How US special-operations forces helped the US military win its first post-Cold War victory yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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As the threat from the Soviet Union declined in the early 1990s, a new challenge for the US arose in the Middle East.
The first Gulf War was a textbook conventional war, but it featured an array special-operations missions that helped secure victory.
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the US military shifted its focus from Russia to the Middle East.
In August 1990, Saddam Hussein s Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, starting an international crisis that would end with Iraq s defeat by a US-led coalition six months later.
How US special-operations forces helped the US military win its first post-Cold War victory msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Stealth fighters, high-end tank systems, and GPS all played their part.
Thirty years ago, new U.S. military technologies exploded onto the popular scene during the Coalition invasion of Iraq through Operation Desert Storm. Those weapons included radar-evading stealth planes, laser-guided precision bombs, GPS-enabled sensors and large radar-enabled surveillance planes.
The now famous 1991 Gulf War included “stealth” air attacks for the first time in history, used GPS for combat navigation, employed missile warning systems, unprecedented applications of force tracking technology, advanced surveillance plane radars, and large amounts of precision-focused laser-guided bombs. While beginning with Apache and Pave Low helicopters, the Gulf War air attack involved F-117 Night Hawk stealth bombers, B-52s, F-15 Eagles and low-flying A-10 Warthog aircraft.