Читать онлайн "NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment" - Lambeth Benjamin S. - RuLit

As noted in Chapter Three, only a few SAMs were reported to have been launched against attacking NATO aircraft the first night. The second night, fewer than 10 SA-6s were fired, with none scoring a hit. Later during Allied Force, enemy SAMs were frequently fired in large numbers, with dozens launched in salvo fashion on some nights but only a few launched on others. Although these ballistic launches constituted more a harassment factor than any serious challenge to NATO operations, numerous cases were reported of allied pilots being forced to jettison their fuel tanks, dispense chaff, and maneuver violently to evade enemy SAMs that were confirmed to be guiding.[8]

Indeed, the SAM threat to NATO’s aircrews was far more pronounced and harrowing than media coverage typically depicted, and aggressive jinking and countermaneuvering against airborne SAMs was frequently necessary whenever the Serbs sought to engage NATO aircraft. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, later reported that there had been numerous instances of near-misses involving enemy SAM launches against NATO aircraft, and General Jumper added that a simple look at cockpit display videotapes would show that “those duels were not trivial.”[9] From the very start of NATO’s air attacks, Serb air defenders also sought to sucker NATO aircrews down to lower altitudes so they could be brought within the lethal envelopes of widely proliferated MANPADS and AAA systems. A common Serb tactic was to fire on the last aircraft in a departing strike formation, perhaps on the presumption that those aircraft would be unprotected by other fighters, flown by less experienced pilots, and low on fuel, with a consequent limited latitude to countermaneuver.

The persistence of a credible SAM threat throughout the air war meant that NATO had to dedicate a larger-than-usual number of strike sorties to the SEAD mission to ensure reasonable freedom to operate in enemy airspace. In turn, fewer sorties were available for NATO mission planners to allocate against enemy military and infrastructure targets—although the limited number of approved targets at any one time tended to minimize the practical effects of that consequence. Moreover, the Block 50 F-16CJ, which lacked the ability to carry the LANTIRN targeting pod, was never used for night precision bombing because it could not self-designate targets.

One of the biggest problems to confront attacking NATO aircrews on defense-suppression missions was target location. Because of Kosovo’s mountainous terrain, the moving target indicator (MTI) and SAR aboard the E-8 Joint STARS could not detect objects of interest in interspersed valleys that were masked from view at oblique look angles, although sensors carried by the higher-flying U-2 often compensated for this shortfall.[10] The cover provided to enemy air defense assets by the interspersed mountains and valleys was a severe complicating factor. Similarly, efforts to attack the internetted communications links of the Yugoslav IADS were hampered by the latter’s extensive network of underground command sites, buried land lines, and mobile communications centers. Using what was called fused radar input, which allowed the acquisition and tracking of NATO aircraft from the north and the subsequent feeding of the resulting surveillance data to air defense radars in the south, this internetting enabled the southern sector operations center to cue defensive weapons (including shoulder-fired man-portable SAMs and AAA positions) at other locations in the country where there was no active radar nearby. That may have accounted, at least in part, for why the F-16CJ and EA-6B were often ineffective as SAM killers, since both employed the HARM to home in on enemy radars that normally operated in close proximity to SAM batteries.[11]

In all, well over half of the HARM shots taken by allied SEAD aircrews were preemptive targeting, or so-called PET, shots, with a substantial number of these occurring in the immediate Belgrade area.[12] Many HARM shots, however, were reactive rather than preplanned, made in response to transitory radar emissions as they were detected.[13]

Yugoslavia’s poorly developed road network outside urban areas may also have worked to the benefit of NATO attackers on more than a few occasions because enemy SAM operators depended on road transportation for mobility and towed AAA tended to bog down when driven off prepared surfaces and into open terrain. NATO pilots therefore studiously avoided flying down roads and crossed them when necessary at 90-degree angles to minimize their exposure time. By remaining at least 5 km from the nearest road, they often were able to negate the AAA threat, albeit at the cost of making it harder to spot moving military vehicles.

Whenever available intelligence permitted, the preferred offensive tactic entailed so-called DEAD (destruction of enemy air defense) attacks aimed at achieving hard kills against enemy SAM sites using the Block 40 F-16CG and F-15E carrying LGBs, cluster bomb units (CBUs), and the powered AGM-130, rather than merely suppressing SAM radar activity with the F-16CJ and HARM.[14] For attempted DEAD attacks, F-16CGs and F-15Es would loiter near tankers orbiting over the Adriatic to be on call to roll in on any pop-up SAM threats that might suddenly materialize.[15] The unpowered AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), a “near-precision” glide weapon featuring inertial and GPS guidance and used by Navy F/A-18s, was also effective on at least a few occasions against enemy acquisition and tracking radars using its combined-effects submunitions.[16]

One problem with such DEAD attempts was that the data cycle time had to be short enough for the attackers to catch the emitting radars before they moved on to new locations. One informed report observed that supporting F-16CJs were relatively ineffective in the reactive SEAD mode because the time required for them to detect an impending launch and get a timely HARM shot off to protect a striker invariably exceeded the flyout time of the SAM aimed at the targeted aircraft. As a result, whenever attacking fighters found themselves engaged by a SAM, they were pretty much on their own in defeating it. That suggested to at least some participating aircrews the value of having a few HARMs uploaded on selected aircraft in every strike package so that strikers could protect themselves as necessary without having to depend in every case on F-16CJ or EA-6B support.[17]

The commander of the Marine EA-6B detachment at Aviano commented that there was no single-solution tactic that allied SEAD assets could employ to negate enemy systems. “If we try to jam an emitter in the south,” he said, “there may be a northern one that can relay the information through a communications link and land line. They are fighting on their own turf and know where to hide.”[18] The detachment commander added that Serb SAM operators would periodically emit with their radars for 20 seconds, then shut down the radars to avoid swallowing a HARM.

In all, more than 800 SAMs were reported to have been fired at NATO aircraft, both manned and unmanned, over the course of the 78-day air war, including 477 SA-6s and 124 confirmed man-portable infrared missiles (see Figure 6.1 for a depiction of reported enemy SAM launches by type).[19] A majority of the fixed SAMs were fired without any radar guidance. Yet despite that expenditure of assets, only two NATO aircraft, an F-117 and an F-16, were shot down by enemy fire, although another F-117 sustained light damage from a nearby SA-3 detonation and two A-10s were hit by enemy AAA fire but not downed.[20] There also were two reported cases of short-range infrared (IR)-guided missiles hitting A-10s, one of which apparently struck the bottom of the aircraft, defused itself, and bounced off harmlessly.[21] At least 743 HARMs were fired by U.S. and NATO aircraft against the radars supporting these enemy SAMs (Figure 6.2 provides a detailed breakout of HARM expenditure by target type).[22] Yet enough of the Serb IADS remained intact to require NATO fighters to operate above the 15,000-ft hard deck for most of the air effort. The main reason for this requirement was the persistent AAA and MANPADS threat. Although the older SA-7 could be effectively countered by flares if it was seen in time, the SA-9/13, SA-14, SA-16, and SA-18 presented a more formidable threat.