- In January and February 1991, hundreds of thousands of troops in a US-led coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.
- In the midst of that campaign, Delta Force and the British SAS went deep behind Iraqi lines to neutralize the Scud missiles Saddam Hussein hoped would turn the tide of the war.
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On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, triggering a crisis that led to the intervention of a massive US-led coalition.
At the time, Iraq had one of the world’s largest armies, with about 1 million troops. To defeat it, the US knocked on every diplomatic door in the region and elsewhere, successfully rallying 750,000 troops for Operation Desert Storm, which began on January 17, 1991.
As the coalition grew against him, Hussein tried to distribute the Babel-style alliance among nearly 40 countries, including several Arab nations and Israel, although Israel did not actively participate. By attacking Israel directly, the Iraqi leader hoped to provoke an Israeli response that would break the fragile coalition.
Hussein chose his Scud missile batteries as an instrument of his strategy. The Soviet Union-made tactical ballistic missile system was supplied in both fixed and mobile launchers, both of which were quite deadly. A Scud hit a US base in Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers.
To stop the Scud threat, the Pentagon did its best: Delta Force, along with its British counterpart, the Special Air Service (SAS).
Skeptical leadership
Delta operators from A Squadron.
Courtesy photo
After the invasion of Kuwait, the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) proposed various operations to the Pentagon, ranging from the rescue of US diplomats and civilians trapped in Kuwait City to direct action in Iraq.
“Once we learned about the invasion, there were a lot of ideas about how the unit might respond,” a former Delta operator told Insider.
But one of the biggest obstacles facing Delta Force and other US special forces during Desert Storm was the leadership of conventional forces.
General Norman Schwarzkopf, the four-star commander of the US Central Command and overall chief of the war, was quite skeptical of special operations forces and their strategic usefulness in warfare between nation states.
Ultimately, however, Schwarzkopf had to resign himself to the White House and Pentagon and allow special operators to join the campaign. It certainly helped that his second-in-command, British General Sir Peter de la Billière, had served in and in command of the SAS and was director of British special forces during the siege of the Iranian embassy in 1980.
General Norman Schwarzkopf and his Delta Force bodyguards. Sgt. 1st Class Earl Fillmore, the operator in the blue shirt, was killed in Mogadishu.
Courtesy photo
Actually, believe or not, at one point Saddam was quite high on the target deck. Of course the boys were all ready, but in the end things came to nothing. We couldn’t locate him. We didn’t. “I don’t have enough or accurate information to perform an operation,” said the former Delta operator. “But looking back, even if there was enough information, the higher groups would probably have gone for an air strike.”
“Some of the ideas, like going after Saddam, were pretty wild, but that’s the whole purpose of the brainstorming sessions. You have to think big and explore all the possibilities, however bizarre they seem,” the former Delta operator told Insider. .
“In the end, we decided on a few options, with Scud hunting being the main one, and A got that, with C doing mainly CP [close protection] for “Storming Norman” “Schwarzkopf, the former Delta operator added, referring to Delta Force’s A and C Squadrons.
Scud hunting in the desert
A Delta Force vehicle is looking for the enemy in the desert.
Courtesy photo
The Iraqis knew their business. They would move the Scud mobile launchers at night and lie down during the day, camouflaging the trucks so well that they would blend perfectly into the desert landscape, making it nearly impossible for coalition planes to see them.
The Delta and SAS patrols would be deployed by helicopters and roam the main supply routes, looking for signs of Scud mobile launchers. Some patrols entered the country by vehicles and others on foot.
The Delta operators used a mix of Humvees, motorcycles and heavily armed Pinzgaeur trucks. A Pinzgaeur, affectionately known as the ‘pig’, could carry a variety of crew-operated weapons, such as the M2 Browning heavy and the M-240 medium machine guns, and large amounts of rations, water, and fuel needed to power the patrols. to support.
However, some Delta patrols have been frustrated with mechanical problems – it is difficult to change a tire in the middle of the desert. But the commandos also had to be wary of the weather. In one case, a special operations helicopter went down, killing the crew and three Delta operators.
Military personnel investigate a Scud missile shot down by a MIM-104 Patriot missile during Operation Desert Storm, March 26, 1992.
United States Department of Defense
There were several times when SAS and Delta Force patrols got into gunfights with Iraqi forces, either because the patrols were in danger or had attacked targets.
One of these patrols went terribly wrong. Code-named Bravo Two Zero consisted of eight SAS troopers from B Squadron. Their mission was to conduct a special reconnaissance deep behind enemy lines in an attempt to locate mobile Scud missiles.
When the team lay in a small ravine the day after their input, they were spotted by Iraqi civilians. There are conflicting reports of what happened next, with some patrol members saying Iraqi mechanized infantry started pouring into the area.
The patrolmen began to escape and fled to Syria, but were separated at night. After a few adventurous days, four SAS troopers fell into Iraqi hands, three were killed (two from hypothermia, one from enemy fire) and one successfully fled to Syria.
Weeks of fighting
Delta operators in a berth in a wadi or ravine.
Courtesy photo
During Operation Desert Storm, the SAS operators had returned to their roots.
The SAS was formed during World War II to fight against the Africa Corps of Nazi Germany, led by the renowned General Erwin Rommel, in North Africa. The bread and butter of the force was long-range reconnaissance and direct action operations, such as raids and ambushes, deep behind enemy lines.
From forward-thinking bases in the middle of the Sahara, the SAS troopers – and some additional special operations units, such as the Long Range Desert Group – used heavily armed trucks and jeeps to devastating effect, destroying more aircraft on the ground. Royal Air Force did it in the theater.
The Delta and SAS operators in the field during Desert Storm faced a different kind of adversary.
Coalition planes created air superiority from day one, and conventional Iraqi ground forces were quickly overwhelmed. But US and British special operators did have a strategic impact on the war, reducing Scud launches against Israel by more than 80%.
Desert Storm ended on February 28, 1991, six weeks after it began. Just weeks after starting their hunt for the Iraqi Scuds, Delta and SAS completed their mission.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a veteran of the Greek Army (National Service to the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ) and a graduate of Johns Hopkins University.