Word: antiaircraft
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Iraqi skies were protected by an air force of 800 combat planes and thousands of antiaircraft missiles and artillery pieces. These defenses looked more capable than those of North Vietnam, which ended up destroying hundreds of American aircraft. But Iraq's forces proved far less effective. Only 36 U.S. and allied planes were shot down, though Washington had been expecting to lose as many as 200. After 36 of his aircraft were destroyed in combat, Saddam sent most of his best planes to sanctuary in Iran and grounded the rest of the air force. Allied electronic jamming and antiradiation missiles...
Suppressing Assets. The destruction of sites containing antiaircraft...
...that are standard equipment on military and civilian aircraft. A missile battery equipped with IFF can "interrogate" an aircraft by beaming a radio signal at it and listening to the answering squawk. But the system is not foolproof. In the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Arab batteries fired 2,100 antiaircraft missiles and destroyed 85 aircraft -- 45 of them Arab, 40 Israeli...
...Baghdad's own figures on civilian casualties, while hopelessly confusing, are remarkably low, given the length and intensity of the bombing. But there is no way to entirely avoid the killing of civilians, and Saddam seems to be trying to provoke more by putting military installations among them -- placing antiaircraft guns on top of apartment houses, for example. Thus a dismal equation: more bombing equals more civilian deaths equals an ever greater chance for Saddam to portray the war as an assault by Western colonialists and Zionists against the entire Arab world...
...days: the actual figure lost in combat through the first 17 days was 15, plus seven allied craft. The principal reason, according to Schwarzkopf, is that the allies have so seriously crippled the Iraqi air-defense system that Baghdad has given up all attempts to exercise central control: every antiaircraft and missile battery is on its own trying to track and intercept allied raiders. Then there is the virtual disappearance of the Iraqi air force: scores of its planes destroyed on the ground or in the air; hundreds more hiding in shelters and rarely taking off; another...