The First Gulf War … it’s been 25 Years!

Twenty five years ago were were just days away from the start of the First Gulf War.  I was stationed in a remote Australian outback town called Woomera where the US Air Force operated a satellite tracking station.  We were in the missile detection business.  Our satellites could “see” the Iraq and Kuwait areas so when a SCUD missile launched, we reported it in real time to the war-fighters.

In May 2015 I published a book about my outback Gulf War experience.  The book is called Yanks in the Outback: A story of Woomera, South Australia, the Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar (JDFN) and the First Gulf War and it’s available on amazon.com in both print and kindle formats.  Here’s an excerpt from my book.

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Desert Storm Begins: Air War
17 Jan 1991 Thursday

Crazy scene today on the ops floor. The war has begun.

The US is bombing the hell out of Iraq and Kuwait.

It seemed like every 5 minutes or so, Sgt Long would enter the ops area and yell out the latest news update from CNN.

Sgt Long is one of our GSOs (Ground Station Operator). His voice pitched higher and almost wanted to crack as he relayed each update. He seemed to relish his new – self-appointed – role. And, he’s pretty good at it. We all more or less accepted him as our personal “war updater.”

A typical call out would go something like this, “US warplanes just bombed Baghdad; over 100 sorties already; no casualties on our side!”

Then he would run back to the break room to get the next round of war information. We watched him throughout the whole process as the break room is adjacent to the ops floor and clearly visible through the large glass windows. We could see him staring at the television screen. Then he’d turn and start back out through the break room door to broadcast the next update.

“No loss of planes and no loss of pilots. That’s what CNN is reporting about the first raid launched from a base in Saudi; according to a high ranking Saudi official.”