Our plan to control the air was complex. First, we would blind the Iraqis by destroying communications links between the air defense search radars, the commanders who dispatched interceptor aircraft or assigned targets to individual SAM batteries, and the pilots who would be given vectors toward their target. Second, we would strike fear in the minds of the Iraqi Air Force pilots, SAM radar operators, and antiaircraft artillery gunners. Our goal was to make them hate to come to work. We wanted them convinced that if they tried to engage our aircraft they would die. Nothing subtle, no nuances, just fear. Finally, we would avoid as many defenses as possible.

★ There is a new buzzword going around nowadays—“information war.”

When people talk about it, they usually mean putting viruses in a computer or making networks crash. Information war can do that, but it is really a lot more.

The key concept involves getting inside your enemy’s decision cycle. That is, you know what is going on faster and better than he does, and can therefore make and implement decisions faster. This permits you to take and maintain the initiative, and causes him to lose control.

At Khafji, for example, Joint STARS told me where and when the enemy was moving—which of course told me nothing about his intentions. Nevertheless, I attacked his movement, and as a result destroyed his attack before it started. He could not form up his attacking forces or mass for the attack, because when he tried, his convoys en route to the battle or invasion were destroyed. Perhaps this is stretching a point, but you could make the case that my information superiority and my increased capacity to analyze and decide what that information meant gave me the means to thwart an attack before I even knew I was being attacked.

Information war, then, is primarily a function of the increased pace and accuracy of data now yielded by computers, sensors, and communications systems.

The analysis of the KARI command control and communication system, as well as the subsequent disruption and dismemberment of its elements, was information warfare pure and simple. Our selection of targets was the product of this analysis—who was in charge of which sectors, which kinds of sensors, whether a radar site or a man out in the desert with binoculars and a telephone. We were counting on the Iraqi reliance on centralized control. Once it was gone, the air defense system would be disorganized.

Attacking the KARI computers and links was the divide-and-conquer concept on a massive scale. Our strategy meant the “AT & T” telephone exchange had to go, and it did. Communication cables in the desert and under bridges had to go, and they did. Microwave antennas located throughout the country had to go, and they did. Some of the links were off-limits, owing to their location in hotels or near religious buildings, and so they survived. But in the first forty-eight hours of attacks, we got enough to cripple KARI. After that, individual elements—fighter aircraft, radars, SAM sites, and AAA batteries—had to fight alone and uncoordinated, acting on their own initiative and judgment; and they had not been trained to do that.