ANTlIOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBUOGRAPHY                                       113

Moore: We had computers but old ones, and it was a very slow and cumber-
some process.   I've got to tell you, once I sent my ATO in--and we talked to
Riyadh all the time and said, "You have any troubles with it? We're executing
it. "--we didn't worry about it from there on, because we knew we had enough
flexibility in that system that we could do anything we wanted.      We paid
attention to the special instructions at the bottom of the ATO, because we
coordinated the whole thing.  It was a fait accompli evolution.
   The Navy's trouble was that they tried to do it very honestly and write just
what they were going to fly.  They did that for a few days and then they started
to use the same process we did. Also, their trouble was getting that passed out
to the individual carriers, all the Aegis cruisers, all the rest of the support ships.
When you try to do that electronically, it really becomes a burden on the
communications system.   They, more than anybody else, would have to build
a system that gamed the ATO process,         put enough flexibility in so the
commander could do whatever he wanted to, and just read the special instruc-
tions.  That's the way they did it at the tail end.

Proceedings:   Were  all U.S.  Marine Corps     air assets covered by the ATO
--Harriers on the hot pad or attack helicopters?  Or did you handle all of that
separately?

Moore: All the fixed-wing guys were in the ATO, but we wrote it more in a
generic fashion so that a particular squadron didn't know that the two F/A-18s
at 0200 were theirs.  We wrote them in as a generic evolution.     As you get
down to the helos, you've got a real saturation problem on your hands. We, in
essence, just let the Air Force know what was going on.      You just have too
many sorties going on.  Marine air flew, for the 44 days or so, 18,000 sorties.
We had only about 500 airplanes.     We flew 9,000 of those sorties in the last
five days. When you start to put those kinds of numbers in the system, you just
clog it up.

Proceedings: You started out on 16 January with interdiction. When you shifted
back closer to the front lines and the ground attack actually began, were the
sorties available to the Marine Corps commanders?

Moore: Yes.    The original Desert Storm plan included 50% of the F/A-18s, all
the A-6s,   and only two KC-130 tankers.        So that left me--and   General
Schwarzkopf did this himself--the remaining F/A-18s, all the Harriers, all the
attack helos, and--on the Air Force side--airplanes like A-i Os, some of the
F-16s, and some of the others I think General Homer put in his pocket.    The
Army provided attack helos.     We knew, even though we had a fourphase
evolution, that Phase I  (the strategic phase), Phase II   (the SEAD--suppres-
sion of enemy air defenses),  and Phase III  (the preparation of the battlefield)
would all probably go at the same time.   That's exactly what happened.  Even
though we    were   running   strikes  to Baghdad, the enemy didn't sit there
without   shooting artillery, and a   lot of the other stuff.  So, in  essence,