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Bahrain Organization and Mission of the Forces
Under the constitution, the amir is the supreme
commander of
the armed forces. The minister of defense directs the
armed
forces through the chief of general staff. The National
Guard has
its own commander, who reports directly to the minister of
defense. The public security forces are all under the
minister of
interior. The minister of defense in early 1993, Ali as
Sabah as
Salim Al Sabah, had been shifted from the Ministry of
Interior as
part of the military shakeup after the gulf war. The
ruling
family maintained a tight grip on the centers of power,
including
many senior posts in the security services.
Before the Iraqi invasion, the army's manpower strength
was
16,000 officers and enlisted men. The principal combat
formations
were three armored brigades, one mechanized infantry
brigade, and
one artillery brigade with a regiment of self-propelled
howitzers
and a surface-to-surface missile (SSM) battalion. All the
combat
units were under strength; by one estimate, as of 1988 the
army's
entire fighting strength was the equivalent of only one
Western
brigade.
Its first-line main battle tanks are M-84s, Yugoslav
versions
of the Soviet T-72 tank. The army has various models of
British
armored cars and armored personnel carriers (APCs). Its
artillery
consists of 155mm self-propelled howitzers, mainly of
French
manufacture. It has a large inventory of antitank missile
systems
of British, French, and United States origin, including
the
improved TOW (tube-launched, optically sighted,
wire-guided)
missile from the United States. It has purchased the
Soviet FROG7 , a mobile battlefield missile with a range of sixty
kilometers.
In 1984, after the United States rejected a Kuwaiti order
for
Stinger shoulder-fired SAMs, Kuwait turned to Moscow for
air
defense weapons, purchasing SA-7 and SA-8 SAMs and
ZSU-23-4
antiaircraft guns.
An estimate of the postwar strength of the Kuwaiti
army,
published in The Military Balance, 1992-1993,
revealed the
devastating effect of the Persian Gulf War. The disparate
ground
forces, estimated to number about 8,000, were to be
reconstituted
into four understrength mechanized and armored brigades, a
reserve brigade, and an artillery brigade. Little matériel
survived the war: some tanks, APCs, and 155mm guns (see
table 38,
Appendix). Kuwait's postwar equipment orders include 200
M-84
tanks (from Yugoslavia to offset previous Yugoslav oil
purchases)
and eighteen self-propelled 155mm guns from France. Kuwait
also
has received United States, Russian, and Egyptian armored
vehicles.
The air force complement in 1990 before the gulf war
was
estimated at 2,200, excluding foreign personnel. Its
inventory
included about eighty combat aircraft, mainly Mirage F1s
from
France and A-4 Skyhawks from the United States, and more
than
forty helicopters of French manufacture, some fitted for
assault
missions with antitank missiles. Ground-based air defense
was
structured around the United States improved Hawk (I-Hawk)
missile system, tied into Saudi air defense to receive
data
transmitted by United States and Saudi AWACS aircraft that
had
been operating in the area since the start of the
Iran-Iraq War.
The Military Balance estimated that the
immediate
postwar complement of the air force was 1,000, with
thirty-four
combat aircraft and twelve armed helicopters remaining. By
early
1993, however, air force personnel numbered about 2,500,
with
seventy-four combat aircraft, including McDonnell Douglas
A-4s
and F-18s, and twenty armed helicopters. Its two air
bases, at
Ahmad al Jabir and Ali as Salim, badly damaged in the war,
are
being repaired. In addition to Iraq's capture of the four
batteries of I-Hawk medium-range SAMs, most of the fleet
of
transport aircraft was lost to Iraq. Before the occupation
of the
amirate, the Kuwaiti air force had ordered forty United
States F18 fighter aircraft plus air-to-air missiles and cluster
bombs.
Deliveries under this order began in the first half of
1992.
Kuwait will acquire the strongest air defense network in
the
Persian Gulf region under a proposal announced by the
United
States in March 1992 to transfer six Patriot antiballistic
missile SAM firing units (each consisting of up to four
quadruple
launchers, radar, and a control station) and six batteries
of
Hawk SAMs. The sale will include 450 Patriot missiles and
342
Hawk missiles.
The navy's strength had been estimated at 1,800 in 1990
before the Iraqi occupation. Previously a coastal defense
force
with police responsibilities, the navy's combat
capabilities were
significantly enhanced during 1984 with the delivery of
eight
fast-attack craft armed with Exocet antiship missiles from
the
West German Lürssen shipyard. The navy also operated a
wide
variety of smaller patrol craft. According to The
Military
Balance, the navy was reduced to about 500 personnel
in 1992
as a result of the Persian Gulf War and the Kuwaiti policy
of
removing bidun ("without"--stateless persons
without
citizenship, many of whom had long-standing stays in
Kuwait while
others came in the 1960s and 1970s as oil field workers
and
construction workers) from the armed forces. With the
exception
of two missile boats, the entire fleet was captured and
sunk or
badly damaged by coalition forces while being operated by
the
Iraqis. Some ships are believed to be salvageable. Five
Republic
of Korea (South Korea) twenty-four-meter patrol craft were
among
the vessels lost. However, delivery is expected on an
additional
four craft under an order pending when the war broke out.
Data as of January 1993
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