Photo By Lori Stewart | The JSTARS prepares to take off for a mission in support of Operation DESERT STORM....... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
JSTARS ARRIVES IN SAUDI ARABIA
On Jan. 12, 1991, two developmental Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) E-8As flew to Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, for operational use in support of Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM. The JSTARS’ success led Brig. Gen. John Stewart, Army Central Command G-2, to call it “the single most valuable intelligence and targeting collection system in DESERT STORM.”
The JSTARS, comprised of an E-8A platform and several ground station modules (GSMs), was meant to provide a long range, near all-weather, night and day intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting capability. It could provide wide-area surveillance with a moving target indicator and two- or three-dimensional imaging through synthetic aperture radar. Both Army and Air Force operators flew onboard the aircraft, viewing the same real-time radar data from their own operational perspective. Air Force operators looked for immediate targeting data for attack aircraft and tracked moving targets in real time. Army operators manipulated the data differently, especially in the GSMs, to look at changes through time to predict enemy ground movements.
Getting JSTARS to Saudi Arabia had been a hurdle. In September 1990, CENTCOM Commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf opted not to request the system. Despite a successful operational field demonstration in Europe the previous month, Air Force representatives had convincingly argued JSTARS was not yet ready for operational use. Believing JSTARS critical to Coalition operations, however, Maj. Gen. Jack Leide, the CENTCOM J-2, took advantage of a chance encounter with his boss at the officers’ club to re-engage him on the subject. Leide argued JSTARS was the only system that could see deep enough into Iraqi-held territory to inform Coalition forces about the Republican Guard’s response once the ground invasion began, a critical information requirement.
Based on his J-2’s arguments and those of other senior leaders who had witnessed JSTARS capabilities firsthand, General Schwarzkopf received additional briefings in mid-December. After a joint Army-Air Force team laid out the system’s capabilities and weaknesses, Schwarzkopf asked General Leide’s opinion. In his book, Professional Courage, Leide said he stressed “the probable positive capabilities far outweighed the possible negatives.” Furthermore, getting the system to theater early would allow time to mitigate the negatives before the ground invasion. Convinced, on Dec. 17, Schwarzkopf ordered immediate deployment of JSTARS to be operational by Jan. 15, 1991.
With less than a month to prepare, Maj. Gen. Paul Menoher, the commanding general at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center (USAIC) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, worked with the Army Staff to authorize a provisional JSTARS detachment. Col. Martin S. Kleiner, the Training and Doctrine Command Systems Manager for JSTARS, then formed the JSTARS Operational Detachment and recruited and trained personnel from USAIC to operate the unit’s GSMs. Meanwhile, the Air Force established its own 4411th JSTARS Squadron. Integrated Air Force-Army training continued throughout the seventeen-hour flight to Saudi Arabia.
On Jan. 12, 1991, the two E-8A aircraft and five GSMs arrived at Riyadh. Two days later, JSTARS flew its first mission, an engineering test flight that became an eight-hour intelligence-gathering mission. Colonel Kleiner remembered that first mission as a learning experience: “No matter how much you test or how much you postulate, until you actually get into an operational environment, you don’t know what you are going to see.”
JSTARS crews flew forty-nine consecutive targeting and ISR missions, mostly at night, and continuously evolved their procedures after each one. The battlefield was ideal for employment of the system as the largely armored enemy moved in mass formations over clear and uniform terrain with little civilian presence. Enjoying air supremacy, Coalition aircraft could immediately destroy JSTARS-identified targets. As an ISR platform, once the ground campaign began, GSM operators located and tracked mobile and fixed enemy formations, like those dug in along the Iraq and Kuwait borders with Saudi Arabia.
JSTARS’ success earned it unmitigated support in the services and in Congress after the war. The first production system was delivered in 1996 and the last in 2005. JSTARS was retired in November 2023.
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| Date Taken: | 01.10.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 01.10.2025 14:24 |
| Story ID: | 488913 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 56 |
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