Your belief that the Iraqi armed forces of 1991 were decrepit and badly run is the proof of just how superior those weapons were, along with the accompanying tactics and doctrine. Before the conflict the overwhelming victory for the Coalition of Willing was not so clear.
The Iraqi army was battle hardened and tested after a near decade long war against Iran. They had the third largest army in the world, which was trained in Soviet doctrine, armed with potent and modern weapon systems. Their integrated air defense system was state of the art combination of the most modern Soviet and European systems that were redundantly layered and hardened.
America, along with its allies, fought them and won in spite of being geographically on the other side of the planet. The exceptional difficulty of achieving that is impossible over state.
> Their integrated air defense system was state of the art combination of the most modern Soviet and European systems that were redundantly layered and hardened.
Not quite: for example, see [0]:
"Though impressive on paper, the Iraqi Air Force's primary role was to act as a regional deterrent, with a secondary role of supporting the Iraqi Army, rather than attempt to gain air superiority in any conflict. Basic training was rigid, inflexible, and left pilots with extremely poor situational awareness.... Like its aircraft, much of Iraq's ground air defenses were also outdated: SA-2 and SA-3 systems were nearing the end of their operational lifespan and their countermeasures were well-known at this point, while its other SAM systems were not much younger."
I'm not talking about their missiles or air force, but the Integrated Air Defense System.
The French built KARI IADS system was a very much modern at the time, having been first operationalized in 1987 and was linked with fiber optic cable, with wireless communication as a backup [0]. While the Iraqi's did not have the latest SAM systems themselves, their integrated air defense system allowed them to keep the radars of SAM batteries turned off, keeping them hidden to avoid detection. Their missiles were very potent, and it had a lot of them at 16,000 in total [1]:
"The U.S. Government estimated before the war that the most critical Iraqi targets were more heavily defended than any in Eastern Europe even during the height of the Cold War."
S-125 missiles had victories against coalition aircraft. They would have had many more victories were it not for the fact that coalition air strikes severed the centralized air command communications in the starting minutes of the war thanks to the Stealthy F-117's which were already above Baghdad at the time of H hour. The combination of stealth aircraft taking out key crucial infrastructure, severing of fiber optics communication, jamming of wireless communications, electronic warfare, and decoy drones proved to be too much for the Iraqi IAD's. But without those technologies and strategies, the Gulf War could have been a blood bath much more akin to Vietnam.
>> The Iraqi army was battle hardened and tested after a near decade long war against Iran.
Which means absolutely nothing if you cannot stop the airplane from dropping bombs on your critical logistics nodes. Those battle-hardened soldiers weren't so hard after a few days without water rations, without fuel in their tanks. In modern maneuver warfare between nation states "toughness" means far less than even a slight technological advantage.
>Which means absolutely nothing if you cannot stop the airplane from dropping bombs on your critical logistics nodes.
Which was only possible thanks to the superiority of American weapons system's which were better versions of old weapons. Thank you for reinforcing my point. Also the major coalition action was over after 3 days of fighting, that wasn't long enough for any Iraqi divisions to run out of supplies.
It was also widely believed that America's "volunteer force" was a disadvantage.
The USA did many firsts. It was the first deployment of M1 Abrams, no one knew if it'd be good (and IIRC, it was considered a waste of money back then, since it wasn't battle proven yet). It was the first time the US used GPS on the battlefield. It was the first time precision weapons were used. Etc. etc.
A lot of people at the time thought the USA could lose Desert Storm. It turns out that war happened completely differently than armchair generals / pundits believed.
I don't know if we'll necessarily win or lose our next war. But I think I can rather confidently say that none of us will be able to predict it.
The US won and then lost Desert Storm the same way it won and then lost Vietnam. Anyone who was saying that Saddam would be able to repel the US was engaging in WWE-style theatrics, but anyone who thought it'd turn into an unending mess would have been right (but was anyone saying that?)
The US was "winning," defined narrowly in terms of military statistics, throughout almost the entire war - casualty ratios were vastly in America's favor, and every military target that was selected was taken and destroyed. Bombers flew with nigh impunity.
That carried public opinion until 1968 when business interests started realizing that none of those things corresponded to anything good. Very similar to Iraq and Afganistan where unquestioned military dominance led to the destruction of the ruling order which led to ???.
