Paralleling this NATO chain of command were the individual chains of each allied member, typified by that of the United States, which began with the National Command Authorities (NCA) at the White House and Pentagon and proceeded to the regional commander in chief, General Clark, in his capacity as CINCEUR (CINC U.S. European Command) and, in turn, to the various subordinate U.S. component commands. The most important two of those subordinate commands were JTF Noble Anvil, established under the command of Admiral Ellis as CINCSOUTH, and USAFE, under the command of General Jumper, who retained operational control of some U.S. assets, specifically the B-1, B-2, B-52, F-117, E-3, KC-135, and U-2 aircraft that flew in Operation Allied Force. General Short exercised tactical control over these aircraft and was assigned operational control of all other combat aircraft assigned to the 31st Air Expeditionary Wing at Aviano Air Base, Italy.[76] Finally, a joint special operations task force maintained operational control over all aircraft dedicated to combat search and rescue missions, and the allied participants ceded operational and tactical control over their aircraft to General Short, who, in his capacity as COMAIRSOUTH, was the designated NATO operational commander and who directed all air missions flown in the NATO-releasable ATO.[77]
This dual-hatting of so many commanders and operational functions often made it hard for Allied Force participants, irrespective of level, to determine exactly who was operating in what capacity at any given time. For example, the CAOC at Vicenza, which was operated by NATO’s 5 ATAF, performed command and control functions both for NATO and for U.S.-only operations. That odd arrangement emanated from the fact that the command and control apparatus put in place for what ultimately became Operation Allied Force had initially been created for a U.S.-only operation, an apparatus that remained in place even as the air war became a NATO effort. As one informed account of this “flawed organizational structure” later observed, the JCS, the USAFE staff, and Admiral Ellis’s JTF all “performed roles outside their doctrinal bounds,” further confusing the execution of Allied Force and producing numerous instances of “conflicting guidance, command echelons being skipped or omitted entirely, and either a duplication of effort or functions not being performed at all, since one organization erroneously thought the other was responsible for a particular task.”[78]
Amplifying further on this bizarre command arrangement, RAF Air Commodore Andrew Vallance later noted from his vantage point as chief of the NATO Reaction Forces air staff in Kalkar, Germany, that the control of an operation in NATO’s southern region would normally have fallen to CINCSOUTH and his subordinate air commander (COMAIRSOUTH), Admiral Ellis and General Short, as had been the case earlier with Admiral Smith and then–USAF Lieutenant General Michael Ryan during the successful Operation Deliberate Force over Bosnia in 1995. Yet in the case of Allied Force, following the precedent set earlier by NATO’s IFOR/SFOR operation in Bosnia, General Clark as SACEUR elected to take direct personal control of the air effort, effectively cutting CINCSOUTH out of the command chain, to all intents and purposes.
In contrast, the commander, Allied Air Forces, Central Europe (COMAIRCENT), a USAF four-star general, would not normally have been directly involved in a southern region operation. However, in the case of Allied Force, through his national responsibilities as commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe (COMUSAFE), General Jumper had “a major say in how the huge USAF contribution was used.”[79] Moreover, unlike General Horner in Desert Storm, who answered directly to the theater CINC, General Schwarzkopf, Short reported not to Clark but rather to Admiral Ellis, who in turn reported to Clark—a situation which, Short cautiously said, “colors the equation a bit in terms of my latitude, if you will, in this air campaign.”[80] Considering all this confusion and more, concluded an informed and expert observer, operational effectiveness in Allied Force was probably achieved “in spite of the… command structures and processes rather than as a direct result of them.”[81]
In addition, because NATO had initially anticipated that the bombing would last only a couple of days, the CAOC was woefully understaffed and unprepared for the demands that immediately fell upon it. For example, on the night the air war began, there was no assigned strategy cell, no flexible targeting cell, no established guidance, apportionment, and targeting (GAT) process, and no BDA team in place.
Even when more fully developed, the BDA process left much to be desired. It was well enough equipped, calling as required on national and theater offboard sensors such as satellites and the U-2, tactical sensors such as Predator and Hunter UAVs, and onboard sensors such as the LANTIRN targeting pod carried by the F-14D, the F-15E, and the Block 40 F-16CG. Inputs from these information sources would be forwarded to the JAC at RAF Molesworth, which wielded chief BDA authority, and other BDA-related entities such as the CAOC, national agencies, the SACEUR staff, JTF Noble Anvil, and the JFACC apparatus. However, inputs from national and theater assets could take days to register an impact because of frequent weather complications and higher-priority taskings. Moreover, because BDA often required two or more independent sources to confirm a target kill, combat assessment often took longer than the time required for mission planning and retargeting. As a result, targets were often reattacked unnecessarily, which made for additional operational inefficiencies, and the air war’s overall progress could not be adequately tracked and measured. For fixed targets in Serbia, BDA confirmation was generally adequate, but the results were frequently not incorporated into replanning. Daily counts of flexible targets known to have been hit in the KEZ were not kept, resulting in a large band of uncertainty with respect to estimates of kills of mobile targets. Finally, there was a recurrent problem with ISR prioritization, reflected in repeated tension between SACEUR’s tasking of information sources to support BDA and the felt need at the operator level for information to support the attacking of targets.[82]
The CAOC also suffered from an inadequate airspace management system for assigning tanker tracks and for managing the nightly flow of combat and combat-support aircraft. Not until late April did the CAOC create separate flexible targeting cells for enemy IADS assets and fielded forces. Only by Day 37 was there a smoothly running target development and review mechanism in place, and only on Day 47 was the first Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List (JIPTL) produced, along with the first operational assessment briefing to Short and Clark. Until that time, the would-be Master Air Attack Plan (MAAP) team had been picking targets almost solely on the basis of what had been politically approved. That meant that for the first half of Operation Allied Force, a consistent targeting strategy not only was not attempted but was not even possible.[83]
76
Although the USAF’s still-embryonic Air Expeditionary Forces were not available for participation in Operation Allied Force, the AEF concept was exercised at Aviano when the reinforced 31st Fighter Wing was designated a provisional air expeditionary wing for the air war’s duration.
77
Complicating matters even further was the added confusion created by having Task Force Hawk and JTF Shining Hope functioning as separate command entities within the joint operating area.
78
Wight, “What a Tangled Web We Wove,” p. 7. As a case in point, the Joint Chiefs, despite their formal status as advisers to the NCA, issued directives as though they were part of the warfighting chain of command, for instance, ruling out the use of CBUs by U.S. forces and placing certain targets on “JCS withhold.” Likewise, JTF Noble Anvil was often placed in a position of providing direction and guidance to NATO operational units, even though it nominally exercised operational and tactical control over U.S. assets only.
79
Air Commodore A. G. B. Vallance, RAF, chief of staff, NATO Reaction Forces (Air) Staff, Kalkar, Germany, “After Kosovo: Implications of Operation Allied Force for Air Power Development,” unpublished paper, p. 3. Although Clark did, by numerous eyewitness accounts, sometimes treat Jumper as though he were the air component commander by virtue of his seniority to Short, Jumper never usurped his superior rank, never insisted that Short follow his suggestions, and frequently lent a helpful hand by quietly adjudicating the more prickly VTC sessions to good effect when Clark and Short got into their differences over targeting strategy and target priorities.
82
Briefing to the author by Brigadier General Daniel J. Darnell, commander, 31st Fighter Wing, Aviano Air Base, Italy, June 13, 2000.