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Kuwait
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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