In the Persian Gulf War of the 1990s, what was Operation Desert Sabre?

From the moment Iraq invaded its smaller neighbor Kuwait to the south on August 1, 1990, an array of world nations condemned the action. Over the next few months, led by the United States, a massive military force from 35 nations was assembled in adjacent Saudi Arabia.

On January 17, 1991, the coalition began air strikes against Iraq, bombing missile bases and other military installations. Meanwhile, ground troops in Saudi Arabia trained for desert warfare. The picture shows the aftermath of Operation Desert Sabre, part of the Persian Gulf War. It was a massive allied ground offensive, involving tanks that were launched northward from northeastern Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq on February 24, 1991. Within three days, Arab and U.S. forces had retaken Kuwait City in the face of crumbling Iraqi resistance.

Operation Desert Sabre was the most pitched tank battle in the history of warfare fought in the desert of Iraq. The four-day ground offensive of the six-week military operation known as Desert Storm, involved a fierce tank-against-tank campaign that outstripped even WWII’s savage battles. There were 3,000 tanks, plus thousands more armored vehicles that fought in the course of not quite 36 hours.

When the battle was over, casualty reports were 292 coalition troops killed compared to tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers.