INITIAL ATTACKS AND THEIR EFFECTS

Operation Allied Force began against Yugoslavia on the night of March 24, within minutes of President Clinton’s announcement that air attacks were under way. The initial concept of operations envisaged night raids against so‑called enabling targets, such as enemy air defense assets, in order to create a more permissive operating environment for subsequent attacks against other classes of targets. In announcing the commencement of attacks, the president declared that the operation had three goals: “To demonstrate the seriousness of NATO’s opposition to aggression,” to deter Milosevic from “continuing and escalating his attacks on helpless civilians,” and, if need be, “to damage Serbia’s capacity to wage war against Kosovo by seriously diminishing its military capabilities.” At the same time, he pointedly stressed: “I don’t intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war.”[26]To those opening words, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army General Henry H. Shelton, added that NATO would engage “the full range of his military capabilities” if Milosevic did not desist from his offensive in Kosovo.[27]As noted earlier, it was accepted as a given by the Clinton administration that Milosevic would settle quickly. As Secretary of State Albright clearly attested to this expectation in a television interview on the evening that the air attacks began: “I don’t see this as a long‑term operation.”[28]

The air war commenced with 250 committed U.S. aircraft, including 120 land‑based fighters, 7 B‑52s, 6 B‑2s, 10 reconnaissance aircraft, 10 combat search and rescue (CSAR) aircraft, 3 airborne command and control center (ABCCC) aircraft, and around 40 tankers.[29]As for NATO’s additional 18 members, 13 contributed aircraft for use in the operation, with 11 allies (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Turkey) eventually participating in offensive and defensive air combat operations of all types. The first wave of attacks on the night of March 24 consisted of cruise missile launches only, featuring TLAMs fired by four U.S. surface ships (including USS Gonzales and USS Philippine Sea ), two U.S. fast‑attack submarines (USS Albuquerque and USS Miami ), and a British attack submarine (HMS Splendid ) operating in the Adriatic Sea. This initial wave further included AGM‑86C CALCMs launched against hardened enemy structures by six B‑52s flying outside Yugoslav airspace. The latter were the first shots fired in the operation.[30]The initial target hits occurred shortly after 8 p.m. local time in the vicinity of Kosovo’s capital city of Pristina, shutting down the electrical power grid and plunging the city into darkness. The main commercial and military airfield at nearby Batajnica was also hit. In all, 55 U.S. cruise missiles were expended the first night.

These cruise‑missile attacks were followed by fixed‑wing air strikes that continued throughout the night, primarily against air defense targets such as SAM batteries and radar and military communications sites.[31]Allied aircraft operated out of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Adriatic Sea.[32]Their targets included a radar site at Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro. In addition, NATO aircrews hit airfields in Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro, as well as electrical power generating facilities, weapons‑producing factories, military and police barracks, and command and control nodes, including some aim points located north of Belgrade. Among specific targets attacked were the VJ’s Kosovoski Junaci barracks near Pristina in Kosovo, the Golobovci airport in Montenegro, munitions stores at Danilovgrad, and other military targets at Radovac, Sipcanik, and Ulcini.[33]Allied pilots were instructed to take no chances with enemy infrared SAMs and AAA and to honor an altitude floor (or “hard deck”) of 15,000 ft to remain above their killing envelopes.

Targets attacked the first night were reviewed with special care at the White House by President Clinton, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and General Shelton. Some proposed targets were removed from the list by dissenting NATO leaders out of concern for causing collateral damage because of their close proximity to civilian buildings. In other borderline cases in which targets were reluctantly approved, the recommended bomb size was reduced to minimize or preclude collateral damage. One of every five laser‑guided bombs dropped by an F‑117 the first night was a 500‑lb GBU‑12 instead of a 2,000‑lb GBU‑27. That meant less likelihood of the bomb’s causing inadvertent collateral damage, but also a lower probability of destroying the intended target. The rules of engagement were uncompromisingly restrictive, with pilots instructed to return home with their weapons unless their assigned target could be positively identified.[34]

In all, some 400 sorties were flown the first night, including 120 strike missions against 40 targets consisting of five airfields, five army garrisons, communications centers, and storage depots, in addition to IADS facilities. Only a few SA‑3 and SA‑6 SAMs were launched against attacking NATO aircraft the first night. All the same, Pentagon officials anticipated the day after that at least a dozen NATO aircraft losses could be incurred should the operation continue beyond just a few days.[35]Contrary to early Western press reports, Serb IADS operators never intentionally husbanded their SAMs. Instead, after experiencing allied SEAD operations for the first time, they adapted their tactics to balance lethality with survivability, with the result that they were always present and aggressive–even as they showed greater firing discipline than the Iraqis did during Desert Storm.[36]

Numerous enemy fighters, including at least a dozen MiG‑29s, sought to engage attacking NATO aircraft the first night.[37]One MiG‑29 was reported to have fired an R‑73 (NATO code‑named AA‑10 Alamo) radar‑guided missile toward an ingressing NATO fighter in an ineffectual attempt to get off a counteroffensive shot. Two MiG‑29s were downed by USAF F‑15s and one by a Dutch F‑16. In addition, a MiG‑21 was believed to have crashed during an attempt to land. Only rarely did Serb fighters rise to challenge NATO aircraft after that. The following day, General Clark declared that the bombardment would “systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate,” and “ultimately… destroy” Milosevic’s army if he failed to accept the American‑drafted peace plan. Clark further declared that the air effort would be “just as long and difficult as President Milosevic requires it to be.”[38]

Attacks carried out by NATO aircrews the second night were described as “significantly heavier” than those the first night. Targets included the VJ barracks at Urosevac and Prizren in Kosovo; the military airfields at Nis in southern Serbia and Golubovci near Podgorica, Montenegro; and other Serb military facilities near Trstenik and Danilovgrad.[39]That night, fewer than 10 SAMs were fired, none of which succeeded in scoring a hit. The third afternoon, a USAF F‑15C downed two more MiG‑29s, which evidently had lost contact with their ground controller and inadvertently strayed into Bosnian airspace. Although their intended NATO targets were never positively determined, it was the subsequent conclusion of the allied air commander, Lieutenant General Short, that the Serb pilots had simply lost any semblance of air situation awareness and, as a result, set themselves up as easy prey for the F‑15.[40]

Third‑night attacks included targets in Mali Mokri Lug, Ayala, Vozdovac, and, for the first time, nearer to the immediate outskirts of Belgrade. That night, 40 percent of the targets attacked were in Kosovo, as opposed to only 20 percent the first two nights.[41]These attacks, however, just like the ones that took place the preceding two nights, caused no serious inconvenience for the Serbs. On the contrary, the gradually mounting intensity of the air war merely allowed the Serbs to adjust to a new level of pain, while pressing ahead with what they had planned all along: to redouble their effort to run as many ethnic Albanian civilians as possible out of Kosovo and thus be able to take an unobstructed shot at the KLA once and for all.

This escalated ethnic cleansing should not have come as a complete surprise to NATO. Weeks earlier, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), George Tenet, had predicted that VJ and MUP forces might respond to a NATO bombing campaign with precisely such a strategy. Similarly, U.S. military leaders had argued behind closed doors that air power alone would not suffice to force Milosevic to back away from such a move.[42]The CIA had reportedly learned as early as fall 1998 that Belgrade was planning a move with tanks and artillery, called Operation Horseshoe, to drive ethnic Albanians over the southern and western borders of Kosovo as soon as the snow melted in the spring. The KLA would thus be stripped of a surrounding civilian population and exposed to direct attack.[43]The Serb incentive for such a move was not difficult to fathom, considering that the heavily radicalized KLA, which represented the aspirations of most Kosovar Albanians, was (and remains) committed to the establishment of an independent Kosovo–and a Greater Albania over the longer term.[44]

In any event, Milosevic’s unleashing of large‑scale atrocities in Kosovo and his truculent defiance of NATO denied the alliance the quick settlement it had counted on and left both NATO and the Clinton administration with no alternative but to continue pressing the air attacks until NATO unambiguously prevailed. Because NATO’s leaders on both sides of the Atlantic had banked on a quick win, no preparations had been undertaken to anticipate what the consequences might be should Milosevic raise the stakes by accelerating his ethnic cleansing plans. Lest there be any doubt on that score, General Naumann admitted a month into the bombing that from the air war’s very start, “there was the hope in the political camp that this could be over very quickly” and that as a result, no one at any level had prepared for Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing push.[45]As a result, what had begun as a coercive NATO ploy aimed at producing Milosevic’s quick compliance quickly devolved into an open‑ended test of wills between the world’s most powerful military alliance and the wily and resilient Yugoslav dictator.