Arms Makers’ Ads Tout Winning Desert Storm Theme
The guns of the Persian Gulf War have gone silent, but the companies that supplied them haven’t.
Defense contractors are shouting the successes of their high-tech weapons in a postwar advertising blitz, and the themes are remarkably similar: Our tools of war did so well in the Gulf, surely you’ll want to buy our new, improved versions.
“Now this star of Desert Storm is ready to dish it out in even bigger doses,” McDonnell Douglas Corp. boasts in an ad for its FA-18, an attack plane that the Navy and Marine Corps used to pound ground targets in Kuwait and Iraq. The company is producing a new, advanced version with longer range and more firepower.
“Mission Accomplished,” trumpets a Litton ad that ticks off eight ways in which its products helped win the war. It says 80% of U.S. combat aircraft had Litton-built inertial navigation and radar warning systems, “which contributed to the lowest aircraft combat attrition rates of any major conflict.”
“Battle Proven,” declares a double-page ad for Westinghouse Corp. radars.
Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led offensive that crushed Iraq’s occupying army in Kuwait, was a live laboratory for many high-technology weapons. So with Western defense budgets shrinking, it’s not surprising that arms manufacturers are trying to bask in the glow of Gulf War victory and win new sales.
McDonnell Douglas, the nation’s biggest defense contractor, is running a six-page special ad section in Jane’s Defense Weekly and other specialized publications titled: “Allied Forces and McDonnell Douglas: The Winning Edge.”
The ad quotes the financial weekly Barron’s as saying the first month of the war was “basically McDonnell Douglas vs. Iraq.”
Some of the postwar ads say it was the skill and courage of the allied soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines--not just their weapons--that carried the day against Iraq. But the stars of the ads are machines, not men and women.
Above the heading “Riders of the Storm,” an LTV Aerospace and Defense ad features three of its Jeep-like Humvees rolling across the desert under a fading sun.
Drawing on the enormous publicity given to Iraqi Scud missile shoot-downs by the Patriot missile, Raytheon Co., maker of the Patriot, has a double-page ad that says, “literally overnight the world suddenly became aware of the Patriot.”
The ad is dominated by a photograph in which two thin, orange streaks in the black sky, seen from afar, are heading toward two glowing orange balls--Patriots to the rescue against incoming Scud warheads.
In a switch from the Cold War days, when arms makers’ ads typically featured their tanks, missiles and aircraft in a northern European setting of cool, dark forests, the new background of choice is dusty desert under a simmering sun.
“Storm Warning,” declares a United Industrial Corp. ad featuring a Pioneer drone aircraft skimming over desolate sand dunes.
American weapons manufacturers are not alone in striking the Desert Storm theme.
A double-page ad for tactical missiles made by the French company Aerospaciale features infantrymen sprawled on a rocky desert with antitank guns. It is titled: “Our Weapons Are Pinpoint Accurate. Just Ask Heroes of the Storm.”
