Finally, Operation Allied Force was hampered by an inefficient target planning process. Because NATO had initially expected that the bombing would last only a few days, it failed to establish a smoothly running mechanism for target development and review until late April. The process involved numerous planners in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the United States, at SHAPE in Belgium, at USEUCOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, and at the CAOC in Vicenza, Italy, with each participant logging on daily to the earlier-noted secure digitized military computer network called SIPRNET.
Daily target production began at the U.S. Joint Analysis Center at RAF Molesworth, England, where analysts collated and transmitted the latest all-source intelligence, including overhead imagery from satellites and from Air Force Predator, Navy Pioneer, and Army Hunter UAVs. Because the United States commanded the largest number of intelligence assets both in the theater and worldwide by a substantial margin, it proposed most of the targets eventually hit, although other allies made target nominations as well.[19] With the requisite information in hand, target planners at SHAPE and USEUCOM would then begin assembling target folders, conducting assessments of a proposed target’s military worth, and taking careful looks at the likelihood of collateral damage. In addition, lawyers would vet each proposed target for military significance and for conformity to the law of armed conflict as reflected in the Geneva Conventions.
Once ready for review and forwarding up the chain of command for approval, these target nominations would then go to the Joint Target Coordination Board for final vetting. That board’s recommendations would then go to Admiral James Ellis, commander of Joint Task Force Noble Anvil and commander in chief, Allied Force Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH), and his staff in Naples, who would review all target nominations and forward his recommendations to General Clark, who in turn would personally review each target to ensure that it fit the overall guidelines authorized by the NAC.[20]
Approved targets would then go back to Admiral Ellis, who would task both the USAF’s 32nd Air Operations Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, and the 6th Fleet command ship deployed in the Mediterranean to develop target folders. The 32nd AOG would assign multiple aim points per nominated target set and multiple weaponeering solutions for a broad spectrum of air-delivered munitions. The 6th Fleet planning staff would do the same for TLAM targets.[21] As one might expect, this exceptionally time-consuming process greatly limited the number of potential targets that could be struck at any given time. Moreover, even after these multiple hurdles had been crossed, an approved target could still be countermanded or withheld by U.S. or NATO political authorities.[22]
Further compounding the unavoidable inefficiency of this multistage and circuitous process, two parallel but separate mechanisms for mission planning and air tasking were used (see Figure 7.1). As noted earlier, any U.S.-specific systems involving special sensitivities, such as the B-2, F-117, and cruise missiles, were allocated by USEUCOM rather than by NATO, and the CAOC maintained separate targeting teams for USEUCOM and NATO strike planning. This dual ATO arrangement meant increased burdens on the planning system to execute workarounds in cases where automated mission planning systems could not support the dual process, as well as added complications in airspace control planning created by the presence of low-observable aircraft, the limited use of IFF systems in some cases, and the absence of a single, integrated air picture for all participants. Although the use of stealthy aircraft in this dual-ATO arrangement was dealt with by time and space deconfliction, it nonetheless made for problems for allies who were not made privy to those operations, yet who needed information about them in the interest of their own situation awareness and force protection.[23] Commenting on the friction that was inevitably occasioned by this cumbersome system, General Short recalled in hindsight that he was constantly having to tell allied leaders to “trust me” regarding what U.S. assets would be doing and that he would have preferred to find a way of ensuring that the daily allied air operations schedule reflected those U.S. systems in some usable way. As it was, their absence led on occasion to some significant force deconfliction problems, such as U.S. aircraft suddenly showing up on NATO AWACS displays when and where they were not expected.[24]
PROBLEMS AT THE U.S. LEVEL
It was not only the alliance-induced friction that made the air war inefficient. As Allied Force unfolded, it became increasingly clear that even the U.S. military component was divided in a high-level struggle over the most appropriate targeting strategy—a struggle reminiscent of the feuding that had occurred nine years earlier between the Army’s corps commanders and the JFACC, USAF Lieutenant General Charles Horner, over the ownership and control of air operations in Desert Storm.[25] There was visible tension in this regard between General Clark and his air commander, General Short, over the heated issue of target priorities: Aggressive micromanagement on the former’s part was eventually met by understandably frustrated and increasingly transparent passive-aggressive rebellion against it on the latter’s. As Clark later characterized this difference of view in his memoirs, he considered the achievement of success against Serbian ground troops in the KEZ to be the air effort’s “top priority,” unlike “some of [his] American commanders [who] subscribed to a more doctrinaire view of the conflict,” one which, he added, was “the classic view of the American air power adherents who saw air power as strategically decisive, without recourse to the dirty business of ground combat,” in contrast to the view of “Army leaders, who want the Air Force to make a difference on the ground.” Short, no doubt, would offer his own no-less-principled view of that characterization.[26]
Once the initial hope that Milosevic would fold within a few days after the bombing commenced was proven groundless, NATO was forced into a scramble to develop an alternative strategy. The immediate result was an internecine battle between Clark and his Air Force subordinate over where the air attacks should be directed. Short had naturally chafed from the very beginning at the slowness of Operation Allied Force to gather momentum—three successive nights had been required just to get through the 51 targets that had been approved up to that point, most of them air defense-related and only a few located anywhere in or near Belgrade.[27] In light of the absence of an allied ground threat to flush out Serbia’s dispersed and hidden forces in Kosovo, Short insisted that a more effective use of allied air power would be to pay little heed to those forces and to concentrate instead on infrastructure targets in and near downtown Belgrade and other cities, including key electrical power plants and government ministries.
Indeed, by the account of numerous observers who either participated in or later watched the videotapes of the 94 top-level video teleconferences (VTCs) conducted throughout Allied Force, a typical exchange between Clark and Short during the air war’s early days would have Clark ask: “Are we bombing those ground forces yet, Mike?” To which Short would typically offer a noncommital response. Even in the case of fixed infrastructure targets, Clark reportedly would venture deep into the most minute details of the target list. “Let’s turn to target number 311,” Clark would say, by this account “opening his binder as other participants flipped to the proper page, as if they were holding hymnals.” He would then raise questions about a target’s relevance, expostulate on allied sensitivities, or abort attacks already in progress. He would also, by this account, sometimes gainsay his own intelligence experts and targeteers by looking at a particular DMPI placement and asking “Isn’t that an apartment building?” or “Can’t we move that [DMPI] over 100 feet?” At which point Short would be seen “slumping back in his chair, folding his arms in disgust, and mentally checking out.” General Jumper would then weigh in out of earshot of the others, and a compromise arrangement would typically be worked out. By this informed account, it was never clear to participants whether Clark, through such ex cathedra interventions, was genuinely responding to political pressure from above or was engaged in a divide-and-rule game by playing on putative “constraints” to his advantage and gathering diverse inputs and opinions until he heard the one he wanted to hear.[28]
19
General Wesley Clark, USA, testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1999.
22
Comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAFE/SA, April 6, 2001. As a rule, the 19 individual allies did not deliberate over every new target added to the list. True enough, the NAC—that is, all 19 members, from the United States to Luxembourg—had to agree to move from one phase in the air war to the next. On January 30, 1999, for example, the NAC authorized NATO’s secretary general to commence Phase I (attacking the IADS and some command and control targets) whenever diplomatic efforts had been deemed exhausted (as it turned out, on March 24, when Solana finally ordered Clark to begin the bombing). The NAC also approved moving to Phase II on March 27, thereby allowing NATO to strike against military targets north of the 44th parallel. Although it never approved Phase III, which entailed strikes against military targets throughout the former Yugoslavia, the NAC gave de facto approval to entering this phase on March 30. From that point on, aside from Britain, France, and the United States, no NATO country ever reviewed, let alone approved or vetoed, any individual weapon aim point. France insisted on reviewing targets in Montenegro; Britain, France, and the United States all demanded the right to review any target that had high political significance or was located in or near civilian areas where the risks of collateral damage were significant. But the remainder of the allies only got to vote on proposed new target categories. Moreover, targets struck by U.S. aircraft operating outside NATO but within USEUCOM were not subject to outside review unless they met these two criteria.
23
This problem will only get worse as the low-observable F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter begin coming on line in significant numbers toward the end of this decade. Should the United States intend to use these third-generation stealth aircraft in a coalition context, as seems to be most likely, a dual ATO arrangement of the type used in Allied Force will not work. New standardized tactics, techniques, and procedures will need to be perfected and employed regularly in routine allied and combined peacetime training. I am grateful to my RAND colleagues James Schneider, Myron Hura, and Gary McLeod for this important insight.
24
John A. Tirpak, “Short’s View of the Air Campaign,”
25
For the pertinent details of that controversy, see Benjamin S. Lambeth,
26
26 General Wesley K. Clark,
27
Of these initial approved targets, 35 were IADS-related, seven entailed VJ and MUP facilities, seven involved command and control nodes, and two were industrial. Comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAFE/HO, May 10, 2001.
28
William M. Arkin, “How Sausage Is Made,”