THE FLIGHT The air campaign began before the ground assault, with more than 4,000 sorties flown between 1 and 20 March 2003 to degrade Iraqi air defenses. On the opening night of major combat, Tomahawk missiles and F-117 strikes hit leadership and command-and-control targets in Baghdad. The coalition flew nearly 1,000 sorties per day, with approximately 68 percent of all munitions expended being precision-guided—compared to only 8 percent in 1991. Time-sensitive targeting, honed in Afghanistan, allowed commanders to strike emerging leadership targets within minutes of detection. On 7 April 2003, a B-1 dropped JDAMs in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay—the building was destroyed but the leadership was not based on real-time intelligence. The 173rd Airborne Brigade conducted a combat jump into northern Iraq, while Marines and armored columns raced from Kuwait to the outskirts of Baghdad in three weeks. Air supremacy extended over 95 percent of Iraq. The regime fell in twenty-one days.