Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War by Rick Atkinson

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The CINC was never one to bungle an entrance, Waller knew. He would be here in due time, probably with a flourish befitting the occasion. Other officers began to enter the room, each bringing a fresh charge of tension. Waller had no doubt that the allies would win, but at what cost? He considered losses of ten to twenty allied aircraft likely tonight; others feared fifty. Waller again scanned operations order 91-001, dated 17 January 1991. " There it was, in thirty-four words. Unlike Vietnam, the mission was succinct, tangible, and limited — precisely the qualities demanded by the mil­ itary of their civilian masters for twenty years.

Electronically linked to a quartet of AWACs planes — airborne radar platforms capable of peering deep into Iraq from their orbits in northern Saudi Arabia — the screen displayed hundreds of tiny green circles, each representing an allied aircraft, as well as the occasional red circle of an Iraqi fighter on patrol. South of the border flew 160 aerial tankers, stacked in cells five deep. Around them, the strike packages massed for attack: bomb droppers and fighters, radar killers and electronic jammers, eavesdroppers and rescuers.

In twenty minutes the city’s defiant glow was gone, and Bagh­ dad’s dark night grew darker yet. Riyadh A mile north of Schwarzkopf’s command post, beneath the three-story headquarters of the Royal Saudi Air Force on King Abdul Aziz Bou­ levard, eighty men, crowded into a hot bunker, watched the war unfold on a four-foot television screen. Electronically linked to a quartet of AWACs planes — airborne radar platforms capable of peering deep into Iraq from their orbits in northern Saudi Arabia — the screen displayed hundreds of tiny green circles, each representing an allied aircraft, as well as the occasional red circle of an Iraqi fighter on patrol.