Publications

It looked like a video game. From the comfort of a living room couch, with TV dinners in hand, families watched as precision-guided munitions rained down with seemingly perfect accuracy on Iraqi military and civilian targets. It was Jan. 17, 1991 - the start of Operation Desert Storm - and the combination of camera equipped high-tech weaponry and night vision equipment provided viewers an action-packed front-row view into the coalition's air war. What had seemed like science fiction was now a reality.

In 1965, the Vietnam War expanded over the 17th parallel into North Vietnam's panhandle and the Red River Delta. Despite its lead in hardware - with access to advanced radars, beyond visual range and close-in heat seeking ordnance, along with large numbers of heavy-bombers and fighter aircraft - the United States failed to achieve air superiority over North Vietnam. The People's Army of Vietnam, supported by its Communist allies, wielded a mixture of sophisticated air-to-air and surface-to-air weapons to devastating effect. By the summer of 1965, American fighters were being lost at a rate of an entire squadron every 45 days. By the end of that year, the U.S. Air Force had lost a total of 174 aircraft and 16 pilots, with another 35 aircrew members missing.