Air Defence Artillery in Combat, 1972 to the Present by Mandeep Singh

Author:Mandeep Singh [Singh, Mandeep]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Weapons, Persian Gulf War (1991), Middle East, Israel & Palestine
ISBN: 9781526762054
Google: 0y8NEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Air World
Published: 2020-11-23T00:43:02+00:00

The Ground Offensive

On the eve of the ground battle, 11th ADA Brigade began moving Patriot fire units farther north to provide air defence for staging areas nearer the Kuwaiti and Iraqi borders. On 20 January Bravo Battery of Task Force SCORPION moved 600 kilometres to its new location, Rafha. The two HAWK fire platoons were operational by the end of the day. As the location was about twenty kilometres from the Iraqi border, the greater danger at the site was more from artillery shelling than anything else. For local protection, Bravo Battery was assigned a platoon of infantry on 11 February.48

More than the Patriot fire units, it was the Avengers that provided close air defence to the field army. The Avenger crews moved with the lead elements of the 1st Cavalry Division during its 500-kilometre move to defensive positions north of King Khalid Military City and later during its offensive across the Iraqi frontier. On 18 February, when the division launched probing attacks, the Avenger platoons provided an effective day and night umbrella as they accompanied multiple-launch rocket systems and 155mm self-propelled howitzers. Later on, Avengers defended critical trains and command posts while providing air defence of the probing forces from overwatch positions on the Saudi side of the berm.

On G-Day Avengers continued to support division deception operations as the 1st Cavalry Division’s 2nd Brigade conducted a limited attack forty kilometres into Iraq to fix the enemy forces in place as part of the deception plan. Subsequently, the Avengers protected not only the division’s manoeuvre elements during the move west through the breach opened by 1st Infantry Division, but also the vital division command posts and brigade tactical operations centres, critical Class IV and V logistics trains and logistics support trains as they moved forward to sustain the momentum of the attack.49

On 24 February, G-Day, Bravo Battery was to re-locate itself to a site about twenty kilometres inside Iraq to cover the advance of XVIII Airborne Corps. The battery was to move at 2:00pm although it was delayed to 4:00pm.50 As the HIMAD Battery with associated HAWK fire units was spread over a large area, an infantry platoon was attached with Task Force SCORPION. At times, they even made use of abandoned Iraqi weapons, including a ZU-23 AA gun at a site inside Iraq. When the ceasefire came into effect, only two HIMAD Batteries were inside Iraq: Bravo Battery and TF 4-43 ADA, serving with VII Corps in the centre.

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