THE COST OF THE MISSING GROUND THREAT

One of the most important realizations to emerge from Allied Force at the operational and strategic levels was that a ground component to joint campaign strategies may be essential, at least in some cases, for enabling air power to deliver to its fullest potential. The commander of Air Combat Command, General Richard Hawley, was one of many senior airmen who freely admitted that the a priori decision by the Clinton administration and NATO’s political leaders not to employ ground forces had undercut the effectiveness of allied air operations: “When you don’t have that synergy, things take longer and they’re harder, and that’s what you’re seeing in this conflict.”[543]

General Jumper later concluded similarly that the imperative of attacking fielded enemy forces without the shaping presence of a NATO ground threat had produced “major challenges,” including creating a faster flexible targeting cycle; putting a laser designator on Predator; creating new target development processes within the CAOC; creating real‑time communications links between finders, assessors, and shooters; and developing more rapid real‑time retargeting procedures for the B‑2s, the B‑1s, the B‑52s, and F‑15Es carrying the AGM‑130.[544]

Amplifying on the fallacy of having started the air effort without a credible ground threat, General Short noted that “this conflict was unlike others in that we did not have a ground element to fix the enemy, to make him predictable, and to give us information as to where the enemy might be.”[545]Short went on to point out, however, that although NATO had not been formally allied with the KLA, the fact that the latter had begun to operate with some success in the end “made the Yugoslav army come out and fight and try to blunt their offensive…. And once they moved, or fired their artillery, our strikers learned where they were and could go in for the kill.”[546]Had VJ forces in Kosovo faced an imminent NATO ground invasion, or even a credible threat of such an invasion later, they would have been obliged to move troops and supplies over bridges that NATO aircraft could have dropped. They also would have been compelled to concentrate and maneuver in ways that would have made it easier for NATO to find and attack them.

Earlier, White House national security adviser Samuel Berger maintained that taking ground forces off the table at the outset had been the right thing to do because anything else would have inevitably prompted an immediate public debate both in the United States and among the allies, which could have split the alliance and seriously impeded the overall air effort.[547]Yet there was a huge difference between acknowledging that a land offensive could be fraught with danger, on the one hand, and ruling out such an offensive categorically before the fact, on the other. The former would have been demanding enough even under the best of circumstances because of basing, airlift, and logistics problems. The latter, however, was a colossal strategic mistake, in that it gave Milosevic the freedom to act against the Kosovar Albanians and the power to determine when the war would be over. The opportunity costs incurred by NATO’s anemic start of Allied Force without an accompanying ground threat included a failure to exploit air power’s shock potential and to instill in Milosevic an early fear of worse consequences yet to come; the encouragement it gave VJ troops to disperse and hide while they had time; the virtual carte blanche it gave Milosevic for accelerated atrocities in Kosovo; and the relinquishment of the power of initiative to the enemy.

As for the oft‑noted concern over the prospect of sustaining an unbearable level of friendly casualties had NATO opted to back up the air war with a ground element, there most likely would have been no need actually to commit NATO troops to battle in the end. The mere fact of a serious Desert Shield–like deployment of NATO ground troops along the Albanian and Macedonian borders would have made their VJ counterparts more easily targetable by allied air power. Had such a deployment commenced in earnest, it also might have helped to deter, or at least lessen, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo by giving VJ troops a more serious concern to worry about. In both cases, it could have enabled a quicker end to the war.

Even had Milosevic remained unyielding to the point where an opposed NATO ground‑force entry would have been unavoidable sooner or later, continued air preparation of the battlefield might have been sufficiently effective that the VJ’s residual strength would not have presented a significant challenge to NATO land forces. The impending improvement of summer weather and the further establishment of NATO air dominance would have enabled more effective NATO air performance against VJ targets, especially had the KLA succeeded in maintaining enough pressure to force VJ units to bunch up and move.

Indeed, well before Allied Force ended, there was a gathering sense among some observers that Serbia’s ground forces were being given more credit than they deserved as an excuse for ruling out a NATO land‑invasion option. As one former U.S. Army officer pointed out, Milosevic’s army was a small conscript‑based force with an active component of only some 115,000 troops who relied on antiquated Soviet equipment, mainly the 1950s‑vintage T‑55 tank. Air strikes during the first few nights of Allied Force had already rendered Yugoslavia’s small air force a non‑factor in any potential NATO ground push. The VJ’s petroleum and other stocks for sustainment had also been rapidly depleted by the bombing, leaving the Serbs with, at best, only a minimal capacity to wage conventional war against a serious ground opponent. In contrast, the modern and well‑equipped NATO ground forces arguably possessed enough combat power “to make mincemeat of the Yugoslav army.”[548]

Be that as it may, the problems created by NATO’s having ruled out a ground option before the fact suggest an important corrective to the seemingly unending argument between airmen and land combatants over the relative merits of air power versus “boots on the ground.” Although Operation Allied Force reconfirmed that friendly ground forces no longer need to be inexorably committed to combat early, it also reconfirmed that air power in many cases cannot perform to its fullest potential without the presence of a credible ground component in the campaign strategy. The fact is that air power alone was not well suited to defeating VJ forces in the field. Once most of the combat returns were in, it became clear that few allied kills were accomplished against dispersed and hidden VJ units in the KEZ. Not only that, allied air power had been unable to protect the Kosovar Albanians from Serb terror tactics, a problem that was further exacerbated by the stringent rules of engagement aimed at minimizing collateral damage and avoiding any NATO loss of life. As former Air Force chief of staff General Merrill McPeak instructively elaborated on this point, “in a major blunder, the use of ground troops was ruled out from the beginning. I know of no airman–not a single one–who welcomed this development. Nobody said, ‘Hey, finally, our own private war. Just what we’ve always wanted!’ It certainly would have been smarter to retain all the options…. Signaling to Belgrade our extreme reluctance to fight on the ground made it much less likely that the bombing would succeed, exploring the limits of air power as a military and diplomatic instrument.”[549]