Creative Execution: What Great Leaders Do to Unleash Bold Thinking and Innovation

Creative Execution Plays Its Part

At the root of the coalition’s overwhelming success was the sheer technological superiority of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army. As Schwarzkopf explained in an interview with the Guardian, “Even though they had a large military and probably a very capable one for this part of the world,” matched against “the sophistication of the US military, there is no comparison. [The Iraqis] grossly underestimated the type of war they were getting involved with and they paid the price for that.”¹⁵ Yet the prowess of U.S. weapons such as the M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, the Patriot antiaircraft missile battery, and air superiority fighters such as the F-15E would have been much degraded had Schwarzkopf and U.S. military ...