Chuck Horner imposed this two-and-a-half-day limit because he didn’t want his forces to be constrained by planning that went on days or even weeks before the war started. He wanted planners to be forced to evaluate the first day’s efforts and results, and then to plan what to do on day three. To make things easier, he gave them a half-day start. Then, as the days proceeded, they needed to make plans completely from scratch, using what they’d learned as previous days unfolded. “Of course, they had target lists hidden in their pockets,” Horner adds. “I expected that. But I wanted to force them into thinking about where we were at a given time and then planning from that, instead of building an entire air campaign and then just modifying it here and there. Chaos reigns and Huns like me revel in it.”

Likewise—as we’ve pointed out before—the commander can’t allow himself (or herself) to be a slave to seemingly potent doctrinaire concepts such as “strategic,” “tactical,” or “operational.”

Chuck Horner takes up the thought:

I have often said in the past that “strategic,” “operational,” and “tactical” are confusing words. And if you try to link strategy, operations, and tactics with the first three, you have a real mess, where people are talking past one another. I can make a strategy of tactical operations using unique tactics in order to attain a series of tactical goals to achieve an operational-level objective, which turns out to be the strategic center of gravity. Take tank plinking. It was a strategy—to deny the enemy the use of his killing machines. It had tactical goals—to destroy one hundred to two hundred tanks a night. It had an operational-level objective—to deny the enemy the effective use of his ground forces against our invading army. It had unique tactics—medium-altitude air attacks using laser-guided bombs with infrared sensors. And it destroyed a strategic center of gravity—since Saddam’s goal was to win a victory or stalemate by inflicting casualties on our forces. You have to be specific when talking about war. But unfortunately many are lost in the heady sense of destiny and all that bullshit, so they use powerful-seeming words like “strategic” when they don’t really know what they are talking about.

★ The D Day ATO tasked the air forces assembled in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations, as well as those aboard the Navy aircraft carriers in adjacent waters, where and when to strike attacking Iraqi forces. It was modest at first, but as more and more aircraft deployed into the AOR, and as more and more planners from the Coalition allies came aboard, the daily ATO (updated daily and stored on floppy disks ready for immediate execution) grew in size and complexity. Meanwhile, as strength on the ground grew with the arrival of more and stronger ground forces, the targeting emphasis changed to reflect new overall campaign strategies.