[The] inferior military skills of the Iraqi soldiers were amplified by U.S. technological advantages, which, paired with superior military skills by U.S. military personnel, proved devastating for the Iraqi Army — leading to the huge disparity in Iraqi and U.S. casualty figures.
As I concluded in my essay for the 10-year anniversary of the war:
Technologically superior heavy forces and air power decisively prevailed in Desert Storm after a laborious deployment to the Gulf. With lighter and fewer but technologically superior troops, we expect to deploy globally from CONUS and smash any enemy rapidly and with few casualties. Desert Storm, updated to Information Storm, will become a Global Storm. Our Information Storm cannot become global without tradeoffs. If we lighten the Army too much and optimize it for stability operations, our troops will be shocked if we must fight even a single MTW, let alone something worse. Training to beat the Soviet first team provided tremendous benefits when we faced a lesser opponent such as Iraq. Now we train for lesser threats and too many question whether that is overpreparing.
What we ultimately should have learned is that 1991 was made possible by more than a decade of work that rebuilt the post-Vietnam United States Army from its nadir and focused it on conventional warfare to defend Europe and South Korea. Although this was a narrowly focused mission, because of its excellence the Army was able to win on the offensive in the desert at the end of a long logistics tether away from major established bases. Desert Storm demonstrated that a good combat-ready Army can adapt to unfamiliar situations. We should certainly have learned that our ability and willingness to put combat-ready soldiers on the ground translates into real power. Without that power, there will be no new Army storms worthy of the name.
Mind you, my main worry was that we had "learned" that a light and outnumbered but very high tech force could slaughter any opponent.
But as you can see, arguing for a trained Army was a big part of the issue. Training a good Army is a never-ending job.
I was pleased that the essay was linked on the Stand-To! Army site back in the day.
