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States set up hospital ships and field hospitals along the Iraqi-Saudi Arabia border in preparation for a blood bath. News reports stated military leaders expected 10,000 American deaths in the first week of battle\u2014which is what the pilots and ground troops read in the copies of Stars and Stripes passed from person to person in the days before the Desert Storm started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The war was historic: Iraq lost 259 aircraft, with 36 being shot down. The United States lost 63, with 33 to combat. And 148 Americans were killed in action, with another 145 losses to nonhostile actions, such as vehicle accidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maj. Marie Therese Rossi-Cayton was the first woman to serve as an aviation unit commander in combat, and she died in that role when her CH-47 Chinook hit an unlit microwave tower while she was flying at night on March 1, 1991, in Saudi Arabia. And Brenda Robinson, the first Black female Navy pilot, also flew in Desert Storm. She flew mail, passengers and cargo to aircraft carriers. The women who served in that war led, in part, to the 1993 lifting of the combat exclusion policy, which kept women from serving in combat roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Desert Storm also signaled the beginning of modern warfare for pilots, as the first stealth bombers were launched, GPS (sometimes) helped pilots make their way across landmarkless terrain, and smart bombs sought out targets if pilots could get them in the general vicinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 30,000 and 100,000 Iraqi fighters were killed, most during the air war, and an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians also died from wounds or lack of food and water, as well as medical supplies, because of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three pilots\u2014an Army Kiowa helicopter pilot: Fred Wellman; an Air Force Thunderbird pilot: Cesar Rodriguez; and Fox\u2014told The War Horse recently about their experiences 30 years ago this week, but spoke as if the battles they faced were yesterday. They talked about the missiles they launched, the friends they lost, the lessons they learned, and the personal battles they\u2019ve fought in the years since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All three said they never expected a desert war, and that they found themselves scared, ready, well-trained, and surprised by the skills of their opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI Will Not Return Unavenged\u201d\u201458th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Air Force<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Retired Air Force Col. Cesar Rodriguez had no idea he wanted to be a pilot. His father, a career Army officer who retired as a lieutenant colonel, had served in Vietnam, but he never talked about it, Rodriguez said. But Rodriguez learned through his father\u2019s service to love traveling and the \u201cpersonalities\u201d he met, and he knew that he wanted to join the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI didn\u2019t have a passion to fly as a kid growing up,\u201d he said. \u201cI really literally fell into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, Rodriguez took a series of tests to see what he might do well in\u2014and his Air Force scores were high. He shifted out of the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program and into the Air Force program, and he eventually qualified for flight school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the Citadel and at flight training, Rodriguez figured he\u2019d never see more than a skirmish: There would be no World War III, and he would spend his career fighting the Cold War, which would consist of a dance to avoid war with the Soviet Union\u2014which the Soviet Union also appeared to want to avoid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought that the \u2018war of all wars\u2019 had been fought, and the country would never be tested or reach out like the Vietnam era.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, and Rodriguez flew his A-10 Warthog to the northern coast of Japan to look for bodies. That, he said, was when he realized just how real his mission was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while his service drove a need to understand both the news and the military\u2019s role in it, he said he didn\u2019t know much about the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI remember when we prepared for our combat missions certifications\u2014our qual tests\u2014all of our scenarios that were given to us by the Air Force and others were really all Cold War-Eastern European-type of approaches,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody ever even thought we would be engaged in the Middle East. And lo and behold, that\u2019s where we ended up going. Our squadron didn\u2019t even have any maps of the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When they got the call to deploy, he was leading a detachment at a flying exercise at Gulfport, Mississippi. His eight F-15s flew against about 24 Missouri Air National Guard F-4E Phantom IIs. Because of new technology in the F-15s that the other pilots didn\u2019t have, Rodriguez\u2019s team was close to undefeatable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe took them all out,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a great week for us as a squadron, as a team\u2014and that night was going to be one hell of a party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when he landed, another officer killed his plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHey, Rico, party\u2019s off,\u201d the officer told him. \u201cAll your bags are being packed up. \u2026 I said, \u2018OK, what\u2019s going on?\u2019 He says, \u2018I don\u2019t know.\u2019 We just we were told, \u2018Get home ASAP.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At that point, everyone started to check the news to see what they might be in for, he said. When they arrived back home at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida\u2014the home of the 58th Tactical Fighter Squadron\u2014the flight line was \u201cbustling\u201d with activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the end of August, they were in Saudi Arabia. After they landed, they immediately put the jets on alert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe started flying missions, in what we called defensive counter-air missions, where certain assets were airborne\u2014AWACs, AB-Triple-Cs, Rivit Joints, obviously, tankers, U2s\u2014all those assets that were literally trying to start gathering data of the enemy, air and land orders of battle. They were in the air, so we were up there protecting them 24 hours after our jets landed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because it was 1990, every day, Rodriguez\u2019s air tasking order came on a floppy disk flown in by a Learjet. They had to print out the order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maps weren\u2019t as big of an issue for his squadron because they flew high\u2014at 30,000 or 40,000 feet, so they weren\u2019t looking for landmarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Rodriguez said that while he wasn\u2019t familiar with the Middle East, he had been training\u2014particularly during the two or three trips a year to Red Flag training at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada\u2014against exactly the weaponry of the Iraqis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the ground, intel worked hard to get the pilots what they needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEverybody used every resource available to us to help us build situational awareness of what could be up there,\u201d he said. \u201cAs well as what were the real current Russian capabilities that were there, to include knowing that at some point, we could also be fighting against Russian pilots. So we planned for the worst. And then planned again on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Iraqi pilots also surprised him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would say first and foremost, that I\u2019m pretty sure that they all woke up 100% committed to defending their nation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And some of them knew how to do their jobs well and had proved it in the war against Iran, but with the training Rodriguez\u2019s team had had, \u201cI\u2019ll just say it bluntly: We would have kicked anybody\u2019s butt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was confident about his team, and he was confident about his own flying abilities, but each new experience in combat proved different from anything he had done in peacetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce everybody disconnected from my com system, and it was just me inside the cockpit \u2026 when I was in my quiet zone, I was\u2014I\u2019ll just use the term bluntly\u2014I was scared shitless,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause you don\u2019t know. You don\u2019t know if there\u2019s going to be another guy or gal on the other side who has prepared harder than I did. You don\u2019t know if there\u2019s the lucky BB, the lucky bullet. I\u2019ve seen and I have good friends who died in peacetime. Well, here we are going into combat. And that can happen to you too. So yeah, \u2018scared\u2019 was a part of my ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he remembered the everyday rituals that apply in peacetime and combat, and he used them to calm himself. And, he trusted his training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jan. 19, three days after the air war began Baghdad-time, would prove to be the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rodriguez and his team flew out on a defensive counter-air mission to protect U.S. Intelligence assets south of the Iraq border at high noon on another clear blue day. It was almost blindingly bright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd then a new target popped up that had not been identified before,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the airplanes that were on alert status on different bases around the region came together, and we went and attacked this particular target.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They found themselves flying 60 or 70 miles southwest of Baghdad. The Iraqis, using pilots as well as integrated air defense systems and missile defenses, tried to defeat the alliance pilots, but, \u201cWe were able to neutralize that piece of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then the situation changed significantly as experienced Iraqi pilots tried to draw Rodriguez and his wingman, Craig \u201cMole\u201d Underhill, into a trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy wingman and I engaged two MiG-29s that were using a highly sophisticated tactic to both attack us, and then also lure us into running into their integrated air missile defenses,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cSo, a complex tactic that many would have probably said, \u2018Now, there\u2019s no way they could do that.\u2019 And then, oh by the way, on the 19th of January, they\u2019re doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, the two pilots didn\u2019t understand the additional danger\u2014they simply took on the MiGs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy wingman shot down one of them with an AIM-7 Sparrow\u201d\u2014a radar-homing air-to-air missile\u2014\u201dand the other one, I was in a visual maneuvering dogfight\u201d\u2014a close-range, one-on-one air battle\u2014\u201dwith him, and it forced him to execute his last maneuver into a \u2018split S\u2019\u201d\u2014as he flew away from Rodriguez, the Iraqi pilot, Captain Jameel Sayhood, rolled upside down, pointed his nose to the ground, and tried to level out to come back at Rodriguez, but he was too low\u2014\u201dwhich basically caused him to crash into the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n During their debrief, the two American pilots learned that it had been a coordinated attack, designed to bring them into the Iraqi integrated air missile defenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of their training, because of the thousands of times they had performed the same maneuvers in peacetime practice sessions, they had completed their mission \u201cpretty much flawlessly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the third day and Rodriguez\u2019s sixth sortie. But he wasn\u2019t done yet. During those days, he slept as close to his jet as he could because he didn\u2019t want to waste any time driving from place to place when he could catch extra sleep. He barely ate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was just grinding, day in and day out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Jan. 26, he prepared for another daytime mission, but this time, sand storms rolled across the northern border area between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. When the sandstorms didn\u2019t force grit into every surface, thunderstorms took over. Rodriguez and his squadron flew in and out of clouds all day, and they found themselves in bad weather as they formed for an engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They made their way to the threat, but they also searched for clear skies, eventually working down from 35,000 feet to about 15,000 feet, in and out of thunderstorms and clouds and rainstorms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce we got below 17 or 18,000 feet, it was just rain down below us\u2014it was pretty easy to see,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capt. Rhory \u201cHoser\u201d Draeger served as the flight lead on that mission, and Capt. Bruce Till served as his wingman. Both Rodriguez and Draeger had one air-to-air kill as they headed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018You know, you and Rhory sounded eerily calm,\u2019\u201d Rodriguez recalled that Till said. \u201cAnd I was scared to bejesus in my cockpit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As they monitored the west side of Baghdad, the F-15s went up against three MiG-23 Floggers coming out of the airfields to the west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt appeared they wanted either to get into Baghdad or fly into Iran,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what their flight plan was really telling them to do. \u2026 But if I had to go through a flight of four F-15s to get to my next either refueling station or my next dinner, I would kind of reach down and kiss my ass goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At about 11 or 12 miles out, they could see the MiGs, and they hit them with AIM Sparrow missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhether they knew to be looking for us, or they could see us, I don\u2019t know that one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a mission in Kosovo, Rodriguez would be one of three pilots to get three air-to-air hits\u2014the most hits since the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After that day, his squadron had several more kills, even as the air war drew down at the end of January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI guess in the vernacular of air-to-air squadrons, we were the lucky ones,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cWe had the highest number of air-to-air kills in the war for everybody. We had the highest number of pilots with multiple kills. And we were the smallest squadron as far as number of airplanes in the air campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He attributes their success, including a \u201c98.9% launch rate for every mission that we were tasked to support,\u201d to the people on the ground making sure he could fly\u2014everyone from mechanics to cooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the ground troops were set to roll in, pilots started to receive intelligence about the booby traps Hussein had placed just about everywhere\u2014from ship mines in the Persian Gulf to the tank and toe-popper mines laid for the ground troops. On a mission, he saw canals that had been filled with oil that Hussein planned to ignite\u2014the Saddam Line, which would need to be blown up with incendiary bombs dropped by C-130s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd then, of course, we started to see the desert on fire,\u201d he said, referring to the oil wells Hussein had set aflame. \u201cFrom the sky, the answer is, \u2018It sure sucks to be down there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the air war turned into the ground war and the pilots moved into more of a support role, Rodriguez knew the battle was just beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was very clear from my chair at 30 and 40,000 feet looking down,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is not over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFirst to Fight\u201d\u201424th Infantry Division (Mechanized), Army<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Retired Army Lt. Col. Fred Wellman had wanted to be anywhere but a heavy mechanized division. He wanted action, and Panama, Libya, and Granada had all been skirmishes that had no time for tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, as a 23-year-old lieutenant, he led a scout platoon of Bell OH-58 Kiowa helicopters in an Apache battalion in the 24th Infantry Battalion (Mechanized).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI remember actually getting into a discussion with my battalion commander, when I first got assigned to the Apache battalion, saying that I needed to get out of there and get to a light infantry battalion like 7th ID because no, we\u2019re never going to have a tank war again,\u201d Wellman told The War Horse. \u201cYou gotta love the hubris of a lieutenant from West Point: I was that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three platoons in, Wellman was champing at the bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe must look back and think, \u2018What a fucking idiot,\u2019\u201d Wellman said, laughing. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really envision a huge set-piece tank war in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wellman\u2019s father had served in the Marines during World War II; he lost one uncle with the Marines in Korea, and a second was an Air Force pilot who died when his bomber crashed. With that background, Wellman knew he wanted to serve and applied to West Point. Like many of that generation, he worried that he\u2019d never get a chance to prove himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He had been stationed in Fort Stewart living in an apartment by the airfield when Panama went down a year before Desert Storm, and he could hear the Rangers flying out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in August 1990, he got a call to come into work in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell, the rest is history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His fianc\u00e9e had just moved down from New York, and they were moving into a new apartment together, so they didn\u2019t have cable yet. He went to another lieutenant\u2019s apartment to watch TV and hang out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hussein invaded Kuwait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[My friend] and I were sitting on the floor, drinking a beer, and we look at each other,\u201d Wellman said. \u201cI said, \u2018You know, man, all our shit\u2019s painted tan.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They had just returned from desert training at the National Training Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018You don\u2019t think they\u2019d send us?\u2019\u201d Wellman remembered saying. \u201cBecause the joke used to be that we\u2019re part of the rapid deployment force, which is the 18th Airborne Corps. But we\u2019re the not-so-rapid deployment force, right? It\u2019s a mechanized division. It\u2019s not like you can throw us on some C5s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wellman served as acting commander that week because his commander was on leave, and he got called into battalion at one in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018Y\u2019all aren\u2019t going to believe this, but we\u2019re fucking going,\u2019\u201d Wellman recalled his battalion commander saying. \u201c\u2018We\u2019re, no shit. We\u2019re deploying to Kuwait, to Saudi Arabia.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back then, there was no family readiness group, and girlfriends and boyfriends didn\u2019t count when it came time for benefits and important notifications, so he and his fianc\u00e9e took their lunch hour to get married Aug. 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next week, the unit loaded their equipment on ships and headed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wellman had been promoted to platoon leader of a scout helicopter platoon in Alpha Company, part of a battalion that had just transitioned to alpha-model Apaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each Apache company had six Apache helicopters in a gun platoon, and then one platoon of scout helicopters\u2014the OH-58 Kiowas. One or two scouts flew with three or four Apaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only were they heading into a tank war, but the Apaches operated like tanks\u2014even flying in tank formation. And they were used just like tanks: to take out tanks. But the Kiowas are small, fast two-seater birds, so they acted as the Apaches\u2019 eyes, flitting in and out to scout the landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBarry McCaffrey was the division commander and really wanted his Apaches forward,\u201d Wellman said. Other brigades put their Apaches on airfields, but Wellman\u2019s unit headed out to the desert and set up tents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe lived in the desert the whole time, which brought its challenges, but it did prepare us well for the invasion,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had to be ingenious, like, how do you land without any dusting out?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over time and multiple landings, the sand turned to \u201cmoon powder,\u201d so the pilots wet it down with water. That lasted about a minute with August temperatures zooming into the 100s. So they used oil. Finally, the Army brought in a synthetic substance that hardened into pavement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They arrived just behind the 82nd Airborne as part of the first wave. At that time, they believed Hussein would attack Saudi Arabia, so Wellman\u2019s scouts helped with the war planning\u2014going out with maps and binoculars and reporting back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They continually flew reconnaissance missions, looking for invasion routes and ways to set up a defense of Saudi Arabia along the Kuwait border and down to the oil fields and Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it became obvious Hussein wasn\u2019t going to chance it, they began to plan the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re in MOPP suits and training, but we flew a lot,\u201d Wellman said. \u201cWe worked those aircraft hard. From the battalion commander down to the company commander, it was just like train, train, train, train. It\u2019s like all the time, so it became rote.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They had so much touch time that they achieved a level of communication rare for any team of pilots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were able to fly our Apaches without talking,\u201d Wellman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They also flew support\u2014running liaison, picking up packages, running passengers to the airfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVery rarely were there two or three days that I didn\u2019t fly, which was awesome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every morning, they would clear the weapons training range because Bedouins would wander in at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the air war kicked off, Wellman worked to cover the ground-troop movements as they positioned themselves for battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the reasons we took a month to do the air war was to soften them up,\u201d he said. \u201cBut also, we got two corps or three corps of troops in position undercover.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His unit moved up to the Iraqi border to the west, where they remained on the far left side of the big left hook\u2014the coalition\u2019s left flank and west of Kuwait\u2014of the original battle plan. After they got settled out front, they started to fly again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would do a lot of rides, pop over the border because the cavalry would say, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s some Iraqis poking around,\u2019 and check it out,\u201d Wellman said. \u201cSo we were trying to cover our movements, so we would send the Apaches up there, but as the war progressed, General McCaffrey was really dissatisfied with the intelligence he was getting about our invasion routes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond what they heard at headquarters, the pilots generally didn\u2019t know about the events of the war. In 1991, they had no individual access to satellite phones or television, and very few people, in general, had heard of email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was different than [Iraq]\u201d\u2014where Wellman deployed after 9\/11\u2014\u201dwhere you could pick up satellite. We\u2019d go to battalion headquarters trying to get updates because they had the TV going up there. But at the company level, you\u2019re pretty much in the dark. People forget how old-school it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And at that point, no one had combat experience at the company level, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCombat patches were a very rare thing in 1990\u2014just the old Vietnam guys and maybe a few Panama vets,\u201d he said. \u201cYou got a lot of people green behind the ears going into combat. It was exhilarating. It was terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, he said he made a lot of mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was very stressed out,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember being very short-tempered. Now I know that I was like, really wired. I look back at my own experience as a young lieutenant and I\u2019m like, \u2018God, you sucked.\u2019 Like, \u2018Jesus, what an ass!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He laughs about it now, but he took those lessons into future deployments, realizing he needed to keep his soldiers calm and to understand what they were going through: Stick to the training and muscle memory. Their brains are frazzled; they\u2019re losing friends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t get distracted. Be calm and focused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou always have to fly the helicopter,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just takes a slight twitch and people die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the air war continued into February, Wellman\u2019s unit became more important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They flew with black-and-white maps\u2014photocopies of maps\u2014because the Army didn\u2019t have enough maps of the Middle East. He highlighted the Tigris River with a light-blue marker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo [McCaffrey] decided he wanted to fly Apaches into Iraq along the air routes at night\u2014the invasion routes\u2014to do route reconnaissance,\u201d Wellman said. \u201cBut the joke was that Apaches couldn\u2019t navigate: Their job was to blow shit up. Apache pilots had notoriously bad navigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one wanted to send the pilots in on infrared\u2014the Apaches used infrared, and the scouts used night-vision goggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou know it was darker than a witch\u2019s ass in Iraq,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a close call myself on a night where it was just blacked out and I couldn\u2019t see shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as he headed toward the ground, he saw his red taillights mark the sand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo it was dangerous flying with NVGs,\u201d he said. At night, \u201cWe would fly next to the Apache instead of leading it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Apache cockpits were filled with red lights. The Scouts used the cockpit lights to make sure they didn\u2019t run into their fellow pilots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was pretty hair-raising,\u201d Wellman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Apaches, without guidance from their scouts\u2019 Kiowas, struggled to find their routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA couple of us scout platoon leaders and pilots went to our leadership and said, \u2018You gotta let us go in\u2014you gotta let us fly these missions,\u2019\u201d Wellman recalled. \u201cWe were just sitting there, and it was killing us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They agreed. They planned to send in two scout weapons teams, with Wellman and Spc. Chris Anderson\u2014his aerial observer\u2014going out. But then, because Wellman was the most junior pilot on the team, the other pilots asked him to \u201cpause mission.\u201d Wellman was not happy, but he regrouped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the platoon leader, he had the most administrative rank: He made the decisions. But as a pilot, the chief warrant officers\u2014technical experts who often have time as enlisted service members before they commission\u2014were older and had more time in the cockpit than Wellman did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is not about leadership or rank,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018This is about who\u2019s going to safely fly in another country where there\u2019s zero information and come back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wellman gave the OK, and they replaced him with CW2 Hal Reichle\u2014a more experienced pilot\u2014and Spec. Mike Daniels. CW2 Dennis Midgley would also go out, as originally planned, with his left-seater, Spec. Dave Corlette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That night, Feb. 20, \u201cHal went up with one team of Apaches, and Dennis went with another and they did the routes,\u201d Wellman said. \u201cAt some point, they hit what was apparently ground fog up in Iraq, and the aircrews became separated. And the Apache did an abort mission and came back, and when they returned across the border, Hal and Mike weren\u2019t with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning, another company of Apaches and a Blackhawk found them: They had crashed about four kilometers into Iraq. They had been killed when they hit the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYears and years and years of therapy for that one,\u201d Wellman said, describing his survivor\u2019s guilt at having lost not only two of his guys, but also someone who went out in his place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe did a couple more missions of the same kind where the Iraqis kind of poked the border and we\u2019d go after them,\u201d Wellman said. \u201cAnd then that was it until the ground war kicked off and we did our thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnytime, Anyplace\u201d\u2014Strike Fighter Squadron 81, Navy<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs far back as I can remember, I wanted to fly airplanes,\u201d said Fox<\/a>, the naval aviator. \u201cAnd when I found out that there were airplanes that landed and took off from ships, that just sealed it for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering that he grew up in West Texas and didn\u2019t see the ocean until he went to the Naval Academy, this seems particularly prescient. His dad was a doctor, but he had been on aircraft carriers during World War II. \u201cThat may have given me a little taste of it,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox earned his commission in 1978\u2014during the post-Vietnam \u201cdoldrums.\u201d He was there for the soul-searching that followed that war, and then for Ronald Reagan\u2019s build-up of the forces in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was always anticipating that there would be some sort of dust-up with the Soviets,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd you know, that didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He started his military career on the A-7, but then transitioned to the FA-18 Hornet in 1984 before serving on the USS Cole<\/i> in the Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMarvelous,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a magnificent airplane. It\u2019s maneuverable and reliable and all the things that\u2014it\u2019s a marvelous jet. And everybody in the Med wanted to bump heads with us. So we wound up in exercises fighting British F-4s and Italian F-104s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While he was deployed, in 1986, the United States launched airstrikes against Libya<\/a> in retaliation for sponsorship of terrorist attacks against Americans. More than 100 U.S. Navy and Air Force planes hit five targets within the space of an hour. But it was still different from Desert Storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve been on the edge of my seat,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been in crisis before. But this was the first time that I ever expended ordnance in personal combat experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox was a lieutenant commander in 1990, and he commanded an F\/A-18 Hornet squadron. They\u2019d been training for the Cold War, as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early August of 1990, his ship, the USS Saratoga, deployed immediately when Hussein invaded Kuwait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t know it, but it was the end of the Cold War,\u201d Fox said. \u201cThe whole geostrategic balance was kind of shifting there a bit, and Saddam just had the incredibly bad timing to decide to invade Kuwait at the same time that we were kind of at the peak of our Cold War strength, anticipating something against the Soviets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Saratoga \u201chustled over\u201d to the Persian Gulf without having any playbook for action in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While he felt prepared for the Iraqi defenses, he found the prospect sobering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese guys have the third- or fourth-largest army in the world, and they\u2019re battle-hardened,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been in the Iran-Iraq war for almost the entire \u201980s. And there were all these predictions that \u2018the desert was going to swim in blood.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When he first arrived in Saudi Arabia soon after Hussein attacked Kuwait, he spent his time trying to figure out the battle plan: How do we support the B-52s? What do we do if Hussein invades Saudi Arabia? Maybe we\u2019ll be doing a battlefield interdiction against the tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. and Maj. Gen. Chuck Horner came into the picture. \u201cThere was a shifting in our thinking from reactive and defensive to proactive and offensive, if you will, going into this, with the backdrop of the UN negotiations and the UN Security Council resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hussein was told he needed to remove his forces from Kuwait by Jan. 15, 1991\u2014or else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs we got closer and closer, it became more and more obvious that he wasn\u2019t going to leave,\u201d Fox said. \u201cI always thought that he would somehow figure out a way to finagle it and wiggle out of it somehow. He blew it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As they prepared, they practiced with mirror-image flights: The ship would launch the airplanes with the loads they would use in combat. The pilots would fly the same distances they would have to fly in war. And they would replicate the same procedures they would use to get to the Air Force tankers. That meant four-and-a-half- to five-hour sorties\u2014considered long in the days before the global war on terror\u2014and making sure all the other parts fit together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Navy carriers didn\u2019t have tankers on board, and the Air Force tankers worked differently from the Navy\u2019s, which meant the pilots needed adapters, which were created just for Desert Storm\u2014and lots of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, they studied Iraq\u2019s systems and defenses to try to figure out how to \u201ccrack\u201d them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey had a pretty sophisticated integrated air defense,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do you take that apart? Well, you kill the sensors. And you kill the long-range radars. And then you start to work your way so that you\u2019re blinding them or you\u2019re jamming them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then the war began with the \u201cGreat Scud Hunt\u201d of 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iraq\u2019s Scud B tactical ballistic missiles terrorized troops based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, beginning the night of Jan. 17, sending them into MOPP-4 protective gear. The Scud was shot down by a Patriot missile. Another Scud was launched against Israel, and strikes continued in the following days against both countries, ultimately killing 31 people. In February, a Scud would kill 27 more people: American reservists from Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. forces hit 28 fixed Scud sites with everything from B-52s to F-117 Stealth Fighters the evening of Jan. 17, 1991. Then, they went after \u201cScud trucks\u201d\u2014trucks from which Scuds could be launched and that were scattered throughout western and southern Iraq. The coalition went after them with A-10 Thunderbolts, RAF Tornado fighter bombers\u2014and F-18s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat was a dynamic targeting problem that we hadn\u2019t really ever trained to,\u201d Fox said. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That day, January 17, Fox flew without knowing what had happened to Speicher\u2014the pilot who had crashed early that morning after taking off from the Saratoga. Speicher would be the only American still missing in action at the end of the war. Rumors would persist for years that the pilot had ejected as his jet crashed early that morning. He had not. Years later, in 2009, an Iraqi told U.S. Marines the Iraqi had witnessed Bedouins quickly bury Speicher\u2019s remains. Iraqis then led Marines to the site, and the pilot was returned home. The CIA reported he had died on impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox\u2019s target was in an airfield called H3. The F18 jets flew in along the EA-6B Prowlers, which jammed electronic signals from the Iraqi integrated air defense system so the Iraqis could not find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Tomcats are up north as a target, and I\u2019m hearing these calls about the bandits,\u201d Fox said. \u201cAnd finally, the E2 guys make this dynamite call, because we were in a group that was headed right at them, and they were headed right for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox and the other pilots moved in quickly toward the target, and Fox was about to drop his bombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe E2 said, \u2018Those bandits are on your nose 15 to 30 miles,\u2019 and we\u2019re about 30 miles south of the target at this point,\u201d Fox said. The F\/A-18s were flying at about 30,000 feet, going \u201cas fast as you can make a Hornet go without using afterburner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone had three 2,000-pound bombs\u2014three Mk-84s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was a very heavily defended airfield,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox had an extra 2,000-pound bomb. He had Sidewinder missiles on his wingtips and two Sparrow missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe E2 says, \u2018That bandit\u2019s on your nose at 15,\u2019\u201d Fox said. \u201cI immediately was looking low. We had mechanically scanned radars in the bay, and so my look assignment was to look low.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He put the Sidewinder into quick-lock acquisition mode. He put a lock on the Iraqi MiG at nine miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt takes a lot longer to just say this than it actually happened,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The E2 came back. \u201cOn your nose at 15.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLock, there\u2019s a guy at nine miles, he\u2019s at Mach 1.3,\u201d Fox said. \u201cSo he\u2019s over supersonic. I\u2019m at .9 Mach or .91, so I\u2019m close to supersonic, but I\u2019m not supersonic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s two airplanes closing at a combined rate at Mach 2.2 or 2.3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThings are happening pretty fast, I guess is the way to put that,\u201d Fox said. \u201cAnd what you train to in peacetime is what you do in combat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside 10 miles, five miles deep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI keep telling the Sidewinder, \u2018Look down the radar line of sight,\u2019 and he didn\u2019t see anything,\u201d Fox said. \u201c\u2018Look down the radar line of sight.\u2019 \u2018We didn\u2019t see anything.\u2019 The third time I did it, I get the rar-rar-rar-rar-rar\u201d\u2014Fox made a noise like a vibrating spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good tone: He knew he had a shot lined up. At the same time, he worked to stay ahead of the enemy plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI knew he was a bad guy,\u201d Fox said. \u201cSo I took a Sidewinder shot, \u2018Fox Two\u2019\u201d\u2014Fox Two is the radio call when a pilot fires a heat-seeking missile\u2014and the missile came off the rail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then the uncertainty set in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNormally, it was like a train going by,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like \u2018Whoosh!\u2019 But then it just disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n No whoosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox had fired two or three Sidewinders in missile exercises, and missiles always left big plumes of smoke. Shooting a simulator, he had experienced the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as he fired at the MiG, he didn\u2019t see a plume of smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt turned out these A-9 Mikes had brand-spanking-new smokeless motors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No whoosh. No smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought, \u2018Man, you know, it is the first day of hunting season\u2014I may have buck fever,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So he selected a Sparrow, a radar-guided missile, and fired a 4.2-mile barrel shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust as I squeeze the trigger on the Sparrow, the Sidewinder hit him, so there\u2019s a big explosion,\u201d Fox said. \u201cBut then out of the explosion comes a burning MiG-21, and then the Sparrow hit him, so he\u2019d eaten two missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the MiG went underneath Fox at less than 1,000 feet distance, the canopy was still on the jet. The airplane burned from mid-fuselage to aft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI didn\u2019t call my shot,\u201d he said. \u201cI was so intent on what I was doing, I didn\u2019t let the other people on the flight know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His wingman on the far left took on a second MiG-21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSplash one!\u201d came in on the radio. Target hit with expended ammunition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen the guy on my right very calmly says, \u2018Splash two,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox figured the first MiG explosion came from the other pilot, Capt. Nick \u201cMongo\u201d Mongillo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As they got closer to their target, they encountered more aircraft, moving slowly. The American pilots didn\u2019t know if they were enemy planes, but they were making unusual mistakes, as if inviting the Americans to come at them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome of the intel that we had studied, before the war started, was the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war would do some pretty sophisticated bait-and-drag kind of tactics, where they\u2019d have somebody come up and do something really stupid,\u201d Fox said. \u201cAnd the Iranian F-4s would commit on that, take advantage of that mistake, and then the Iraqis would have a supersonic Flogger, or somebody going from low to high and come in there and nail the Iranians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He kept watch behind him to make sure he wasn\u2019t being baited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then he realized he was on the target, and he would have to fly past it to pursue the other pilot with 8,000 pounds\u2019 worth of bombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe is no threat to me, and I came here to drop bombs,\u201d Fox said. So that\u2019s what he did. At H3, he looked for the command and control bunker that was meant to be his target, but it was noon\u2014no shadows and no definition on the target. He couldn\u2019t see it. But then he saw the secondary target, a big hangar. He dropped his bombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As he flew back, he wondered if perhaps the first explosion was his Sidewinder. He felt the excitement of the possibility, but he needed to focus on landing his aircraft on the carrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve got this kind of little angel and little devil on the shoulder,\u201d he said. \u201cYou got a MiG kill!\u2019 \u2018You\u2019re going to bolter!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a pilot misses the wires on a ship landing and has to come back around to land, it\u2019s called a \u201cbolter.\u201d And it\u2019s embarrassing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because they\u2019d lost a pilot early that morning, Fox said he wasn\u2019t in any mood to do a victory roll or something dramatic to celebrate. He landed on his first pass\u2014no bolter\u2014and went to debrief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe Mobley, a pilot who had been a POW during the Vietnam War after his plane was shot down and was an \u201cabsolute prince of a man,\u201d looked at Fox\u2019s tape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unknown to Fox, his first missile saw the MiG and went after him. Both the Sparrow and the Sidewinder had hit the back half of the Iraqi pilot\u2019s plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018Mark, you fired a Sparrow into a burning MiG,\u2019\u201d Mobley told Fox. \u201c\u2018Those are expensive, you know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018I just wanted to be sure,\u2019\u201d Fox said, laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow well you train is a direct indicator of how well you will fight,\u201d Fox said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing really magical about that, except for the fact that you don\u2019t know until you actually release ordnance in anger, and then you realize, \u2018My training has been very good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the first of only two U.S. Navy MiG kills during Desert Storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe ship\u2019s food tasted better. The sun shone brighter. It was just good to be alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly Kennedy is the Managing Editor for The War Horse. Kelly is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist who served in the U.S. Army from 1987 to 1993, including tours in the Middle East during Desert Storm, and in Mogadishu, Somalia. She has worked as a health policy reporter for USA TODAY, spent five years covering military health at Military Times, and is the author of \u201cThey Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq,\u201d and the co-author of \u201cFight Like a Girl: The Truth About How Female Marines are Trained,\u201d with Kate Germano. As a journalist, she was embedded in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She is the only U.S. female journalist to both serve in combat and cover it as a civilian journalist, and she is the first female president of Military Reporters and Editors.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n Editors Note: This article<\/a> first appeared on The War Horse,<\/a> an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter<\/a> People tend to remember Desert Storm as a short, easy war\u2014and compared with the \u201cforever\u201d wars that followed, that makes sense: a 100-hour ground war blip in the annals of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":92321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-featured-layout","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,23,89,12,26,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4966],"class_list":["post-53924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-middle-column","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"4S4IJMJCLFA4XILFCUV7BFPLVU","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2021\/02\/07\/30-years-on-veterans-recall-the-desert-storm-air-war\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"featured-layout","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"Mark](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/web-Fox_Hornet.jpg.jpg\")
![\"Maj.](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Maj.-Marie-Rossi.jpg.jpg\")
![\"Cesar](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/web-Rico-strapping-in.jpg.jpg\")
![\"Brenda](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/web-Brenda-Robinson.jpg.jpg\")
![\"A](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2357976.jpg.jpg\")
![\"Rodriguez](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/web-Rico-with-Baby.jpg.jpg\")
![\"Fred](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/web-Wellman-and-the-Mad-Penguin.jpg.jpg\")
![\"Fred](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/web-Wellman-Reichle-Daniels-at-Christmas-Goat-Grab.jpg.jpg\")
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