Ask a history buff about the timeline of the 1990s, and they’ll probably point to a very specific set of dates. They’ll tell you it started when Saddam Hussein’s tanks rolled into Kuwait City on August 2, 1990. They’ll say it ended with a ceasefire on February 28, 1991. If you do the math, that’s about seven months.
But is that the whole story? Not really.
When people ask how long was the Persian Gulf War, they are usually looking for the duration of the combat—the "television war" that flickered across CRT screens in living rooms around the world. But if you’re looking at the actual military operations, the diplomatic buildup, and the grueling aftermath, the timeline stretches and shrinks depending on who you ask. It’s a bit of a trick question. It was a lightning-fast campaign, sure, but it was also a decade-long geopolitical knot.
The 42-Day Sprint: Operation Desert Storm
The phase most people actually care about is Operation Desert Storm. This was the actual shooting war. It didn't start the moment Iraq invaded Kuwait; instead, there was a long, tense period of "Desert Shield" where the U.S. and a massive coalition of 35 nations just sat in the sand and waited. They were drawing a line in the dirt.
Then, on January 17, 1991, everything changed.
The air war began with a level of precision the world hadn't seen before. For five weeks—about 38 days—the coalition hammered Iraqi infrastructure, command centers, and supply lines from the sky. It was relentless. Baghdad looked like a fireworks display on the nightly news. Then came the ground war on February 24.
The ground war lasted exactly 100 hours.
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Think about that. After months of buildup and weeks of bombing, the actual "boots on the ground" liberation of Kuwait took less than four days. By February 28, President George H.W. Bush declared a ceasefire. So, if you’re measuring by the intensity of the conflict, the "hot" part of the Persian Gulf War was just 42 days long. It was an incredibly lopsided victory that redefined modern warfare, making people believe that wars could be won quickly and cleanly with enough high-tech hardware.
Why the "Official" Dates Can Be Deceptive
If you’re a veteran looking for benefits, the VA has a very different answer for how long was the Persian Gulf War. Officially, for administrative purposes, the period of the Gulf War hasn't actually "ended" in the way we think. Under federal law, the Gulf War period began on August 2, 1990, and continues through a date yet to be set by law or presidential proclamation.
Basically, the conflict never legally closed.
Why? Because the 1991 ceasefire wasn't a peace treaty. It was a stop-gap. For the next twelve years, U.S. and British pilots flew "no-fly zones" over Iraq (Operations Northern and Southern Watch). They were getting shot at by anti-aircraft batteries almost weekly. Sanctions remained in place. Tensions stayed high. If you ask a pilot who was patrolling the 33rd parallel in 1998 if the war was over, they’d probably laugh at you.
Then there's the human element. The "length" of a war for a soldier isn't just the days spent in a foxhole. It's the decades of exposure to burn pits, depleted uranium, and the mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome." For those families, the war has lasted over 30 years.
A Timeline of the Critical Moments
- August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. Saddam Hussein claims Kuwait is "Iraq’s 19th province." The world disagrees.
- August 7, 1990: Operation Desert Shield begins. This was the buildup.
- January 17, 1991: The transition to Desert Storm. The air campaign starts at roughly 2:38 AM local time.
- February 24, 1991: The "Left Hook." Coalition forces move into Kuwait and Southern Iraq.
- February 28, 1991: The ceasefire. Kuwait is liberated.
- April 11, 1991: The UN officially declares the ceasefire in effect via Resolution 687.
The Logistics of a "Short" War
We tend to romanticize the speed of the 100-hour ground war, but the logistics were a nightmare. General Norman Schwarzkopf—"Stormin' Norman"—didn't just wake up and decide to move. The coalition had to move over 500,000 U.S. troops and thousands of tanks halfway around the world.
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It took five months to prepare for a war that lasted six weeks.
This ratio is actually pretty common in military history, but the Gulf War took it to an extreme. The sheer amount of bottled water, fuel, and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) required to sustain half a million people in the Saudi desert was staggering. If the buildup had taken any longer, the political will of the coalition might have crumbled. Keeping 35 countries—including Arab nations like Syria and Egypt—on the same page while the U.S. worked with Israel to stay out of the fight was a diplomatic balancing act that lasted much longer than the shooting did.
What Most People Get Wrong About the End
There’s a common misconception that the war ended because the coalition reached Baghdad. They didn't. In fact, they never intended to.
The UN mandate was strictly to liberate Kuwait.
When the ceasefire was called on February 28, the "Highway of Death" (the road from Kuwait City to Basra) was littered with the charred remains of retreating Iraqi vehicles. The coalition had a clear path to the Iraqi capital, but the political leadership decided to stop. They feared that toppling Saddam would create a power vacuum and lead to a long-term occupation—exactly what happened in 2003.
So, while the war was "short" in terms of calendar days, it was "incomplete" in terms of geopolitical resolution. This incompleteness is why historians often view the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War as two acts of the same long-running play.
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The Lasting Impact of those 42 Days
Even though the "hot" war was brief, its shadow is massive. It was the first time the world saw GPS used on a large scale. It was the debut of the Patriot missile and the stealth fighter. It changed how the media covered combat, moving toward 24-hour live reporting.
Honestly, the brevity of the war might have been its most dangerous legacy. It gave the American public and military planners a sense of "technological triumphalism." We started to think that all future wars would be this fast, this clean, and this easy to win. That mindset directly influenced the planning for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq a decade later, with much grimmer results.
Practical Insights for Students and Researchers
If you are researching this for a project or just trying to win a trivia night, keep these distinctions in mind:
- Direct Combat Duration: 42 days (Jan 17 – Feb 28, 1991).
- Total Conflict Duration (Invasion to Ceasefire): Approximately 7 months (Aug 2, 1990 – Feb 28, 1991).
- The "Desert Storm" Phase: Only refers to the offensive started in January.
- The Veteran Status: Legally, the era hasn't ended.
To get a true sense of the conflict, don't just look at the dates. Look at the "Why." Read the accounts of General Colin Powell or the memoirs of soldiers who lived through the "Highway of Death." The war was short on the clock, but for those who were there, the intensity of those 100 hours of ground combat felt like a lifetime.
To understand the full scope, compare the 1991 maps of Iraqi troop movements with the later 2003 invasion routes. You’ll see that the 1991 war was a masterpiece of maneuver warfare that focused on a single, specific goal: the sovereignty of Kuwait. Once that was achieved, the clock stopped—at least for the history books.