They took off, raised their gear and blew up*

Well....If you're reading this on the 4th of July holiday weekend, my detailed campaign plan to deploy a pithy blog post discussing some Alaskan topic, such as "Grudge Match--Killer Whale vs Sea Lion", or "Could we build a house on that island over there", or is "Macallan 18 as good as The GlenLivet Naturra", has gone awry.

Yes, I'll be celebrating the Nation's 241st birthday on board a cruise from Seward to Vancouver.  Evidently the free WiFi included in our package was insufficient to allow for posting and I had to "Scramble the Spare".

Last week's post talked about an incident I had with General Charles A. "Chuck" Horner.  (I, of course, referred to him as General or, alternatively, Sir).  I was reminded of that incident when I found this video which, although lengthy is quite good discussing the F-15's role in Desert Storm. (You have my permission to close it out after watching the F-15 part at the beginning.  It only covers the F-117 and F-111's role.  I agree... boring! /sarc).

I think the video does an outstanding job of explaining how the complete air dominance that the coalition gained in the first few days enabled so many of the options that played out in the rest of the campaign.  

Please note, nowhere in that paragraph do I say or even imply that the Air Force won Desert Storm.  Air Power enabled a lot of the operational maneuver that defeated Saddam.  Without that dominance, I believe the end result would have been the same, if quite a bit later and with much higher cost.  

In any case, "Scramble the Spare"!  Here's the video.

*The Title is a quote from General Horner in the Video describing what happened to the Iraqi Air Force.