Operation Southern Watch

Operation Southern Watch
Part of the Iraqi no-fly zones conflict

Two F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft from the Texas Air National Guard and New Jersey Air National Guard prepare to depart Prince Sultan Air Base on a patrol as part of Operation Southern Watch in 2000.
Date26 August 1992 – 20 March 2003
Location
Southern Iraq, below the 32nd and 33rd parallels.
Result Inconclusive
Belligerents
 United States
 United Kingdom
 France (until 1998)[1]
 Saudi Arabia		 Iraq
Commanders and leaders
United States George H. W. Bush
United States Bill Clinton
United States George W. Bush		 Iraq Saddam Hussein
Strength
5,000[2] Various Iraqi air defense forces
Casualties and losses
29 American airmen killed and 372 Coalition personnel injured in the Khobar Towers bombing
3 RQ-1 Predator shot down[3]		 1 MiG-25 Foxbat and
1 MiG-23 Flogger shot down
10–15 air defense systems destroyed
175+ civilians killed and 500 others wounded[4]

Operation Southern Watch was an air-centric military operation conducted by the United States Department of Defense from August 1992 to March 2003.

United States Central Command's Joint Task Force Southwest Asia (JTF-SWA)[5] had the mission of monitoring and controlling the airspace south of the 32nd Parallel (extended to the 33rd Parallel in 1996) in southern and south-central Iraq during the period following the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War until the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

  1. ^ Boring, War Is (15 August 2016). "Warning – MiG-25!". Archived from the original on 23 October 2016. Retrieved 16 August 2016.
  2. ^ "Air Force Historical Support Division > Home" (PDF).
  3. ^ Knights, Michael (2005).Cradle of Conflict: Iraq and the Birth of Modern U.S. Military Power. Naval Institute Press, p. 242. ISBN 1-59114-444-2
  4. ^ John Pike. "Operation Southern Watch". Globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 19 May 2011.
  5. ^ "A BRIEF LOOK AT JOINT TASK FORCE-SOUTHWEST ASIA". www.airforcehistoryindex.org. Retrieved 30 July 2020.