Storm over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series)

by Richard P. Hallion

Series: Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series

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An incisive account of the Persian Gulf War, Storm Over Iraq shows how the success of Operation Desert Storm was the product of two decades of profound changes in the American approach to defense, military doctrine, and combat operations. The first detailed analysis of why the Gulf War could be fought the way it was, the book examines the planning and preparation for war. Richard P. Hallion argues that the ascendancy of precision air power in warfare--which fulfilled the promise that air power had held for more than seventy-five years--reflects the revolutionary adaptation of a war strategy that targets things rather than people, allowing one to control an opposing nation without destroying it.… (more)

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Written immediately after the end of the 1991 Gulf War, this remains the best single-volume history of how air power defined the shape of the war. Hallion's overarching thesis is that the U. S. Air Force, stung by its failure to achieve decisive victory in Vietnam, reinvented itself as a force dedicated to precision strikes that could paralyze an enemy's military machine in a matter of days rather than grinding it down over months or years. Hallion--with good reason--sees the Gulf War as a stunning vindication of the Air Force's new approach to war-fighting, and his narrative of the war is shaped by that idea.

Chief of the USAF historical branch, Hallion is understandably proud of what "his" service accomplished in 1991, and it shows. Unfortunately, it (and the lack of the "long" view) sometimes causes him to overstate the effectiveness of Air Force's new weapons and tactics and to slight the contributions of the ground forces. Even so, Storm Over Iraq ranks along with Rick Atkinson's Crusade and Tom Clancy's Every Man A Tiger as one of the essential books on air power in the Gulf. (

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ABVR | Nov 28, 2005 |

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An incisive account of the Persian Gulf War, Storm Over Iraq shows how the success of Operation Desert Storm was the product of two decades of profound changes in the American approach to defense, military doctrine, and combat operations. The first detailed analysis of why the Gulf War could be fought the way it was, the book examines the planning and preparation for war. Richard P. Hallion argues that the ascendancy of precision air power in warfare--which fulfilled the promise that air power had held for more than seventy-five years--reflects the revolutionary adaptation of a war strategy that targets things rather than people, allowing one to control an opposing nation without destroying it.

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