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Operation Instant Thunder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Instant Thunder was the preliminary name given to a planned air strike by the United States during the Gulf War.[1] it was planned to be an overwhelming Aerial Strike which would devastate the Iraqi military with a minimum loss of civilian as well as American life.[2][3]
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The planning of the operation made use of Warden's Five Rings intellectual model,[3] which prioritized different aspects of a nation's war machine into a hierarchy of concentric circles. The leadership was placed as a top priority, saying that this would "decapitate" the enemy. The name is a nod to Operation Rolling Thunder, a joint American-South Vietnamese bombing campaign in the Vietnam War.[4]