Walt Boomer in the east coordinated his offensive plan with the Islamic corps on his right, the Eastern Area Command, and with the one on his left, the Northern Area Command. For his part, Boomer was generally confident that the targets of immediate concern to him would be serviced, because USMC aircraft were collocated with him and had limited range. Boomer’s enemy was going to get bombed, simply because the basing and design of Marine air vehicles, such as the AV-8B Harrier, left little other choice. This was in itself fine, until we consider that Boomer faced the largest number of Iraqis, but with aircraft that were the least capable in payload, range, and use of precision munitions.

Fred Franks’s VIIth Corps (including a British division), to the left of the Northern Area Corps, was designated the main attack, because their job was to outflank Kuwait and plunge into the Republican Guard and Iraqi heavy armored divisions. Franks justifiably wanted most of the air to go against these well-equipped divisions, for there the fighting should be the fiercest.

Though the other U.S. and Islamic corps commanders doubtless agreed with him, the lives of their troops were as valuable as the lives of VIIth Corps and British troops; and therefore, they were not about to be submissive when it came time to argue for air. Gary Luck’s XVIIIth Airborne Corps and the French forces in the far west had the big job of driving farther north into Iraq than the other corps, and then swinging to the right and fighting farther east. Though they had the fewest enemies per mile of travel, they had the most miles of travel. Like the other commanders, Luck wanted his share of the air.

On top of all of this, John Yeosock’s Third Army headquarters oversaw Franks’s and Luck’s planning efforts, with Yeosock’s G-3, Brigadier General Steve Arnold, being the man in the middle between the corps commanders and Schwarzkopf. Arnold’s job was to argue Franks’s and Luck’s case against the requirements of the two Islamic corps, represented by C3IC’s Paul Schwartz and Abdullah al-Shaikh, and Schwarzkopf’s other component commander, Walt Boomer.