EP. 515: Victory Through Airpower: General Chuck Horner and Operation Desert Storm

0:00Welcome to the proceedings podcast. I'm Bill Hamlet, the editor-in-chief at the U.S. Naval Institute. It's Friday, September 11th, 2026. Good to have you on board, everybody. This episode is brought to you by General Dynamics Elected Boat. GDEB has a 126-year legacy of delivering the summering's our nation needs to defend our freedoms and those of our allies to ensure our nation's defense now at this critical time in history. GDEB is investing in the next generation of shipbuilders and infrastructure to answer the call. It was EB then and it's EB now. Learn more at gdeb.com slash about slash EB now. Okay, because today is the 25th anniversary of 9-11, I want to pause for a second just to remember. 25 years ago today, I was in the Pentagon,

1:01I was working in the National Military Joint Intelligence Center, which was part of the National Military Command Center. It was both a horrific day for all the obvious reasons and one that I remember with a degree of pride because all the people I worked with reacted with utmost professionalism and did their jobs extremely well. I always pause on the anniversary of 9-11 to remember two people I knew well who were killed on the other side of the building from me, Navy Lieutenant Darren Pantell and Navy civilian Angie Houts both were young, smart, dedicated professionals, mainly arresting peace. Okay, moving on, my guest today is John Andreas Olson. He's the author of a new book just released from the Naval Institute Press. It's titled Victory Through Airpower, General Chuck Horner and Operation Desert Storm. John, welcome to the show. Thank you Bill, I'm delighted to be on it. So John, let's just start with who was General Chuck Horner?

2:04General Chuck Horner was the air commander of Operation Desert Storm and I would argue that the Gulf War of 91 was a masterclass in air warfare unmatched by any use of military force since World War II and Chuck Horner stood at the center of this success at the center of this revolution in military affairs. He oversaw the planning and execution of the air campaign that liberated Q8 from Iraqi occupation and it was the commander-in-chief General Norman Swashkov who appointed Horner to be his joint force air component commander, what we call the J-FAC, in line with the Goldwater Nichols Act. This means that there was one person who would oversee all the air strikes. And in this capacity, Horner coordinated joint and coalition air assets into an integrated air campaign. And I would argue that Chuck Horner succeeded because he knew the air power profession

3:05extremely well to his fingertips but also because he established a unique bond with his boss, General Norman Swashkov. Horner established a trust that none of the other generals were able to do and this trust ensured that Swashkov supported all his decisions and defend his decisions against the advice of even some of his three-star army generals. So for historical perspective, I think it's fair to say that Horner earned a level of trust in respect for Swashkov which matched 2,000 hours of Karl Spots and George Patton's of Upy Waelen and Douglas McArthur's of George Keeney back in the Second World War. So in one sentence, I would submit that Chuck Horner was the most accomplished air commander since World War II. Now I think you're absolutely right. Thanks for summarizing that for us. I'm going to be a little bit combative intentionally with

4:08the next question. So the title of your book is Victory Through Airpower and a lot of our listeners will think that's not possible. You have to have boots on the ground. You have to have naval, particularly for the navalists in the audience. You have to have naval power to control key lines of communication, all those things, right? So I got to ask you, do you think military victory is possible through air power alone or perhaps did the Iraq War Operation Desert Storm present just a unique opportunity, a unique military conflict in history? You're right. Of course, in an absolute sense victory, three air power alone is not possible. War is far too complex to be handled by one military domain. But that said, Operation Desert Storm was a war under unique circumstances. As War Skolf decided early on to rely on air power to liberate Q8 and this

5:13was reflected in its four-phase air-centric war strategy, first a strategic offensive to establish air superiority over Iraq and incapacitate Salamu Sayy's regime, second, I campaigned to secure control of the air over the Q8-theatre operations that KTO and third, sustain attacks against Iraqi ground forces, and then finally, a ground operation to liberate Q8. So off the four faces, the first three, where air power alone, so to speak, as War Skolf decreed that the ground operation phase four would not begin until after your air power at a tricky rocket tanks and artillery and on personal carriers, in occupying Q8 by 50%. It's War Skolf had great faith in air power destroying and preparing the battlefield. So eventually the war lasted 43 days and the first 39 was conducted with air power alone. And it was only during the last four days that we saw engagement on the ground, hence the phrase the 100-hour battle. So consequently, although the US

6:19led coalition ground operation was executed with exceptional professionalism and effectiveness, that's not in question. It ultimately exploited a victory that air power had already made possible. And let me just elaborate a little bit because I know some of the listeners will be upset about this, but first the Soviet diplomat, Yigini Primakov, has documented that Saddam Hussein told Moscow that he agreed in principle to withdraw all Iraqi forces from Q8 after one month of sustain bombing, but on a condition, if the United States receded, all security council resolutions adopted after resolution 660. So President Mikhail Gorbachev urged President George Bush to convene an emergency security council session, but the White House, for various reasons, chose to proceed with a planned ground offensive. Second, the CIA estimated that air power had destroyed 39

7:20percent of Iraqi tanks, 32 percent of all the personnel carriers, and 47 percent of artillery before the ground operation began. And the reason this is important because even the Army manuals at the time stated that a combat unit is ineffective if it's destroyed by 30 percent or more. By the time the ground operation began, the Iraqi leaders Saddam Hussein had already instructed his forces to prepare for retreat. And by their own admission, the Iraqi army was operational defeated before coalition ground forces crossed into Q8. And even the elite Republican Guard, division that were the third echelon in Q8 sought escape rather battle while the limited engagement that did occur lasted minutes rather than hours and days. So thousands of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions and surrendered before coalition ground forces advanced. Iraq in general later stated

8:20that another two or three weeks of air operations alone would have forced them to withdraw because of logistical collapse. And Saddam Hussein, reflecting on this, after his capture in 2003, told the interrogators that coalition ground forces merely completed a victory, quote, already accomplished by the air forces, unquote. He also stated that the air strikes disintegrated his government. So as far as the storm goes, the subjectum of my book, I think it's fair to refer to it as a victory to air power, not the absolute sense, but air power was decisive in winning the war. I know it sounds bombastic, but in this case, which was quite unique, it was air power that won the war and the ground operation completed it. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think having read the book and having been alive in part of the US military during Desert Shield Desert Storm, I think that's

9:22a really fair and accurate summary. One of the things that your book brings out, you just you mentioned the Republican Guard Corps there at the end. And in the book, you bring out the fact that horrors, the J-FAC and the Master Air Attack Plan, it's part of that overall four-phase war effort. They were very keen on making sure that the Iraqi Republican Guard Corps could not escape from Kuwait, right? That they they trapped them and then helped decimate them in Kuwait so they couldn't retreat. It was a it was a big level of of Saddam Hussein's power, his national power. And so, you know, they were a key target or a key target set within the overall Master Air Attack Plan, which I thought was really interesting. You brought it out well in the book. I looked at Swashkov told Warner, I want you to bond the Republican Guard

10:25every single day. And he did. Yeah, yeah. So, let's go back a little bit because, you know, we talked a little bit before we started recording here and in your book, I think a key strength in the book is the fact that there's just a lot of background information about General Horner, key leaders in history. It's always, you know, insightful, I think, to go back and where do they come from? How did they rise to the ranks? Who did they work for? Who helped shape them and form them? And what were the key aspects or, you know, experiences of their young lives, their young professional lives that helped shape them? So, so tell us a bit about Horner, his early years in the Air Force, what kinds of aircraft did he fly? And who were those earliest assignments and leaders who shaped him? Sure, sure. Chircono was born in Iowa in 1936, part of what we now call the silent generation. A generation shaped by war, economic uncertainty, hard work, and a strong

11:29sense of duty. And this is important because that stayed with him, that that was his character, this sense of duty and hard work. He grew up on the farm and he was always proud of his Midwestern origins. If somebody said, you're a four star general, you're far away from from the cornfields of Iowa, he will be offended because there's there's nothing negative to be said about the farmers and Iowa in his mind. So in June 58, he graduated and was commissioned through the ROTC as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. Reserve, he found his calling, he wanted to fly fighter aircraft and he concluded early on that that was best done alone in a one one theater. And he was extremely good at that. His hand, a mind coordination was was very impressive from from the early days. So he learned how to fly the T34, the T28 and the famous T33 before moving into fighters. And at

12:33the time, when the strategic air command and his bombers dominated the US Air Force, relatively few young pilots were allowed to go straight into fighters. So he was absolutely delighted. And this is because he was number one in his flight to get an assignment on the F-100, the Hun. So in the book, I sort of identified three life changing experiences that formed your corner into the commander. And the first was a near death experience that we talked about before the show. This near death experience made him deeply religious and that affected him throughout his career. The F-100 demanded confidence, judgment and respect for the machine. And he said that the F-100 was his first love, but it could kill you in an instant. And in 1962, at the age of 26, while flying in an exercise over the Libyan desert outside three-ply, the F-100 nearly killed him.

13:39He was pulling the stick too hard to avoid an air-to-air collision. His aircraft stalled, which sometimes happened with the F-100. And the aircraft stopped flying. And he suddenly found himself strapped to a 30,000 pound break, falling toward the desert, approaching certain death. He tried something desperate. In 1999, although a hundred times he wouldn't work, but he lit the off-the-burner. And slowly, but almost impossibly, the aircraft began flying again, staggering just above the desert and the Warner escaped death by seconds. And that evening, he replayed incident over and over again, and he concluded that he should not have survived. So he came to the conclusion. He came to believe that God had intervened and spared him for a purpose. This conviction became central to Horner's character. It gave him a sense of purpose. He felt like a reborn Christian in his own words. He got his spiritual side that stayed with him

14:44throughout the career and helped him in difficult times. But he also realized there's a degree of fatalism. So he came to the conclusion that he was not in control of his own life. The second defining experience for Horner's career was Vietnam. He flew from Courotte, Airbase in Thailand, in the F-105, in two combat tours. And during the last one, as the wild weasel pilot completing 111 combat sorties, he had gone to war willingly. He wanted to service country, test himself in combat, as any fighter pilot would like to do, and experience the ultimate challenge of facing death in the air against an opponent. But Vietnam left him deeply disillusioned as the rest of the United States, of course. To Horner, we had now demonstrated almost everything

15:46that could go wrong in the employment of air power. There was no clear connection between political objectives and military operations. Washington attempted to calibrate violence through gradual escalation, hoping to signal American resolve without promoting a wider war. We remember the infamous pictures of Linby Johnson and the Tuesday lunches in the White House with all the maps on the floor where he's selecting targets. So Taris were approved and sometimes selected at the highest political level, produced an extraordinary micro management of what pilots could attack, how they should fly, when they should fly, and under which circumstances and with which weapons systems they were not in the position to choose to out themself. There was no single commander for air, North Widow was divided into geographical route packages with different headquarters and services controlling operations. And this system fragmented air power rather than concentrating it toward

16:51a common objective. And that always stayed with Chuck Horner, and he promised himself that if he ever ended up in a position to influence events, he would do it very differently from Vietnam. So that became sort of the anti-thesis for him. But he also decided that he should stay in the air force. He would devote his life to write these wrongs and make the US Air Force better. After Vietnam, Horner went to the on-command staff college. She worked at the Pentagon. Joining the fighter mafia at the time, he attended a National War College as a colonel, and he became deputy commander of operations at the fourth tactical air wing, Seymour Johnson. He flew the F4, an aircraft that he loved. He loved all the aircraft he flew, and he realized a significant improvement in this third generation aircraft compared to the Hun, but also the incoming

17:56fourth generation of F15s and F16s. Now, the third great influence on Horner, as you mentioned, Bill, who sponsored him, who was, who mentored him, and the name is General Wilbur Creach, Bill Creach, who was the very powerful commander of tactical air command from 78 to 84. And if he had known, taught Horner how not to fight in an air war, he helped him, taught him how to build and train and lead a modern air force. So, Creach inherited a tactical air command from General Robert Dixon that still suffered from many of the problems of the post-Vietnam era with poor readiness, declining morale, inadequate training, and a centralized management that often separated the authority and responsibility. So, his response amounted to a revolution in the way that tactical air command and tactical air forces operated, and that the heart was this simple principle

19:00of giving people responsibility, to give them the authority to carry it out and to hold them accountable to the resource. Creach pushed for authority, downward strengthening commanders, the mounted rigorous standards, and assisted that commanders take ownership of the people, aircraft maintenance, training, and combat readiness. He was really focused on ownership, and he used to phrase, one is the last time you washed a rental car. You need ownership to take responsibility, and he believed that quality mattered in everything you did. So, Creach had the greatest influence on the Horners development professionally as a commander. He repeatedly placed horned positions, increasing more and more responsibilities, selecting to command two wings, and later two air divisions. And in doing so, Creach forced Horners to develop beyond being an

20:01exceptional fighter pilot and tactician to one that would lead organizations, develop subordinates, and force standards, manage resources, and create combat readiness through other people. And the great mantra was not to micromanage, but to trust people. So, Horners in turn absorbed Creach's most important lessons, trust subordinates, decentralized execution, the mandrelistic training, and force high standards, and judge commanders by results and not talk in appearances. So, off the desert storm, Horners went back and acknowledged Creach as the man behind the success. But Bill Creach is by far the most influential character in Chuck Horners' career. And that's great. And all that comes out, I was, I never heard of General Creach before, and then just your biography focuses on Horners, but there's a lot of really important information,

21:06interesting reading I found about General Creach and his character and his leadership style. And also, as you point out, he was the commander of tactical air command, which is one of the major units within the United States Air Force at a pivotal time, right, coming out of Vietnam and trying to correct for the mistakes in Vietnam and get ready for what would be, you know, sort of fourth, fifth generation warfare. There are a couple things that you just mentioned that I wanted to just pull the threads a little bit on. One of the things that stood out to me is, the early in the book, you know, you mentioned that the Harnor was a member of the fighter mafia, which is true, but I think a key thing for, particularly for naval aviators and for Navy, a Navy audience, our audience is that Horners always flew aircraft that had an air to ground wall. It wasn't just an air to air wall, right? So the F-100, the F-105, the F-4, you mentioned the

22:10wild measle missions that he flew in Vietnam. Those were all missions where he had both an air to air wall and he had flying aircraft that were going after ground targets. And I think that played a huge role in his development to be ready to be the J-FAC commander for Operation Desert Storm, because I think some of the magic of Desert Storm, the air power, the way air power was wielded in Desert Storm, was that it was in service of ground targets. It was in strategic and tactical, and that prepped the ground force for that 100-hour race to Baghdad, right? For the ability, or not quite the Baghdad, but for the ability of the ground forces to make that wrap and sweep and just decimate the Iraqi military, because the air power hadn't just taken out air to air capability, but they had softened the ground forces of the Iraqi military. I think that's a really key point in one that kind of came out as I was reading the book over and over.

23:12This is a guy who's focused on not just air power for air powers, but air power for ground powers sake and really the enablement of the entire joint force. So I want to pull a little bit more on that. So your book, it just provides an impressive level of detail about how the Desert Storm air campaign was planned and built and executed. And how did you research that? And as you researched it, what did you learn that surprised you? There are several books based on primary sources and the most extensive and authoritative is of course the Go for Air Power Survey, which you several volumes, there's one on planning, one on operations, one on effects and effectiveness. That's my Elliot Cohen. Absolutely. He was the director of the study and they got quite a bunch of really good people to come in and help with those studies. So that is the most authoritative

24:15data collection that we have with solid assessment by those who understand air power. I've also talked to a lot of people over the years, people that were part of making the air campaign happen. And of course back in 2007, I published a book on John Warden, he was in any way, it's the intellectual architect of phase one of Operation Desert Storm. And I've talked a lot to John Warden over the years, but also with David Abdullah, who I've known for almost 30 years. And he was a lieutenant colonel at the time. Now he retired as a three star general and he's the Dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies. But he was the one that transformed and amplified the air campaign and made it executable in theater. I was able to communicate to owner on a daily basis what air power could do. And

25:18I'm known as well for almost 30 years. Makes me feel a bit old when I say it that way, but he, I met him back in 1997. And we've kept in touch over the years and met quite a few times. And I've he has answered so many questions in the process of writing this book, 200 or 300 emails. And we have talked quite a bit and his memory is extremely good. So I have these facts, but I also have these personal perspectives when I write a book like this. I don't think I was surprised by anything Bill, but having more access to the Iraqi story now and the other side of the hill, if we use a basic little heart phrase, I have been become even more convinced how important the strategic campaign was in a parallelizing Saddam Hussein's regime and influencing his decision-making and decision-making process. So these air attacks, they left him essentially incapacitated

26:22by disconnecting communications between the leadership and the field commanders and the population. And although he could move around in secret and from safe house to safe house, he couldn't establish a war council and anything close to what the coalition had. He was just running a day-to-day basis trying to stay alive. And that would have been a very different scenario if we hadn't attacked downtown Baghdad and gone for the leadership and his command structure the way we did. Simultaneously, a coalition aircraft, this monthly Iraqs integrated there, the defense system, securing air superiority almost immediately and allowing subsequent operations. And as you said, also against the Iraqi forces on the battlefield. So if anything, I think this recent book has reinforced my belief in air superiority and strategic attacks.

27:24But also how important it is with with air power leadership. If you're going to run an air campaign, it has to be an airman with extensive experience both as a commander but also with that insight into what is the air professional about. And we had that with General Chakorni, it wasn't perfect, but he fit the situation perfectly. Yeah, great point. So because Dezr Strong was more than 35 years ago now for our younger listeners, can you recap some of the highlights of the air campaign? How many sorties, targets, hits, air to air kills, the number of just as sure the sheer size of the air forces that were joined together for the campaign. And maybe what were some of the friction points? Okay, here are some of the numbers. And we may be surprised about how big the numbers really are, how big an effort it was.

28:25More than 1,100 US Air Force aircraft deployed to the region and we're used in Operation Desert Storm. Coalition air forces flew nearly a total of 120,000 sorties and of these more than half of them were combat sorties or shooters as we say, depending on how you precisely define define it. It took 43 days and coalition aircraft dropped roughly 88,000 tons of bombs. And for the US Air Force, specifically the Gulf Air Force survey that we talked about recorded approximately 210,000 air to ground munitions expanded. And air superiority was extremely one-sided. The G-Wops or the Gulf Air Force survey credits coalition aircraft with 37 Iraqis, aircraft destroyed in air to air combat. Of course, they destroyed many more in the

29:26shelters and when they tried to escape, but in air to air combat. And with no coalition aircraft lost in those engagements. And it was the F-15C Charlie that accounted for nearly 90% of those kills. Coalition forces lost 75 fixed wing aircraft during Desert Storm. Just more than half of them in with enemy action. A remarkable small number given that they flew over 120,000 sorties. But those are some of the numbers, technical numbers, but of course we're also talking about people here. And United States suffered 148 fatalities and 467 wounded while defense intelligence analyst John Heidner's concluded that fewer than 10,000 Iraqis soldiers were killed. So it's very a fixed based oriented this air campaign. It did not set out to destroy and kill

30:29as much as possible, which is very different from a strategic air campaign back in the second world war. A new technology played an important role, but contrary to its reputation, the air campaign did not primarily rely on advanced precision weapons. Precision guided munitions, PGM, accounted for only 8% of the weapons that were used. So it was a precision war, but only 8% were precision weapons. So those are some of the numbers. And I think the scale as go may surprise as a little bit when we look at our air forces today. Among the friction points, the where US Army leaders, especially Normus Walshko's deputy, the Lieutenant General Calvin Waller, and Freddie Franks, who was the commander of the 7th Corps, they were at times very skeptical about how a Hohner allocated air power. Most Army leaders want air power in their sector,

31:32naturally. So they would criticize Hohner quite often, but Kwaschko has always defended his airmen on this. There were also friction points between planners and operators on one hand and intelligence community on the other, especially because this was an effects-based approach. Intelligence community had not prepared themselves to assess damage in those terms. So those were some of the things, some of the friction points, and of course the big political friction point was the Skull Hunt and the inability to destroy a single mobile Skull launcher throughout the campaign. I mean, they managed to get the number of launches down, but none of the mobile launches were found and destroyed. So that's some of the numbers and some of the friction points in an otherwise extremely successful air campaign. Yeah, that's a great summary. The air campaign, it also had introduced a lot of new joint vernacular

32:39to anyone who was associated with air power, the ATO air tasking order, the map, the master air attack plan, the joint force air component commander, J-FAC, and I will admit freely that the Navy was a little bit behind. So, you know, a lot of our listeners will remember that the Navy contribution to the Desert Shield and Desert Storm, six aircraft carrier strike groups deployed three operated in the Persian Gulf and three operated in the Red Sea, and so there were a lot of aircraft, but the Navy was not ready to integrate into the ATO, the air tasking order. And so, we couldn't, Navy ships couldn't receive it electronically, and so they used to have to fly aircraft in to an air base in theater, pick up a printed copy of the ATO and fly it out to each carrier, and then the pilots would go through and do the planning based on what they were tasked

33:39or frag to do in that ATO. And so, that started after Desert Storm happened for the 1990s for naval aviation, and I was an intelligence officer who spent much of my career attached to naval aviation units. There was a lot of catch-up of, okay, how do we play into the J-FAC? Could the Navy do a J-FAC afloat on an aircraft carrier? What was the, the proper, how do we increase the the communications bandwidth so that we can receive the ATO and be more up on step, and there was also a lot of now we're suddenly sending people into the members of the J-FAC staff from a carrier striker, but send a liaison officers to wherever the J-FAC was based, that each Navy air wing would send a couple of usually lutetic commanders to be embedded into that process so that you were looking out for the Navy's equities, and then also being able to tell the Navy what was coming in

34:45the three-day ATO cycle, not just what they're getting today, but what's coming two days from now, three days from now, four days from now, to be ready for it. So I want to just, my question is, what are your impressions of Hohner and his team's efforts to wield air power for the benefit of the whole joint force, and any thoughts on, you know, your impressions on his lasting legacy or lasting effect on the U.S. military? Yeah, one of the most important operational innovations was the master attack plan that you mentioned because it translated the FAC space approach into a coherent design of the air campaign. So the air-tasking order is an un-myster to document assigning aircraft emissions, but the map is the higher level where you provide the operational logic linking every strike to the air campaign. So it prescribes the sequence of attacks across time and space and generate instant and cumulative systematic effects, synchronizing parallel strikes. And of

35:49course, Hohner's point was that if you, the Navy, would like to operate with us, you have to be part of the master attack plan, you have to be in the ATO. And of course, they did find some compromise where the Navy would, you know, protect its carriers without being in the ATO and those kind of things. And there was some controversy about how to use the F14. But from my perspective, one of Hohner's strengths was that he was an excellent joint broker. He managed to transform a still new and contested position of joint of J-FAC into an effective instrument of joint warfare, and he established an extremely good relationship with the other joint component commanders, Admiral Stan Arthur on the Navy side, and Will Grumer on the Marine Corps side, and John Yosok on the Army side, although Swatka retained the role of land component command of himself.

36:52So as the first J-FAC to direct the air party in the major war, he had Hohner had little to go by. There were no President, there were limited doctrinal guidance. He wasn't too keen on doctrine in the first place. He always said that we don't talk about the D-word. Yet he succeeded precisely because he did not treat joint command as an exercise of authority. Rather than impose control through doctrine, he built consensus, made practical compromises together with Admiral Stan Arthur and the others, and he focused on producing the best military solutions. His guiding principle was unity of effort rather than doctrinal purity. It is important, I pointed out in the book, but one of the reasons Chuck Hohner had such trust from Swatka was that he met him every day. They sat in the war room together. The quarters were

37:52quite close. Stan Arthur wasn't there, of course. He was out on the ship. So that distance did not work to his favor in influencing Swatka when it came to the use of air power. But he and Hohner had an extremely good relationship, and they referred to each other as brothers. And there were plenty of parochial fights on the level below, but on the three-star level, they were like brothers, and they just wanted to do what was best. This mattered because each service bring their own doctrine and priorities and their assets to the theatre, and there is this potential for institutional rivalry, and it's part of our DNA. We are proud of our service, and we want to make the most out of this. But Hohner understood this, these sensitivities, and he resisted turning every disagreement to a test of his authority. And in doing so, he validated the old

38:55that goes back to Bill Mitchell, that there's a single manager for joint air power. And that was also, of course, in intention, where the Goldwater Nichols Act, which was a result of of Vietnam, so he never insisted on control of all aircraft, and he demonstrated the operational value of centralized planning. So I think the idea was that you had to agree on the effect you wanted to achieve, and then you decide on the target, and then you decide on the aircraft and the weapon systems. Jointness must be determined by the desired strategic effect, and not by service interests. So in terms of jointness, I mean, what's the legacy today? I mean, yes, we have a J-FAC, and we have a well-for-collision air forces as well. But in terms of jointness, we have had more

39:56than a moment relapse of recent, I think we're back to the olden days where rivalry and approachalism is stronger than the willingness to compromise and find synergy. I don't think we are as evolved as we should be based on the experience from 1991. Interesting. Last question, and we've got to kind of wrap this up, but as a biographer, what overall impression, General Horner, did you come away with at the end? I think if I have to narrow it down to one thing, I would suggest his ability to build relationships, built on trust. He wasn't a people's person, that's a classic sense, but his ability to make people trust him. And Horner's interest in the bubble on this extraordinary trust with General Normez-Warskov, you can't succeed in the military hierarchy if you can't get along with your boss. And Swarskov was, you know, he was the mounting volatile protective of his own

40:58authority. He was not easily won over. Yet Horner was the one who succeeded because he had competence, he was loyal, and he had this old habit of bringing your boss solutions, not problems. And he succeeded because of his perceptive understanding of Swarskov's personality, which was quite complex. He recognized his commandous intelligence, Swarskov was extremely intelligent, and he's concerned for his soldiers. After Vietnam, Swarskov was almost obsessed about the well-being of his soldiers. But he also had an insecurity about himself and a desire for recognition, and Horner adjusted his behavior to Swarskov's. He spoke plainly, never competed for the spotlight, and he used humor to deliberately present himself as this unpretentious dumb farmer boy from I of R, this fighter pilot, to the fused tension. Swarskov was very theatrical, and Horner was the

42:04opposite. There's no smoke and mirrors with Chuck Horner. And he always avoided challenging Swarskov publicly. And when he disagreed, he didn't imprive it in his office, and he could be remarkably candid, but protecting Swarskov's authority in public, ensured that Horner gained greater freedom of influence in private. And that trust created access and access as we know created influence. So he was extremely successful at translating air power into terms that mattered to Swarskov. And he also ensured that Swarskov remained personally invested in the air campaign. It was Horner allowed Swarskov to announce air superiority. He allowed Swarskov to present the day they had air supremacy. He always referred to it as Swarskov's air campaign. And that was a very clever

43:04move. And one of the reasons he managed to succeed so well, he managed to play with his boss, and he became sort of a silent educator of Swarskov in terms of air power. And as I say in the book, he became Swarskov's whisperer. As a brilliant way to summarize this, just fascinating conversation. By yesterday's been John and Andreas Olsen. His book is titled Victory Through Air Power, General Chuck Horner, and Operation Desert Storm. It's one of the newest books out from the Naval Institute Press. You can order your copy by going to usni.org slash press slash books and then just search on victory through air power. Naval Institute members, by the way, receive a 40% discount. So if you're not a Naval Institute member, that's another good reason to become a member of the Naval Institute. John, thanks for writing the book and for being on the show today. Great conversation. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay. Well, this episode is brought to you by General Dynamics Electric Boat. GBEB has a 126 year legacy of delivering the summaries

44:11our nation needs to defend our freedoms and those of our allies to ensure our nation's defense now at this critical time in history. GBEB is investing in the next generation of shipbuilders and infrastructure to answer the call. It was EB then and it's EB now learn more at gbeb.com slash about slash EB now. Save the day once more on 9 December the Naval Institute's Defense Forum Washington 2026 will bring together senior voices from government, Congress, the military, and industry to examine whether America's budgets, industrial capacity, forces, and munitions are aligned with this defense strategy. DFW will take place at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC go to usni.org slash events to register. If you like the show, ring the bell, subscribe and tell a friend until next episode. Remember victory begins at the Naval Institute.