114                                                  U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 199O~1991

Phases I, II, and III kicked off within two hours of one another.                SEAD never
stops.
   Right at D-Day in mid-January, the Harriers started to fly, two hours after
the big strike started.   The Iraqis started to shoot artillery, to move around the
battlefield, and we started to hit them.                So that process stayed tight, and we
really had a solid script for the first 36 hours.              After that, we started weaning
out assets, and pretty soon, with General Schwarzkopf's acknowledgement, about
15 days prior to the ground campaign, we were into battlefield preparation.               At
that time, if a target didn't do something for the I MEF and battlefield
preparation, we weren't going.                  The Air Force understood that.
   Of course, they were being pressed by General Schwarzkopf, who said, in
effect, "Start preparing the land in front of those Army corps.                  Start pulling
back out of these great MiG sweeps and deep air war and start preparing the
battlefield."   That was General Schwarzkopfs guidance.                    It fell right in with
ours, and by that 15-day period, we had weaned ourselves out of any deep
strike support.   When I say weaned ourselves, we made some tradeoffs.
General Homer would come to me and say, "Hey, Royal, if you can hit these
rail yards or you can hit this power line, I will give you 75 A-10 sorties as a
tradeoff.  If you can give me one more strike group late in the afternoon or in
the morning, I will give you these F-16s or these F-l5Es."                      So there were
tradeoffs back and forth as we worked through the air war.


                 Al 5~s,,h                       6   -Kh0~.y0l             Air Control Zones

                                                                        During the Air Campaign
                                                                            January 1991


                                                        -     -      6,000,-C   IRAN


     SCil  AHI CHd6
           001 C00~ I DASC 6 CA ~             --.......- - -  - -    -- -

                  *Qso..h
                    DASC
                          I````````````````````````````````-.


        SAUDI ARABIA                          FAIC NAF~, AC-----------  - --


   Nttrnbernd boxes are flghter Engeaernent
   Zones. Grids over Kuweit era Secondery Ter-
   get Kill Zones. These were used to assign         AdDDDDD
   fniflions to airc~ft that were unable to en.
   gage their primary terget.