Wybrane aspekty osiągania przewagi w operacji „Iracka Wolność” w 2003 roku

Iraqi Freedom operation significantly differed from a classic model of waging offensive operations in the second half of the 20th century. There appeared a kind of joining of the timeless rules of conducting war with the application of an innovative approach to certain aspects of the art of war and using the state-of-the-art technology. The picture of the battlefield showed great flexibility and mobility both in the land and air dimensions. The necessity to operate with the use of small forces in relation to the area of operation required capabilities to concentrate efforts where it was useful from the coalition point of view, and inconvenient for Iraqi forces. During the whole operation a great attention was drawn to acquiring, maintaining and using information advantage which allowed unprecedented control of the battlefield both in the sense of effective command of precision weapons and due to capabilities of effective command of quick surprising manoeuvre of the friendly forces. Iraqi commanders did not posses modern systems of command and reconnaissance, what contributed to the lack of possibility to command their own forces in an effective way. A huge advantage of coalition groups resulted from the fact that Iraqi frees in the first week of operations were significantly weakened due to constant air strikes, their command system was neutralised, what in turn made it impossible to attempt reorganisation, creating an appropriate defence group and regrouping necessary troops. Moreover, in many regular army units there was seen the weakeneing of the will to fight. The technological advantage of American units effectively minimised the quantative advantage of Iraqi forces. The coalition forces having much fewer divisions and artillery than Iraq, surpassed it with modern armament systems. The technological advantage of conventional weapons and information advantage were the key factors of the coalition success.