To be sure, there were occasional instances of major success stories. For instance, the U-2 demonstrated its ability to be retasked in real time to image a reported SA-6 site, data-link the resulting imagery via satellite back to its home base at Beale AFB, California, within minutes for an assessment of the target’s coordinates, and have the results transmitted back to the cockpit of an F-15E just as its pilot was turning inbound toward the target to fire an AGM-130.[141] In another such case, on Day 4 a Navy TLAM on short notice successfully attacked a “target of opportunity” believed to have been a pop-up MiG-29 detected on the runway at Batajnica by real-time imagery from a U-2.[142] Although those examples were not representative, they previewed the sort of fusion toward which the U.S. ISR system is heading and represented what USAF Lieutenant General Marvin Esmond later described as “the first-ever distributed ISR architecture.”[143]
More typically, however, target images from Predator UAVs flying over Kosovo would be transmitted to the CAOC in real time, only to encounter difficulty being forwarded from there to operating units in time for them to be tactically useful. In addition, the Joint STARS crew complement was found to be too small to accommodate many of the data processing and reporting demands it was asked to handle. The aircraft was said to require either more battle managers integrated closely enough into the commander’s loop for targets to be identified and attacked in near-real time, or wider-band data links to ground stations, where a larger number of mission specialists could do the analysis and handling.[144]
Yet a third bottleneck identified was the classified worldwide Internet link called SIPRNET (Secure Internet Protocol Router NETwork), upon which USEUCOM’s Joint Analysis Center (JAC) at RAF Molesworth, England, relied heavily. As a rule, intelligence sources would forward proposed target materials to Molesworth for validation, with the JAC staff tasking additional intelligence collection as deemed necessary. That process would have been all but impossible without the aid of the Internet, which made for vastly more rapid worldwide information availability than did the former hard-copy practices. Frequently, however, because of the absence of institutionalized procedures, the use of SIPRNET made for confusion and difficulty in finding some target materials on short notice. In addition, real-time target information would be withheld from U.S. allies as U.S. officials argued over who should be allowed to see what. Finally, NIMA was frequently slow to deliver overhead photography of proposed targets and of targets already attacked, which in turn slowed the battle-damage assessment process and the decision as to whether to retarget a previously attacked site. One informed source commented that ISR fusion worked better in Allied Force than it did during Desert Storm, but that it still rated, at best, only a grade of C-plus in light of what remained to be done. In contrast, what generally worked well was the “reach-back” procedure first pioneered in Desert Storm, in which commanders and planners in the forward theater used secure communications lines to tap into information sources in the intelligence community in Washington and elsewhere.[145]
AIRSPACE AND TRAFFIC FLOW MANAGEMENT
A major concern for Allied Force mission planners entailed the coordination of air operations with so many allied aircraft transiting the relatively dense and compact airspace between Italy and the Balkans. Among other things, the CAOC coordinated operations by some 200 NATO tanker aircraft operating out of eight countries to support strikers flying from 15 bases in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[146] There were numerous reported instances of near-midair collisions caused by marginal weather and an insufficiency of battle management information relayed by AWACS to friendly aircraft operating in and near the combat zone. Mission planners at the CAOC sought to deconflict allied aircraft by parceling out the most impacted airspace so that only a given number of friendly aircraft would be operating inside any block at a given time. The danger of midair collisions was of particular concern in designated engagement zones, or “kill boxes,” in the KEZ, with only a few allied aircraft being permitted to operate within a given box at any time for that reason. Both the E-3 AWACS and the EC-130 ABCCC carried copies of the daily ATO, which allowed them to keep track of scheduled flight operations and remind allied aircrews of pertinent details as necessary. Another problem caused by the unusually congested airspace over and near Yugoslavia entailed linking some combat aircraft with their assigned tankers, particularly the German Tornado ECR variants and the EA-6B, which lacked air-to-air radars and had to be vectored to their tankers by AWACS.[147]
In an important contribution to easing the air traffic nightmare that threatened to ensue over the Adriatic and in the adjacent airspace as the air effort unfolded, Italian air traffic authorities lent their expertise to the CAOC’s air traffic control cell in order to make key staffers there more familiar with Italian airspace structure and regulations. They also dispatched a representative to the military cell of the regional civilian air traffic control (ATC) center to smooth out potential difficulties in controlling the heavy flow of ATO sorties going in and out of the area of responsibility (AOR). Measures taken to manage that flow and to deconflict it from civil traffic included closing the airspace over parts of the Adriatic, establishing a no-fly zone encompassing the airports of Bari and Brindisi, suppressing all or parts of some airways, establishing a special corridor to permit the transit of Italian airspace by air traffic entering from outside the AOR, providing a system of safe operating routes to allow the departure and return of combat aircraft loaded with weapons operating from Italian air bases, and establishing six emergency weapons jettison areas in international waters and six active inflight refueling zones over the Adriatic 24 hours a day.
Not surprisingly, the Italian ATC system experienced considerable difficulty in handling this large volume of daily traffic. To begin with, because of the air war’s length and the shortage of available controllers, ATC found it a major challenge to maintain round-the-clock control of all the active and alternate military airfields that were involved in air operations. Second, Eurocontrol experienced problems managing civil aviation flight plans, given the density of military traffic, and was not always able to maintain the impermeability of the posted no-fly zone over the Adriatic. Third, ATC was frequently unable to track military aircraft operating from the several aircraft carriers that were deployed in the Adriatic and, for that reason, faced serious deconfliction problems with civil traffic flying along the southern air routes toward Greece and Turkey. Fourth, communication problems were often encountered between and among the various agencies engaged in air traffic flow management, such as airfield control towers, approach and departure control centers, military regional control, air defense radars, and AWACS. Finally, there was far too little time available to debug, test, and properly validate these highly jury-rigged arrangements. Although the system worked in the end with no catastrophic or otherwise untoward incidents, numerous aircrews reported that the aerial traffic jams of ingressing and egressing NATO aircraft transiting the AOR throughout Allied Force often appeared more dangerous than the threat presented by Serbia’s SAMs and AAA.[148]
131
The AGM-130 is a rocket-boosted variant of the electro-optical and infrared guided GBU-15 2,000-lb PGM featuring midcourse GPS guidance updates. At the start of the air war, 200 of these weapons had been fielded, and those used were pulled from Air Combat Command’s Weapons System Evaluation Program (WSEP), leaving no munitions for training. William M. Arkin, “Kosovo Report Short on Weapons Performance Details,”
133
Lieutenant General Marvin R. Esmond, testimony to the Military Procurement Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., October 19, 1999.
134
David A. Fulghum, “Lessons Learned May Be Flawed,”
135
Rowan Scarborough, “Kosovo Target Data Stalled in Transit,”
138
Colonel E. Baldazzi, Italian Air Force, “Host Nation Support for the Kosovo Air Campaign,” briefing at a conference on “The NATO Joint Force Air Component Commander Concept in Light of the Kosovo Air Campaign,” Headquarters NATO Reaction Force Air Staff, Kalkar, Germany, December 1–3, 1999.