In the end, as noted above, only two aircraft (both American) were brought down by enemy SAM fire, thanks to allied reliance on electronic jamming, the use of towed decoys, and countertactics to negate enemy surface-to-air defenses.[23] However, NATO never fully succeeded in neutralizing the Serb IADS, and NATO aircraft operating over Serbia and Kosovo were always within the engagement envelopes of enemy SA-3 and SA-6 missiles—envelopes that extended to as high as 50,000 ft. Because of that persistent threat, mission planners were forced to place such high-value ISR platforms as the U-2 and Joint STARS in less-than-ideal orbits to keep them outside the lethal reach of enemy SAMs. Even during the operation’s final week, NATO spokesmen conceded that only three of Serbia’s approximately 25 known mobile SA-6 batteries had been confirmed destroyed.[24]
In all events, by remaining dispersed and mobile, and activating their radars only selectively, the Serb IADS operators yielded the short-term tactical initiative in order to present a longer-term operational and strategic challenge to allied air operations. The downside of that inactivity for NATO was that opportunities to employ the classic Wild Weasel tactic of attacking enemy SAM radars with HARMs while SAMs were guiding on airborne targets were “few and far between.”[25] The Allied Force air commander, USAF Lieutenant General Michael Short, later indicated that his aircrews were ready for a wall-to-wall SAM threat like that encountered over Iraq during Desert Storm, but that “it just never materialized. And then it began to dawn on us that… they were going to try to survive as opposed to being willing to die to shoot down an airplane.”[26] In fact, the survival tactics employed by Serb IADS operators were first developed and applied by their Iraqi counterparts in the no-fly zones of Iraq that have been steadily policed by Operations Northern and Southern Watch ever since the allied coalition showed its capability against active SAM radars during the Gulf war. That should not have come as any great surprise to NATO planners, and it is reasonable to expect more of the same as potential future adversaries continue to monitor U.S. SEAD capabilities and operating procedures and to adapt their countertactics accordingly.
The dearth of enemy radar-guided SAM activity may also have been explainable, at least in part, by reports that the Air Force’s Air Combat Command had been conducting information operations by inserting viruses and deceptive communications into the enemy’s computer system and microwave net.[27] Although it is unlikely that U.S. information operators were able to insert malicious code into enemy SAM radars themselves, General Jumper later confirmed that Operation Allied Force had seen the first use of offensive computer warfare as a precision weapon in connection with broader U.S. information operations against enemy defenses. As he put it, “we did more information warfare in this conflict than we have ever done before, and we proved the potential of it.” Jumper added that although information operations remained a highly classified and compartmented subject about which little could be said, the Kosovo experience suggested that “instead of sitting and talking about great big large pods that bash electrons, we should be talking about microchips that manipulate electrons and get into the heart and soul of systems like the SA-10 or the SA-12 and tell it that it is a refrigerator and not a radar.”[28] Such pioneering attempts at offensive cyberwarfare pointed toward the feasibility of taking down SAM and other defense systems in ways that would not require putting a strike package or a HARM missile on critical nodes to neutralize them.
During Desert Storm, by means of computer penetration, high-speed decrypting algorithms, and taps on land lines passing through friendly countries, the United States was reportedly able to intercept and monitor Iraqi email and digitized messages but engaged in no manipulation of enemy computers. During Allied Force, however, information operators were said to have succeeded in putting false targets into the enemy’s air defense computers to match what enemy controllers were predisposed to believe. Such activities also reportedly occasioned the classic operator-versus-intelligence conundrum from time to time, in which intelligence collectors sought to preserve enemy threat systems that were providing them with streams of information while operators sought to attack them and render them useless in order to protect allied aircrews.[29]
Fortunately for NATO, the Serb IADS did not include the latest-generation SAM equipment currently available on the international arms market. There were early unsubstantiated reports, repeatedly denied by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that several weeks before the start of the bombing effort, Russia had provided Yugoslavia with elements of between six and ten S-300PM (NATO code-name SA-10) long-range SAM systems, which had been delivered without their 36D6 Clam Shell low-altitude acquisition radars.[30] Had those reports been valid, even the suspected presence of SA-10 and SA-12 SAMs in the enemy IADS inventory would have made life far more challenging for attacking NATO aircrews. Milosevic reportedly pressed the Russians hard for such equipment repeatedly, without success. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott later stated that the Yeltsin government had been put on the firmest notice by the Clinton administration that any provision of such cutting-edge defensive equipment to Yugoslavia would have had a “devastating” effect on Russian-American relations.[31]
All of this raised basic questions about the adequacy of U.S. SEAD tactics and suggested a need for better real-time intelligence on mobile enemy IADS assets and a means of getting that information to pilots quickly enough for them to act on it, as well as for greater standoff attack capability.[32] The downings of both the F-117 and F-16 were attributed to breakdowns in procedures aimed at detecting enemy IADS threats in a sufficiently timely manner and ensuring that pilots did not fly into lethal SAM envelopes unaware of them. Other factors cited in the two aircraft downings were faulty mission planning and an improper use of available technology (see below for more on the F-117 downing). Although far fewer aircraft were lost during Allied Force than had been expected, these instances pointed up some systemic problems in need of fixing. As one Air Force general observed, “there had to be about 10 things that didn’t go right. But the central issue is an overall lack of preparedness for electronic warfare.”[33]
One of the first signs of this insidious trend cropped up as far back as August 1990, when half of the Air Force’s ECM pods being readied for deployment to the Arabian peninsula for Desert Storm were found to have been in need of calibration or repair. Among numerous later sins of neglect with respect to electronic warfare (EW) were Air Force decisions to make operational readiness inspections (ORIs) and Green Flag EW training exercises less demanding, decisions that naturally resulted in an atrophying of the readiness inspection and reporting of EW units, along with a steady erosion of EW experience at the squadron level. “Now,” said the Air Force general cited above, “they only practice reprogramming [of radar warning receivers] at the national level. Intelligence goes to the scientists and says the signal has changed. Then the scientists figure out the change for the [ECM] pod and that’s it. Nobody ever burns a new bite down at the wing.”[34]
25
Tim Ripley, “‘Serbs Running Out of SAMs,’ Says USA,”
26
Interview with Lieutenant General Michael Short, USAF, PBS
27
David A. Fulghum, “Serb Threat Subsides, but U.S. Still Worries,”
29
David A. Fulghum, “Yugoslavia Successfully Attacked by Computers,”
30
Zoran Kusovac, “Russian S-300 SAMs ‘In Serbia,’”
31
Michael Ignatieff,
32
For example, the SA-10 and SA-12, now available on the international arms market for foreign military sale, are lethal out to a slant range of some 80 nautical miles, five times the killing reach of the earlier-generation SA-3 (David A. Fulghum, “Report Tallies Damage, Lists U.S. Weaknesses,”
33
David A. Fulghum, “NATO Unprepared for Electronic Combat,”