It happened fast. If you weren’t glued to a television set in early 1991, you might have missed the actual combat phase of the Gulf War entirely. People often ask when was the desert storm war because the timeline gets blurry between the buildup, the actual bombing, and the ground invasion that felt like it ended before it even started.
History is messy.
Operation Desert Storm officially began in the early morning hours of January 17, 1991. That was the moment the "Desert Shield" transition shifted into "Storm." But you can't really talk about the dates without talking about August 2, 1990, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces poured across the border into Kuwait. That invasion set the whole clock in motion. For months, the world waited. The UN gave Iraq a deadline: get out by January 15, 1991, or face the consequences. Saddam didn't budge. Two days after that deadline passed, the sky over Baghdad lit up with anti-aircraft fire and Tomahawk missiles.
The Specific Dates That Defined the War
Let's get the calendar straight because the nomenclature matters. Operation Desert Shield was the defensive phase. That ran from August 1990 to January 1991. Then you have Operation Desert Storm, which is the actual combat element.
It lasted 42 days.
The air campaign was the marathon. From January 17 until late February, the Coalition (led by the U.S. but including 34 other nations) absolutely hammered Iraqi infrastructure, command centers, and integrated air defense systems. Then came the "100-hour war." On February 24, 1991, the ground invasion started. It was a massive, sweeping "left hook" through the desert that bypassed the heaviest Iraqi defenses. By February 28, a ceasefire was declared.
Kuwait was liberated. The war was "over," at least in the traditional sense, though the no-fly zones and sanctions would drag on for over a decade until the 2003 invasion.
Why the 1990 Buildup Felt Like Forever
If you ask a veteran who was sitting in the sand in Saudi Arabia, the war didn't start in January. It started in the sweltering heat of August. General Norman Schwarzkopf—"Stormin' Norman"—had the unenviable task of moving hundreds of thousands of troops and millions of tons of equipment into a desert with very little existing infrastructure for a force that size.
Honestly, the logistics were more impressive than the shooting.
Dick Cheney, who was the Secretary of Defense at the time, and Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had to coordinate a coalition that included the UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even Syria. It was a weird, brief moment in history where almost the entire world agreed on one thing: you can't just swallow your neighbor's country because you want their oil.
The Air War: January 17 – February 23
When people think about when was the desert storm war, they usually picture the green-tinted night vision footage from CNN. That was the first time the public saw "smart bombs" in real-time.
The air war was brutal and surgical.
The Coalition flew over 100,000 sorties. They dropped 88,500 tons of bombs. While the media focused on the high-tech F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters, the workhorses were often the older A-10 Warthogs and B-52s. The goal was simple: decapitate the leadership and break the morale of the rank-and-file soldiers in the trenches before a single tank crossed the border. It worked better than anyone expected. By the time the ground war started, thousands of Iraqi soldiers were already looking for someone to surrender to.
The Scud Missile Factor
During this window in late January and February, things got dicey for Israel. Saddam started launching Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa. Israel wasn't even in the war. Saddam’s goal was to provoke Israel into hitting back, which would have likely caused the Arab nations in the Coalition to pull out.
It was a massive diplomatic tightrope.
The U.S. rushed Patriot missile batteries to Israel and begged them to stay out of the fight. This is a nuance people often forget when looking at the timeline. The war wasn't just happening in Kuwait; it was a regional powder keg that almost blew up the entire Middle East coalition.
The Ground War: February 24 – February 28
This is the part that gets into the record books. The ground phase of Desert Storm lasted almost exactly 100 hours.
It was a rout.
The Iraqi military was the fourth largest in the world at the time. On paper, they were formidable. They had battle-hardened troops from the eight-year war with Iran. They had T-72 tanks. But they didn't have GPS. The Coalition did. U.S. and British forces moved through the "impassable" deep desert, appearing behind the Iraqi lines like ghosts.
The Battle of 73 Easting is still studied in military colleges today. It was a massive tank battle in a sandstorm where American Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1A1 Abrams tanks decimated Iraqi armored divisions with almost zero losses. By the time the sun came up on February 28, the "Highway of Death" (the road leading out of Kuwait City toward Basra) was a graveyard of burned-out vehicles.
Misconceptions About the War’s End
A lot of people think the war ended with a formal treaty on the deck of a battleship. It didn't. It ended with a tent meeting at Safwan Airfield.
There's a lot of debate among historians, like Rick Atkinson (who wrote Crusade), about whether the war ended too soon. The Coalition stopped the fighting while the Iraqi Republican Guard was still escaping. This decision, made by President George H.W. Bush, was based on the mandate provided by the UN. The mandate was to liberate Kuwait, not to occupy Baghdad or topple Saddam Hussein.
"We're not going to Baghdad," was the refrain.
This choice had massive long-term consequences. Because Saddam stayed in power, he was able to crush the uprisings that began in the south and north immediately after the ceasefire. This led to the no-fly zones that lasted throughout the 1990s and eventually set the stage for the Iraq War in 2003. So, while the "Desert Storm" dates are tidy, the conflict itself never really "settled" until much later.
The Environmental Disaster
We also have to talk about the fires. As the Iraqi army retreated in late February 1991, they set fire to over 600 oil wells.
It was apocalyptic.
The sky over Kuwait turned black. It rained oil. The last fire wasn't put out until November 1991. If you're looking for the "end" of the war’s impact, the date is much further out than the February ceasefire. Thousands of soldiers came home with what would later be called Gulf War Syndrome, a complex set of chronic symptoms that the VA is still dealing with decades later.
Actionable Insights for Researching Desert Storm
If you are looking to dig deeper into the history or are writing a paper on the conflict, don't just look at the dates. Context is everything.
- Check the Primary Sources: Look up the "Schwarzkopf Briefing" from February 27, 1991. It’s often called the "Mother of All Briefings." It’s a masterclass in military communication and gives the clearest picture of how the "left hook" worked.
- Analyze the UN Resolutions: Read UN Security Council Resolution 678. This is the document that gave the legal "teeth" to the intervention. It explains why the war stayed limited to Kuwait.
- Study the Technology Shift: Research the transition from "dumb" bombs to "smart" munitions. Desert Storm was the turning point for modern electronic warfare.
- Look at the Human Cost: Beyond the battlefield, research the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that happened in March 1991. This provides the necessary "why" for the continued U.S. presence in the region for the next decade.
The dates of when was the desert storm war are firm—January 17 to February 28, 1991—but the ripple effects of those six weeks are still being felt in global geopolitics today. It was the first "Post-Cold War" conflict, and in many ways, it defined the role of the United States as the world's sole superpower for the twenty years that followed.
The brevity of the war is what makes it so unique in the American consciousness. It was a clear victory with a defined beginning and end, something that feels like a relic of the past when compared to the "forever wars" that followed. Understanding the 1991 timeline is the only way to make sense of everything that has happened in the Middle East since.