Desert Storm and Its Meaning : The View from Moscow (a Project AIR FORCE Report)

"Sales/posting to the USA suspended". Card covers, xvi/93pp. Light edge wear; near fine. Operation Desert Storm (ODS) was the closest thing to a laboratory test of the U.S. and Soviet ways of war. This paper presents an assessment of the war offered by military analysts in Moscow. Russian military analysts publicly cited a number of conclusions from the experience in the Persian Gulf, including (1) the nature of modern war had changed radically; (2) though it may not win wars by itself, air power had become the decisive force; (3) the Soviet concept of integrated, overlapping, and redundant air defences had serious shortcomings; and (4) coalition warfare could work. The papers posits that Russian military would most likely adopt a more Western approach as a result of the model provided by the allied performance in ODS. Some of the most important insights the Russians drew from the Gulf experience were more political than military.