On May 12, roughly 600 Allied Force sorties were launched all told, including the highest daily number of shooter sorties to date. (See Figure 3.3 for the overall trend line in U.S. and allied sorties flown over the 78-day course of Allied Force. Most of the troughs in that trend line indicate sortie drawdowns or cancellations occasioned by nonpermissive weather over Serbia.) The multiple waves of successive large force packages commenced with a sunrise launch of 36 aircraft, including USAF F-16s and A-10s, RAF Harrier GR. Mk 7s, French Jaguars and Super Etendards, Italian AMXs, and Canadian CF-18s. A subsequent late-morning launch featured 32 aircraft, consisting of RAF Tornado GR. Mk 1s, French Jaguars, and USAF
F-16s, followed by 30 F-15Es and 16 more later in the surge. A mid-afternoon strike with 28 jets was then followed by 24 more, with the day finally ending with a midnight package of 38 strikers, including B-1Bs and B-52s.[93]
Three days later, General Jumper declared that NATO had achieved de facto air superiority over Yugoslavia, enabling attacking aircraft to “go anywhere we want in the country, any time,” even though the skies were admittedly “still dangerous.”[94] Not long thereafter, an option became available to attack from the north with 24 F/A-18Ds of Marine Air Group 31 deployed to Taszar, Hungary. That option promised to further isolate Yugoslavia, make it appear surrounded, and force its remaining air defenses to work harder by having to look in more than one direction rather than mainly toward a single attack axis from the west. It also promised to avoid adding to the already severe air traffic congestion over the Adriatic and in other western approaches to Yugoslavia.
As allied air operations against VJ troops in the KEZ became more aggressive, a clear preference for the USAF’s A-10 over the Army’s AH-64 Apaches in Albania became evident because weather conditions over Kosovo had improved by that time, rendering the Apache’s under-the-weather capability no longer pertinent and because enough of the Serb IADS had been deemed weakened or intimidated to make it safer to operate the A-10s at lower altitudes. Moreover, the Apaches were deemed to be more susceptible to AAA and infrared SAM threats than were the faster and higher-flying A-10s. President Clinton himself later reinforced those reservations when he commented in mid-May that the risk to the Apache pilots remained too great and that because of recent weather improvements, “most of what the Apaches could do [could now] be done by the A-10s at less risk.”[95]
Later on in May, allied fighters and USAF heavy bombers committed against suspected enemy troop positions in the KEZ were joined for the first time by USAF AC-130 gunships, which offered an additional standoff capability against enemy vehicles and other ground targets with their accurate 40mm Bofors gun, 25mm Gatling gun, and 105mm howitzer. The AC-130, however, was only used over areas where there was no known or suspected presence of operational SAM batteries and always flew above the reach of IR SAMs and AAA. When targets of opportunity presented themselves on rare occasions, sensor platforms that detected ground vehicular movement would pass the coordinates and target characterization information to the EC-130 ABCCC, which, in turn, would vector NATO attack aircraft into the appropriate kill box, first to confirm that the targets were valid and then to engage them. The ABCCC also controlled the ingress and egress of attacking fighters and maintained battlespace deconfliction throughout ongoing operations.
Once Serbia’s air defenses became a less imminent threat, the air war also saw a heightened use of B-52s, B-1s, and other aircraft carrying unguided bombs.[96] By the end of May, some 4,000 free-fall bombs, around 30 percent of the total number of munitions expended altogether, had been dropped on known or suspected VJ targets in the KEZ. There was a momentary resurgence of Serb SAM activity later that month, with more than 30 SAMs reportedly fired on May 27, the greatest number launched any night in nearly a month.[97] That heightened activity was assessed as reflecting a determined last-ditch Serb effort to down at least one more NATO aircraft. (An F-117 had been shot down during the air war’s fourth night, and a USAF F-16 had later been downed on the night of May 2.)[98]
In what was initially thought to have been a pivotal turn of events in the air effort against enemy ground forces, the newly enlarged and hastily trained KLA, estimated to have been equipped with up to 30,000 automatic weapons, including heavy machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and antitank weapons, launched a counteroffensive on May 26 against VJ troops in Kosovo. That thrust, called Operation Arrow, involved more than 4,000 guerrillas of the 137th and 138th Brigades and drew artillery support from the Albanian army, with the aim of driving into Kosovo from two points along the province’s southwestern border, seizing control of the highway connecting Prizren and Pec, and securing a safe route for the KLA to resupply its beleaguered fighters inside Kosovo.
Operation Arrow represented the first major assault by KLA rebels in more than a year. It was evidently intended to demonstrate both to Milosevic and to NATO that the KLA remained a credible fighting presence in Kosovo. The assault was thwarted at first by VJ artillery and infantry counterattacks, which indicated that the VJ still had plenty of fight in it despite 70 days of intermittent NATO bombing. Three days after launching their assault, the rebels found themselves badly on the defensive, with some 250 KLA fighters pinned down by 700 VJ troops near Mount Pastrik, a 6,523-ft peak just inside the Kosovo-Albanian border.
For abundant good reasons, not least of which was a determination to avoid even a hint of appearing to legitimize the KLA’s independent actions, NATO had no interest in serving as the KLA’s de facto air force and repeatedly refused to provide it with the equipment it would have needed for its troops to have performed directly as ground forward air controllers (FACs). The KLA did, however, receive allied support in other ways. There had been earlier unconfirmed reports going as far back as the air war’s second week that KLA guerrillas had been covertly assisting NATO in the latter’s effort to find and target VJ forces in Kosovo.[99] The first known direct NATO air support to the KLA occurred on the day that Operation Arrow commenced. It was confirmed both by KLA fighters in Albania and by military officials in Washington.
Although the Clinton administration denied helping the KLA directly, U.S. officials did admit that NATO had responded to “urgent” KLA requests for air support to turn back the VJ counterattack against its embattled troops near Mount Pastrik. In addition to the support they attempted to provide at Mount Pastrik, NATO aircraft attacked VJ targets near the Kosovar villages of Bucane and Ljumbarda, enabling the rebels to capture those villages. The KLA kept NATO informed of its positions in part so that its troops would not be inadvertently bombed, which had occurred two weeks earlier in an accidental NATO attack on a KLA barracks in Kosari.[100] KLA guerrillas used cell phones to convey target coordinates to their base commanders, who, in turn, relayed that information to NATO military authorities.
95
Robert Burns, “Use of Apache Copters Is Not Expected Soon,”
96
The Block D version of the B-1 employed in Allied Force was configured to carry the GBU-31 joint direct attack munition (JDAM), but only the B-2 actually delivered that still-scarce munition.
97
It bears noting here that the highly effective GAU-8 30mm cannon carried by the A-10 saw use only 156 times in Allied Force because of the extreme slant range that was required by the 5,000-ft altitude restriction (comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAFE/SA, April 6, 2001). At that range, the principal problem for today’s A-10 pilots is not hitting the target; it is
98
Glenn Burkins, “Serbs Intensify Effort to Down Allied Warplanes,”
99
Alessandra Stanley, “Albanian Fighters Say They Aid NATO in Spotting Serb Targets,”
100
Dana Priest and Peter Finn, “NATO Gives Air Support to Kosovo Guerrillas,”