In the end, however, the plan ultimately agreed to by NATO expressly ruled out any backstopping by ground forces for two avowed reasons. The first had to do with identified logistic difficulties, the anticipated challenge of the terrain, and poor access and basing opportunities. The second, and far more pivotal, reason entailed the Clinton administration’s concern over lack of congressional support for such an option and the presumed unwillingness on the part of the American people and the NATO allies to accept combat casualties, reinforced by a near-certainty that the allies would not buy into a ground option. All planning, moreover, took for granted that NATO’s most vulnerable area (or “center of gravity”) was its continued cohesion as an alliance. In light of that, any target or attack tactic deemed even remotely likely to undermine that cohesion, such as the loss of friendly aircrews, excessive noncombatant casualties, excess collateral damage to civilian structures, or anything else that might undermine domestic political support or cause a withdrawal of public backing for the bombing effort, was to be most carefully considered—if not avoided altogether.
NATO’s final plan was conceived from the start as a coercive operation only, with the implied goal of inflicting merely enough pain to persuade Milosevic to capitulate. Its first phase, against only 51 approved integrated air defense system (IADS) targets and 40 approved punishment targets out of 169 in NATO’s Master Target File, entailed attacks against a combination of enemy air defenses and fixed army installations that aimed at softening up Yugoslavia’s IADS and demonstrating NATO’s ability to conduct precise air attacks with a minimum of unintended damage. The second phase envisaged attacks against military targets mainly, though not exclusively, below the 44th parallel, which bisected Yugoslavia well south of Belgrade (see Figure 2.1). Only in the third phase, if need be, would the bombing go in earnest after military facilities north of the 44th parallel and against targets in Belgrade itself.[13] NATO had approved this three-phase plan in principle the preceding October as a part of its ACTORD and had handed the keys for Phase I to Solana on January 30. Approval by the NAC of Phases II and III, however, would come only after the air effort began.
For his part, General Clark had called for punitive air strikes against Yugoslavia as early as January 1999, in response to the Serb massacre of 45 Kosovar Albanians near the town of Racak just days before. Persistent pressures from within NATO to explore a diplomatic solution, however, outweighed that recommendation for the early use of force. The resulting delay gave Milosevic time to bolster his forces, disperse important military assets, hunker down for an eventual bombing campaign, and lay the final groundwork for the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. Owing to that delay, NATO lost any element of surprise that may otherwise have been available.[14]
In the end, Operation Allied Force came just 10 days short of NATO’s 50th anniversary. The Clinton administration did not seek a UN Security Council resolution approving the air attack plan, since it knew that Russia and China had both vowed to veto any proposal calling for air strikes.[15] NATO’s going-in expectation was that the bombing would be over very quickly. Indeed, so confident were its principals that merely a token bombing effort would suffice to persuade Milosevic to yield that the initial attack was openly announced in advance, with U.S. officials conceding up front that it would take a day or more to program all of the TLAMs to hit some 60 planned aim points.[16] Only at the last minute did NATO’s political leaders give Secretary General Solana authority for what one NATO official called a “much more diverse target list, a more intensive pace of operations, and an expanded geographical zone.”[17] Once under way, the slowly escalating air effort put the United States into two simultaneous regional conflicts (the other being Operations Northern and Southern Watch against Iraq) for the first time since World War II. It also made for a uniquely demanding test for American air power and became the most serious foreign policy crisis of the Clinton presidency.
Chapter Three
THE AIR WAR UNFOLDS
The operational setting of Yugoslavia contrasted sharply with the one presented to coalition planners by Iraq in 1991. Defined by a series of interwoven valleys partly surrounded by mountains and protected by low cloud cover and fog, Serbia and Kosovo made up an arena smaller than the state of Kentucky (39,000 square miles), with Kosovo itself no larger than the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Its topography and weather—compounded by an enemy IADS that was guaranteed to make offensive operations both difficult and dangerous—promised to provide a unique challenge for NATO air power.
Yugoslavia’s air defenses were dominated by surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries equipped with thousands of Soviet-made SAMs, including three SA-2 battalions; 16 SA-3 battalions, each with numerous launchers directed by LOW BLOW fire-control radars; and five SA-6 regiments fielding five batteries each, for a total of 25 SA-6 batteries directed by STRAIGHT FLUSH radars. These radar-guided SAMs were supplemented by around 100 vehicle-mounted SA-9 and several SA-13 infrared SAMs, along with a profusion of man-portable infrared SAMs, some 1,850 antiaircraft artillery (AAA) pieces, and numerous stockpiled reserve weapons and buried communications lines. Backing up these defenses, the Yugoslav air force consisted of 238 combat aircraft, including 15 MiG-29 and 64 MiG-21 fighter-interceptors.[1] Although the Yugoslav IADS employed equipment and technologies that dated as far back as the 1960s, albeit presumably with selected upgrades, its operators knew U.S. tactics well and had practiced air defense drills and honed their operational techniques for more than four decades. They also had the benefit of more equipment and better training than did the Bosnian Serbs in 1995. Finally, they enjoyed the advantage of being protected both by mountainous terrain and by the cover of inclement weather when the air war began.
In addition, Serbia’s SA-2s, SA-3s, and SA-6s were served by more than 100 acquisition and tracking radars, all of which were internetted by underground land lines and fiber optic cables. They were further backstopped by a robust civilian and military visual observer network that included covert Serb observers who monitored NATO aircraft as they took off from their bases in Europe.[2] In anticipation of a possible air offensive, Yugoslav defense specialists had met the month before in Baghdad with their Iraqi counterparts. Indeed, such Yugoslav-Iraqi collaboration had long preceded the Kosovo crisis. Baghdad had purchased some Yugoslav IADS equipment late during the cold war before the onset of Desert Storm. Iraq also very likely shared intelligence with Belgrade on U.S. suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) tactics, as well as its own experience and recommendations, in subsequent years.[3] According to General Salko Begic, the air commander for the Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia and a former service academy classmate of the Serb generals who were running Yugoslavia’s air defenses when the air attacks began, the intended tactic to be used against attacking NATO aircraft was to create a killing zone below 10,000 ft by means of AAA, SA-7 infrared SAMs, and Swedish Bofors man-portable air defenses.[4]
13
Charles Babington and William Drozdiak, “Belgrade Faces the 11th Hour, Again,”
14
William Drozdiak, “Politics Hampered Warfare, Clark Says,”
15
This should not be taken to suggest that NATO’s air war against Serbia was a unilateral action undertaken without regard for the UN whatsoever. On the contrary, in March 1998 the Security Council had expressly recognized in Resolution 1160 that the Serb government’s repression of the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo constituted a threat to international peace and security, a view later repeated in Resolution 1199 six months before the start of Allied Force, which called for action aimed at heading off “the impending humanitarian catastrophe” in Kosovo. As an IISS comment later noted, NATO’s air war for Kosovo thus constituted “a highly significant precedent,” in that it established “more firmly in international law the right to intervene on humanitarian grounds, even without an express mandate from the Security Council.”
16
Jane Perlez, “U.S. Option: Air Attacks May Prove Unpalatable,”
17
Steven Erlanger, “U.S. Issues Appeal to Serbs to Halt Attack in Kosovo,”
1
“AWOS [Air War Over Serbia] Fact Sheet,” Hq USAFE/SA, December 17, 1999. See also
2
Discussions with former East European strategic and tactical SAM operators on IADS visual observer employment doctrine, as reported to the author by Hq USAFE/IN, May 18, 2001.
3
John Diamond, “Yugoslavia, Iraq Talked Air Defense Strategy,”
4
Michael R. Gordon, “NATO to Hit Serbs from 2 More Sides,”