With his own funds, he brought the number of the weapons to eight, and had two crews trained. The investment paid off big-time in the Gulf War.
While nowhere near as accurate as laser-guided or other "smart" bombs, they don't need to be: The Blues' sheer size makes a considerable impact. (For comparison's sake, the most common iron bombs dropped from B-52s and other aircraft are five hundred pounds.)
Minefields posed a problem for the Marines scheduled to invade Kuwait. MC-130 crews — aware of this — suggested that the Blues could be used to clear them: Pressure from the explosion would set off the mines.
At least, they thought they would. The tactic had never been tried with the BLU-82. After some debate, the allied commander approved the mission. A pair of MC-130s, escorted by SAM killers and Air Force Raven EB-11 Is to help fend off radars, lumbered over the target area at about 16,000 feet. As the bombs slid out the back of the planes, the pilots had to work hard to hold the suddenly unbalanced MC-130s steady.
The first explosions were so massive (the story goes) that a British commando operating in Iraq more than a hundred miles away grabbed his radio. "The blokes have just nuked Kuwait!" he is said to have told his commander.
Whether the story is apocryphal or not, the bombs devastated the minefields. They also killed anyone within 4,000 yards of the explosion who wasn't in a protected position. Eleven were dropped during the conflict.
The Blues were also potent psychological weapons. When an Iraqi unit was told they were due for a BLU-82 bombing, most of its men promptly came across the lines and surrendered.
PSYOPs
Surely the least publicized major effort of the war was the Psychological Operations (PSYOPs) campaign. This was a comprehensive effort with several aims: to build coalition support for the war, counter Iraqi propaganda, unnerve Saddam's troops, and loosen the Iraqi resolve to fight.
Planning for the campaign began very early in the American buildup. The head of the 4th Psychological Operations Group, Colonel Tony Normand, prepared for General Schwarzkopf a comprehensive PSYOPs campaign with strategic (aimed primarily at populations) as well as tactical (aimed primarily at enemy military forces) operations. Normand, who had shaped the highly successful PSYOPs campaign in Panama, drew up a broad plan with the help of his staff, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Daniel D. Devlin, who had just relinquished command of a 4th Group battalion. By contrast with his attitude toward SOF operations, Schwarzkopf turned out to be a big PSYOP booster from the start.
"PSYOP is not really a difficult subject to understand, but many try to make it overly complex, and in the end, fail to understand it at all," noted Devlin, who served as deputy commander of the 4th PSYOPs Group after it deployed to the Gulf. "First, any political, military, legal, informational, or economic action can be psychological in nature, and therefore part of a strategic PSYOP plan at the national level. Second, any military or informational action in the combatant Commander's (CINC's) sphere of influence can be psychological in nature as a part of the CINC's operational PSYOP plan. Third, any military action on the battlefield can be a part of the tactical PSYOP plan. Really good military minds understand the psychological nature of the battlefield."
After the plan was completed, Normand waited for two days to get in to brief the CINC. Called away before he could make the presentation, he told Devlin to give the briefing.
Devlin recounts:
"He said not to be concerned if I had to give the briefing before he returned. He told me, 'The success of the briefing will only determine whether we take part in this operation, or return home to Fort Bragg to rake pine needles.' That kind of the essence of our relationship. We were always direct with each other, but with a great deal of friendship and humor. He was my boss. He knew he could count on me."
The CINC's office called for Devlin twice, but then sent him back when more pressing matters delayed the meeting. "The numerous overlapping demands on the CINCs time were amazing," Devlin recalls. Finally, General Schwarzkopf had time for the briefing.
"I went in and gave General Schwarzkopf a personal, one-on-one briefing from a three-ring binder," Devlin continues. "About a half-dozen staffers followed me in and stood in the corner waiting to see me dismembered, because the majority of the CINC's staff didn't think much of us being there. At the conclusion of my briefing, General Schwarzkopf pounded his right fist on the table and said, 'This is exactly what we need. There's an information war going on right now and we're losing it! What do I need to do to make this happen?' The staff's acceptance of us changed amazingly following the briefing.
Schwarzkopf personally edited a draft message, making it much stronger, and then authorized its transmission to Colin Powell. The message requested PSYOP assistance, and, as a result, the 4th PSYOP Group began deploying to the Gulf on August 25. The first group to deploy included Normand, Devlin and the planning staff, and a few others. Once there, as additional PSYOP assets came in from Fort Bragg, Normand and his immediate staff prepared more detailed operational plans covering a wide range of strategic, operational, and tactical missions. But even with the CINC's backing, most of Normand PSYOP plans sat for months at the Defense Department, apparently stymied because of geopolitical sensitivities in Washington.
"We're afraid of cross-border operations," explained Colonel Normand later. Cross-border operations — Irom Saudi Arabia, say, over the border into Iraq — were in many cases inherently dangerous and always carried a potential to backfire and cause embarrassment. Thus they were likely to be sidetracked by Washington. This meant that a strategic campaign aimed at telling Iraqi citizens why the war was evil couldn't be launched. But it also hamstrung the tactical operations aimed at Iraqi soldiers.
"A leaflet is a cross-border operation," said Normand. "You're told to start targeting the Iraqi soldiers. Well, you can't do that because they're not on your side of the border. You can't do cross-border operations."
The official resistance led Normand to shuttle between Washington and Riyadh with one plan after another, seeking approval from the Joint Chiefs and a myriad of other military brass, as well as Defense and State Department officials. After several weeks of this, he finally received approval to proceed.
After a fashion: Washington had split the plan into two halves — overt and covert. "Overt" PSYOP actions were okay, but covert actions were put on hold. The catch-22: Nearly everything Normand wanted to do was considered "covert," much of it simply because it required cooperation from another organization or country. With the exception of a film called Line in the Sand—which had to be reedited because the delays made parts of it out of date — the major PSYOP initiatives against Iraq were put on hold. The film would later be smuggled into Iraq and distributed freely around the rest of the world; but little else in the way of a "strategic" PSYOP campaign — targeting common Iraqi citizens and telling them why their country was being attacked — would ever be implemented.
Carl Stiner has views about this kind of thing: "Certain lawyers get in the act, and you've got certain people that don't want their thumbprint on anything that might have risks associated with it. That's the way they've survived; they limit their exposure. And when you run into that, you've got to get the Chairman or the CINC to override all these birds and get their asses out of the process or they'll delay it to eternity."
Finally, Normand went to Schwarzkopf in mid-December, shortly before he was scheduled to relinquish command of the 4th PSYOP Group for another assignment. Standing in front of the CINC in disgust, he told him, "We need to send a message back to Washington that if we don't get approval soon we can't execute." He handed the general a piece of paper. "I recommend you send this message."