As one may recall, manipulation of the Kosovo issue and Serbia’s strong emotional attachment to the province had figured prominently in Milosevic’s rise to power and in his continued hold on it since 1989. For that reason, acceding to NATO’s demands as expressed in the proposed Rambouillet accords would, in all likelihood, have meant political suicide for him. By June 1999, the opposite had become true: Milosevic’s continued survival seemed to depend on finding a way to stop the bombing and to extricate himself gracefully from his growing predicament. Although Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin provided him with the ready pretext that he needed, it was the air war’s steadily increasing encroachment on Serbia’s core equities that most likely prompted the decisive shift in his political calculus, as perhaps best attested by his own plaintive question to Chernomyrdin on June 2 cited earlier.[39] In contrast, by Clark’s own admission after the cease-fire, the attempted attacks against dispersed and hidden VJ forces in Kosovo caused the latter little significant pain or inconvenience. That suggests, by elimination, that whatever one may believe was Milosevic’s most critical vulnerability, the bombing of Clark’s target priorities in the KEZ was not what mainly swung his decision to capitulate.[40]
On this still-contentious issue, defense analyst William Arkin, who led a private bomb damage assessment mission for Human Rights Watch for three weeks in August 1999 and who visited more than 250 targeted sites in the process, perhaps offered the most helpful and incontestable perspective when he observed: “It was not what we bombed, but that we bombed. The coalition didn’t crumble, the Russians didn’t bail Belgrade out, China was unable to affect the war. At some point it was clear to Milosevic that he wasn’t going to be able to wait out the bombing, that NATO wasn’t going to go away, and that progressively Serbia was being destroyed, he chose to get the best negotiated settlement he could. To say it was this or that target that was important to Milosevic is just to engage in mirror-image speculation.”[31]
Chapter Five
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE AIR WAR
A number of “firsts” were recorded during NATO’s air war for Kosovo. To begin with, Operation Allied Force was the first air war in which all three currently deployed U.S. Air Force heavy bomber types saw combat use. Those bombers constituted a major part of the overall strike force. Of some 700 U.S. combat aircraft committed to the operation altogether, a mere 21 heavy bombers (10 B-52s, 5 B-1s, and 6 B-2s) delivered 11,000 out of the more than 23,000 U.S. air-to-ground munitions that were expended over the operation’s 78-day course.[1]
There also was an unprecedented use of precision-guided munitions in the air war. In Desert Storm, only 10 percent of the participating U.S. strike aircraft were PGM-capable. That number rose to 69 percent in Operation Deliberate Force and shot up to 90 percent in Allied Force.[2] Thanks to the heavy use of PGMs in the interest of both operational efficiency and avoiding unintended collateral damage, a full three-quarters of the more than 400 fixed targets attacked in Serbia were assessed as having sustained moderate to severe damage.[3] Some 64 percent of the 9,815 aim points altogether were hit by PGMs, for a total hit rate of 58 percent.[4] Figure 5.1 shows the proportion of precision munitions and nonprecision munitions delivered by U.S. combat aircraft over the 78-day course of the bombing effort. At nearly a third of the total number of ground-attack munitions expended altogether, PGM use in Allied Force greatly overshadowed that in Operation Desert Storm nearly a decade earlier. In that conflict, the proportion of PGMs delivered by U.S. forces compared to nonprecision munitions was less than 10 percent.
In addition, more than in any previous U.S.-led air operation, UAVs were used in Allied Force for combat support, most notably for locating VJ troops dispersed in the KEZ.[5] In yet another precedent, the USAF’s air expeditionary force (AEF) concept was first successfully exercised in a full-up combat setting, with expeditionary fighter squadrons deploying to Aviano Air Base, Italy, from the continental United States and from U.S. bases in Europe and folding into the anchor 31st Air Expeditionary Wing stationed there, which, at its peak, operated a record 175 combat aircraft.[6] Relatedly, the assignment of tactical control of 12 C-17s directly to USAFE roundly validated that aircraft’s “direct delivery” status and reflected a major step forward in the employment of air mobility forces as global assets. Finally, as the discussion below will sketch out in more detail, Operation Allied Force saw the most extensive use of space systems in combat to date, with more than 50 U.S. and European satellites directly involved in support of USEUCOM and NATO intelligence, coordination, and attack activities.
THE COMBAT DEBUT OF THE B-2
Of major note, Allied Force finally saw the long-awaited combat debut of the USAF’s B-2 stealth bomber, which was the first manned aircraft to penetrate Serb air defenses the first night.[7] As the final countdown drew near, expectations ran high throughout the Air Force that the regional combatant commanders in chief around the world, who had long resisted the B-2’s use in earlier air power applications because of their distrust of unproven systems, would finally be won over by a record of unblemished accomplishment by the aircraft over Serbia and Kosovo. Those expectations were more than vindicated. Of 19 B-2s all told that had been delivered to the aircraft’s parent 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, only 9 were available to USEUCOM for combat operations, with the other 10 undergoing avionics upgrades to the aircraft’s definitive Block 30 status.[8] Nevertheless, to the surprise of many, the B-2 turned out to be the most consistently effective performer of the entire air war. According to the 509th commander at the time, Brigadier General Leroy Barnidge, B-2 operations demonstrated a 96-percent weapons effectiveness rate.
Since only six of the nine available aircraft were actually used on combat missions, the average turn time per aircraft was two days.[9] There was never a shortage of capability to meet USEUCOM’s targeting needs, however. Some B-2s were turned in the time it took to refuel them. The only reported case of a B-2 component having failed during a combat mission was a malfunction of a rotary bomb launcher, which was promptly repaired upon the aircraft’s return to base.[10] The chief maintenance drivers were said to have been the aircraft’s low-observable treatment, its flight control system, its synthetic-aperture radar, and engine accessory drives.
Each B-2 flew nonstop to its targets in its final Block 30 configuration directly from Whiteman on 28- to 32-hour round-trip missions, delivering up to 16 global positioning system (GPS)-guided GBU-31 joint direct-attack munitions (JDAMs) from 40,000 ft, usually through cloud cover, against enemy targets including hardened command bunkers and air defense facilities. Those missions typically entailed 15-hour legs out and back, with two inflight refuelings per leg. Two aircraft were launched on 15 nights and just a single aircraft on 19 nights. The aircrews quickly adjusted to these unprecedentedly long missions and coped with them adequately. They also quickly adapted to the demands of real-time targeting changes en route. Although the USAF bomber community, by virtue of its traditional nuclear focus, had long been predisposed to do things in a carefully preplanned way, USAFE’s commander, General John Jumper, traveled to Whiteman and personally talked to B-2 aircrews about the need for rapid adaptability. After just a few hours of intense operator-to-operator brainstorming, any residual doubts some B-2 pilots may have harbored regarding the merits of replacing traditional cold-war practices with real-time improvisation as needed to meet current demands were put to rest. The first time the ensuing air effort attempted to apply what came to be called “flex” (for flexible) targeting against enemy assets that had been detected and identified only on short notice, the B-2s took out two SA-3 sites that had been assigned to them only a few hours prior to their planned arrival over target.[11]
39
Indeed, from a low of fewer than 100 daily strike sorties flown during the air war’s fifth night, the bombing effort intensified steadily and uninterruptedly to almost three times that number by the eve of Milosevic’s capitulation on June 3. Briefing by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 10, 1999, cited in Major General Eitan Ben-Eliahu, commander, Israeli Air Force, “Air Power in the 21st Century: The Impact of Precision Weapons,”
40
It bears acknowledging here, however, that only the authoritative report of NATO’s intent to proceed with an eventual ground invasion, should the bombing alone fail to dislodge Milosevic, finally convinced Moscow to play its constructive role in June 1999. Russia’s deploying of Chernomyrdin helped negotiate an international military presence in Kosovo, thus warding off a NATO-only presence and preserving at least some Russian influence in the Balkans. On this point, see the informed comment offered by former Russian foreign ministry Balkan official Oleg Levitin, “Inside Moscow’s Kosovo Muddle,”
41
William Arkin, “Yugoslavia Trip Report,” September 8, 1999. In a similar vein, Karl Mueller suggested that “while it was not clear how NATO was going to win, it certainly would continue the effort until it managed to do so. From this perspective, it was not
1
David Atkinson, “B-2s Demonstrated Combat Efficiency over Kosovo,”
3
5
The qualification “U.S.-led” is appropriate here, considering that the Israeli Air Force has made regular and highly effective use of UAVs over southern Lebanon for nearly two decades, going back to the Beka’a valley air campaign of 1982.
6
The wing had most of the essential support assets on hand, so deploying squadrons did not need to bring much by way of logistics overhead.
7
Dale Eisman, “Over Balkans, It’s Beauty vs. the Beast,”
9
Of the nine available B-2s at Whiteman, one was kept aside for training, one was undergoing final upgrades to Block 30 status, and one was in extensive maintenance. “Missouri-to-Kosovo Flights for B-2 Not a Concern to Wing Commander,”
10
“B-2 Performed Better in Kosovo Than USAF Expected,”