Many Army units inside Iraq had reached their objectives by the late morning on the 24th and expected no more movement until the following day. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Colin Powell received a phone call explaining that the Marines smashed through both lines, forcing him to pressure U.S. The rehearsals worked the Marines went through the obstacles so quickly that Gen Schwarzkopf was afraid Iraqi units would be able to escape from Kuwait before the coalition troops were in place to block their retreat.
As soon as the Marines arrived in the Persian Gulf, they began studying the obstacle belts and practiced breaching them. The Marines' rapid breach of the obstacle belt surprised everyone except the Marines. The task force then turned left to advance on Al Jaber Air Base. They engaged Iraqi defenses in the oil fields that afternoon and destroyed eleven Iraqi tanks. By early afternoon, TF Ripper had penetrated both obstacle belts and entered the Al Burqan Oil Fields. At around 0400 local time, TF Ripper began assaulting across the first obstacle belt with the 3d Tank Battalion in the lead. The 3d Tank Battalion drove over the border and stopped in an assembly area just short of the first of two obstacle belts in Iraq-occupied Kuwait. Just after midnight on 24 February, a tank named Genesis II, belonging to Company C, 3d Tank Battalion, drove across the berm at the Kuwaiti border. Marine engineers masterfully prepared the way in all of the obstacle belts, earning high praise from Gen Schwarzkopf. TF Papa Bear and TF Ripper were mechanized and had the 1st Tank Battalion and 3d Tank Battalion attached to their organizations, respectively, to provide an armored punch as the units began their assaults on the Iraqi obstacle belts. MajGen James Myatt, Commanding General of the 1st Marine Division, organized four task forces (TF), named TF Papa Bear, TF Ripper, TF Grizzly, and TF Taro. The Marine ground forces still faced a dug-in and armored enemy. Though a massive air bombing campaign preceded the ground assault, the Iraqi Army was still a formidable force. Meanwhile, a large coalition force pushed north into Iraq through the lightly defended Saudi-Iraq border, then swung to the east to cut off fleeing Iraqi troops leaving Kuwait in a maneuver called the “Hail Mary” or the "Left Hook." Army Gen Norman Schwarzkopf planned for the Marines, flanked on either side by a multinational Arab force, to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein, who thought a coalition assault would unfold in Kuwait, believed he could grind the war into a bloody stalemate in the same way the Iran-Iraq War unfolded. These belts were comprised of barbed wire, mines, tank traps, and ditches designed to slow an army, making them vulnerable to artillery attack. Beyond the berm, the Iraqi military built two obstacle belts in Kuwait. Though not constructed as an impediment for a military force, it would still need to be breached by the Marines. The berm was constructed before Operation Desert Shield as a method to limit the wanderings of the Bedouin tribes. Ī large berm stood on the Saudi-Kuwait border. Much of the U.S.-led coalition shifted west while the looming threat of the Marines held the Iraqi Army in place. Marines stationed on amphibious assault ships in the Persian Gulf threatened to perform an amphibious assault and kept the Iraqis on the Kuwaiti coast from reinforcing the obstacle belt. During Operation Desert Shield, the leadup to Operation Desert Storm, the Marines prepared to oppose the Iraqi Army, who had dug-in in southern Kuwait.
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