The 1991 Gulf War opened with a massive coalition air campaign against Iraqi forces and infrastructure. Precision-guided munitions, stealth aircraft, and televised cockpit footage shaped public perceptions of modern war. The conflict presented air power as both overwhelming and media-saturated.

Gulf War writing and criticism confronted a new aesthetic of distant, screen-mediated violence. Aircraft became part of a televised spectacle in which war appeared clean, abstract, and technologically controlled, a claim many poets and witnesses challenged.