NATO's Air War for Kosovo

On March 24, 1999, NATO embarked on a 78‑day air war aimed at compelling the government of Yugoslavia and its elected president, Slobodan Milosevic, to halt and reverse the human rights abuses that were being committed by armed Serbs against the ethnic Albanian majority living in Yugoslavia’s Serbian province of Kosovo. That effort, called Operation Allied Force, ended on June 9 after Milosevic finally acceded to NATO’s demands and a withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo had begun. The air war was a first of that magnitude for NATO and represented the third largest strategic application of air power by the United States since World War II, exceeded only by the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm in scale and intensity.

With a view toward capturing the many useful insights to be extracted from that experience, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff, General Michael Ryan, asked Headquarters United States Air Forces in Europe (Hq USAFE) shortly after Allied Force ended to establish a studies and analysis office (USAFE/SA) to manage all USAF‑sponsored assessments of the air war. The director of that office, Brigadier General John Corley, in turn asked RAND’s Project AIR FORCE to contribute to the assessment effort across a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from individual platform and systems performance to command and control, operational support, strategy and planning, and other considerations bearing on the air war’s effectiveness.

This book examines the conduct and results of Operation Allied Force at the strategic and operational levels. An earlier and less developed version appeared as a chapter in the author’s previous book The Transformation of American Air Power , which was published by Cornell University Press in September 2000. The research documented herein was carried out in Project AIR FORCE’s Strategy and Doctrine Program and was completed in August 2001. All photographs included in this study were provided by the U.S. Department of Defense. The book should be of interest to USAF officers and other members of the U.S. national security community concerned with strategy and force employment issues raised by NATO’s air war for Kosovo and with the implications of that experience for force development, air power doctrine, and concepts of operations for joint and coalition warfare.

Other documents published in this series currently include the following:

MR‑1279‑AF, Command and Control and Battle Management: Experiences from the Air War over Serbia , James E. Schneider, Myron Hura, Gary McLeod (Government publication; not releasable to the general public)

MR‑1326‑AF, Aircraft Weapon Employment in Operation Allied Force , William Stanley, Carl Rhodes, Robert Uy, Sherrill Lingel (Government publication; not releasable to the general public)

MR‑1351‑AF, The Conflict over Kosovo: Why Milosevic Decided to Settle When He Did , Stephen Hosmer

MR‑1391‑AF, European Contributions to Operation Allied Force: Implications for Transatlantic Cooperation , John E. Peters, Stuart Johnson, Nora Bensahel, Timothy Liston, Traci Williams

DB‑332‑AF, Aircraft Survivability in Operation Allied Force , William Stanley, Sherrill Lingel, Carl Rhodes, Jody Jacobs, Robert Uy (Government publication; not releasable to the general public)

Topics examined in series documents nearing completion include:

• Supporting Expeditionary Aerospace Forces: Lessons from the Air War Over Serbia

• Lessons Learned from Operation Allied Force Tanker Operations