It is no surprise, then, that Warden embraced with enthusiasm the task of developing a plan to force Iraq out of Kuwait by using airpower to destroy Iraq’s centers of gravity as defined by his Five Rings theory. For him, this task was the culmination of his military experience and of his search for new truths about the decisive potential of aerial attack.

Warden and his team immediately turned to this planning effort with great zeal and initiative.

The plan that came out of CHECKMATE was essentially a series of proposed targets to be attacked over a total of six days41 (after which, presumably, the Iraqi leadership would give up and the war would be over). Attacking these targets would punish the leadership of the Iraqi government until it was driven into them that continuation of their land grab in Kuwait was futile.

• According to the CHECKMATE plan, Iraqi power and communications grids, command-and-control bunkers and facilities, and infrastructure like transportation and bridges, would be attacked.

• The plan also aimed strikes at Iraq’s emerging capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction (NBC) and their delivery systems, such as missiles—like Scuds—and aircraft.

• Significantly, the CHECKMATE plan took into account the importance of minimizing civilian casualties, primarily through the use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs). This campaign was to be nothing like the city-busting, population-punishing bombing of World War II (which was not only morally suspect but ineffective: it only made people fight harder).

• Key to making all this happen was to be the concerted effort (called SEAD—Suppression of Enemy Air Defense), in the earliest stages of the campaign, to wreck the Iraqi air defense system (called KARI—Iraq spelled backwards in French42), so that U.S. losses would be minimized and aircrews and planners would have the freedom to make most effective use of the new PGMs and delivery systems that had come into the Air Force inventory during the past decade.

• Finally, though there were some plans to attack the Iraqi military in the field (i.e., in Kuwait), these were relatively modest as compared with the rest of the effort. . . . The CHECKMATE plan did, however, produce some unintended benefits in that direction. There is no doubt, for instance, that it influenced favorably the capabilities of the deployed forces; and because of it, the force that finally deployed was far more capable than the original force allocated to CENTCOM. For example, at Warden’s behest, the air staff deployed the laser and electro-optical-guided bomb-capable F-111Fs from the 48th TFW at Lakenheath (the F-111Fs were later used to great effect in tank plinking) rather than the apportioned F-111Ds from Cannon AFB (which weren’t so equipped). Though no one had any notion of the eventual success of tank plinking until the idea was evaluated in the Night Camel exercises in October and November, the F-111Fs were nevertheless much more valuable than the F-111Ds.