ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE AIR WAR

A number of “firsts” were recorded during NATO’s air war for Kosovo. To begin with, Operation Allied Force was the first air war in which all three currently deployed U.S. Air Force heavy bomber types saw combat use. Those bombers constituted a major part of the overall strike force. Of some 700 U.S. combat aircraft committed to the operation altogether, a mere 21 heavy bombers (10 B‑52s, 5 B‑1s, and 6 B‑2s) delivered 11,000 out of the more than 23,000 U.S. air‑to‑ground munitions that were expended over the operation’s 78‑day course.[183]

There also was an unprecedented use of precision‑guided munitions in the air war. In Desert Storm, only 10 percent of the participating U.S. strike aircraft were PGM‑capable. That number rose to 69 percent in Operation Deliberate Force and shot up to 90 percent in Allied Force.[184]Thanks to the heavy use of PGMs in the interest of both operational efficiency and avoiding unintended collateral damage, a full three‑quarters of the more than 400 fixed targets attacked in Serbia were assessed as having sustained moderate to severe damage.[185]Some 64 percent of the 9,815 aim points altogether were hit by PGMs, for a total hit rate of 58 percent.[186]Figure 5.1 shows the proportion of precision munitions and nonprecision munitions delivered by U.S. combat aircraft over the 78‑day course of the bombing effort. At nearly a third of the total number of ground‑attack munitions expended altogether, PGM use in Allied Force greatly overshadowed that in Operation Desert Storm nearly a decade earlier. In that conflict, the proportion of PGMs delivered by U.S. forces compared to nonprecision munitions was less than 10 percent.

^{Figure 5.1–U.S. Precision and Nonprecision Munitions Expended}

In addition, more than in any previous U.S.‑led air operation, UAVs were used in Allied Force for combat support, most notably for locating VJ troops dispersed in the KEZ.[187]In yet another precedent, the USAF’s air expeditionary force (AEF) concept was first successfully exercised in a full‑up combat setting, with expeditionary fighter squadrons deploying to Aviano Air Base, Italy, from the continental United States and from U.S. bases in Europe and folding into the anchor 31st Air Expeditionary Wing stationed there, which, at its peak, operated a record 175 combat aircraft.[188]Relatedly, the assignment of tactical control of 12 C‑17s directly to USAFE roundly validated that aircraft’s “direct delivery” status and reflected a major step forward in the employment of air mobility forces as global assets. Finally, as the discussion below will sketch out in more detail, Operation Allied Force saw the most extensive use of space systems in combat to date, with more than 50 U.S. and European satellites directly involved in support of USEUCOM and NATO intelligence, coordination, and attack activities.