Information and War: Is It a Revolution?

On January 29, 1991, an Iraqi probing attack crossed the SaudiKuwait border and occupied the deserted town of Al-Khafji, Saudi Arabia. As coalition ground forces battled to retake the town, the Iraqi high command ordered large reinforcements into the battle. On January 30, an experimental Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft and various unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles detected the nighttime movement toward AlKhafji of two Iraqi divisions some 50 miles behind enemy lines. This information was passed to Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, which rapidly redirected coalition aircraft to attack the formations (Department of Defense [DoD], 1992, pp. 131–132; Keaney and Cohen, 1993, pp. 19–21 and 246–247). Throughout that night, a variety of aircraft dispatched from all over the theater used JSTARS targeting information and precision-guided weapons to effectively destroy the two divisions on the move. From that point forward, the Iraqis understood that they could not move their forces, even at night, without risking annihilation.