by Randy Roughton
Defense Media Activity-San Antonio
8/6/2010 - SAN ANTONIO (AFNS) -- The day retired Gen. Charles A. Horner received the call 20 years ago that eventually launched Operation Desert Shield he was flying his F-16 Fighting Falcon, engaged in an air-to-air training mission near the North Carolina coast with two F-15 Eagles from Langley Air Force Base, Va.
General Horner, then the commander of 9th Air Force and U.S. Central Command Air Forces at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., had expected to hear from Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf since Saddam Hussein moved seven divisions of his army into Kuwait several days earlier on Aug. 2, 1990. But once the call from the Federal Aviation Administration came for him to return to Shaw, he knew instantly what it meant.
"We'd been following the invasion since it happened," General Horner said. "In fact, I had the 363rd Tactical Fighter Wing at Shaw (AFB) and 1st Tactical Fighter Wing at Langley (AFB) on alert for about a month to the point it was affecting their peacetime operations. My boss, Gen. Bob Russ, called me and said, 'Chuck, you probably need to take them off alert. You're affecting operations'. I said I can't. Suddenly, the invasion occurred, just like everybody was predicting".
Operation Desert Shield began five days after the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait when President George H. W. Bush ordered air and ground forces to Saudi Arabia. It became the largest American deployment since the Vietnam war. More than 30 other nations joined the coalition and 18 other countries contributed with financial and humanitarian aid. The coalition built up its force in the Arabian Peninsula during the next six months and Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm Jan. 17, 1991. As the joint force air component commander, General Horner was the architect of the air campaign against Iraq.
Long before the Gulf crisis began, the American military had trained for an eventual showdown with Iraq, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. A month earlier, a U.S. Central Command war game had a scenario of a "Country Orange" attacking Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the north. When General Schwarzkopf accepted command of U.S. CENTCOM in November 1989, he told his military leaders since a war with Russia wasn't likely to happen, "we have to find a new enemy or go out of business," General Horner said. U.S. Air Force
