The Gulf War Air Power Survey is a report commissioned by the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

in 1993 to document and analyze its performance during the 1991

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

. It consists of five sections each averaging over 700 pages, and a 276-page summary report. It was one of the most popular reports issued by the U.S. military at the time. On 22 August 1991, then

Secretary of the Air Force A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a w ...

Donald B. Rice Donald Blessing Rice (born June 4, 1939) is a California businessman and senior government official. He has been president and chief executive officer of several large companies including RAND Corporation, and has sat on numerous boards of direc ...

commissioned an independent study "to review all aspects of air warfare in the Persian Gulf". Rather than a historical account, it analyses the operational level of the air war, in which 52,788 sorties were carried out, resulting in 41,309 strikes. The study was directed by

Eliot A. Cohen Eliot Asher Cohen (born April 3, 1956 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American political scientist. He was a counselor in the United States Department of State under Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009. In 2019, Cohen was named the 9th Dean of ...

, a professor at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

School of Advanced International Studies The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China. It is consistently ranked one of the ...

, and the research and writing was carried out by teams consisting of civilians and retired and active military officers. In 2002, the Air Force removed links to the study from its websites in what the

Federation of American Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1946 by scientists who wo ...

called "merely one instance of a continuing government-wide trend of removing unclassified information from public access on the web". In response, FAS posted copies of the report to its own website. The study was subsequently put back on the military sites.

External links

Downloadable files of the summary and five sections
Air Force Historical Studies Office
Downloadable files of the summary and five sections in the Secrecy and Security Library

AIR FORCE TAKES GULF WAR STUDY OFFLINE
FAS Project on Government Secrecy, 10 September 2003
WorldCat library database entry
Gulf War United States Air Force {{Mil-hist-stub