What's the difference between the Gulf War and previous wars?

The Gulf War changed the traditional way of fighting and strongly impacted the traditional concept of war formed since World War II. Its greatest feature is that it is a high-tech war. The multinational forces led by the United States generally use various advanced technologies:

(1) electronic warfare has an important influence on the course and result of the war, and the electromagnetic superiority of the multinational forces led by the United States will become a new commanding height in the war;

(2) Air power played a decisive role. The Gulf War set a precedent for winning the war with air power as the main body. In the air raid, due to the use of a large number of precision-guided weapons, the accuracy of the air raid has been improved and civilian casualties have been minimized.

(3) The combat airspace has expanded unprecedentedly, and the battlefield has developed in a deep and highly stereoscopic direction, with no obvious front and back;

(4) High-tech weapons have greatly improved the combat capability, making the combat operation develop to high-speed, all-weather and full-time domain.

In the Gulf War, air combat has emerged as an independent combat style. During the 43-day air battle, the multinational forces headed by the US military dispatched various purpose planes to carry out air strikes, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, escort, refueling, transportation, observation and other tasks, carried out all-round and all-weather air strikes on Iraqi command center, air defense system, heavy group and other tasks, completed four stages of strategic air strikes, seized the air superiority in the theater, weakened Iraqi ground forces and supported ground operations. The Gulf War promoted the international status of the United States to a certain extent, enhanced its ability and confidence to intervene in international affairs, and also encouraged its ambition to dominate the world. In the Gulf War, the United States quickly established a powerful anti-Iraq alliance through various means, played a leading role, and showed its "leading" role in handling international affairs; It left the Soviet Union aside, ignored the suggestions and calls of many countries for a peaceful solution to the Gulf crisis, and insisted on waging war, which fully exposed its ambition to dominate and lead the world. It only won the war at the cost of 286 deaths, restored the confidence of the United States in the military, got rid of the "Vietnam War Syndrome" that has been affecting itself for many years to a certain extent, and greatly increased its confidence in intervening in international affairs. After the Gulf War, the United States formulated a new regional defense strategy of "winning two local wars at the same time". After Clinton took office, he accelerated the pace of dominating the world.

The Gulf War is the first large-scale modern local war after the Cold War. The easy victory of this war made the United States get rid of the "Vietnam War Syndrome" that has been affecting itself for many years, enhanced its ability and confidence to intervene in international affairs, and fueled its ambition to dominate the world. After the Gulf War, the United States greatly increased its interference and involvement in global and regional affairs, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Haiti and other regional affairs, as well as NATO's eastward expansion, sanctions, military strikes against Iraq, and launching the Kosovo war. These are concrete steps to promote power politics and neo-interventionism, which not only adversely affect regional security, but also damage world peace and stability. The direct economic losses caused by the Gulf War to Iraq amounted to about $200 billion. In the U.S. air strikes against Iraq, some infrastructure such as oil industry and transportation and some important military targets were bombed, which dealt a heavy blow to Iraq's future economic construction. Militarily, the Iraqi army lost more than two-thirds of its overall combat capability in the Gulf War, and more than forty divisions were destroyed. The number of casualties ranged from 85,000 to100,000. The Iraqi navy was completely destroyed in this war.

Before the outbreak of the Gulf War, with its rich oil and natural gas resources, Iraq's economic development was at the upper-middle level in the Middle East, and its per capita GNP was close to 4,000 US dollars. 199 1 After the Gulf War, Iraq's GDP only reached one-third of that before the war, and its per capita income fell to less than 400 dollars. The United States dropped about 300 tons of depleted uranium bombs in southern Iraq, which caused the incidence of difficult diseases such as leukemia and malignant tumors in this area to be 3.6 times higher than the national average, and the abortion rate of pregnant women was more than ten times that of the past. The Gulf War accelerated the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar pattern, which was objectively beneficial to the development of multipolarization. The performance of the Soviet Union in the Gulf crisis and war shows that it has existed in name only as one pole in the bipolar pattern, and the former superpower can only let it develop. To a certain extent, the United States fought both Iraq and the Soviet Union in the Gulf War. After the Gulf War, the Soviet Union finally disintegrated, ending the bipolar pattern. The United States won a great victory in the Gulf War and became the only superpower after the Cold War, but this did not change the basic power balance in the world. On the contrary, the world is accelerating towards multipolarization.

The Gulf War shows the great power of high-tech weapons, which indicates that high-tech local wars, as the basic style of modern wars, have entered the world military stage. Due to the use of high-tech weapons, great changes have taken place in the operational ideas, operational styles, operational methods, command methods, organizational structure of combat troops, and the process and outcome of the war, which strongly impacted the traditional concept of war formed since the Second World War, and prompted the upsurge of studying new future wars around the world, thus triggering a worldwide military revolution characterized by the transformation from mechanized warfare to information warfare!