TOWARD A “REPORT CARD” FOR ALLIED FORCE

As for what airmen and other observers should take away from Allied Force by way of lessons indicated and points worth pondering, the commander of the U.S. military contribution, Admiral Ellis, offered a good start when he declared in his after‑action briefing to Pentagon and NATO officials that luck played the chief role in ensuring the air war’s success.[550]Ellis charged that NATO’s leaders “called this one absolutely wrong” and that their failure to anticipate what might occur once their initial strategy of hope failed occasioned most of the untoward consequences that ensued thereafter.[551]These included the hasty activation of a joint task force, a race to find suitable targets, an absence of coherent campaign planning, and lost opportunities caused by the failure to think through unpleasant excursions from what had been expected. Ellis concluded that the imperatives of consensus politics within NATO made for an “incremental war” rather than for “decisive operations,” that excessive concern over collateral damage created “sanctuaries and opportunities for the adversary–which were successfully exploited,” and that the lack of a credible NATO ground threat “probably prolonged the air campaign.”[552]It was only because Milosevic made a blunder no less towering than NATO’s preclusion of a ground option that the war had the largely positive outcome that it did.

Indeed, that NATO prevailed in the end with only two aircraft lost and no combat fatalities sustained surely reflected good fortune at least as much as the professionalism of its aircrews and their commanders. General Jumper explained afterward that “we set the bar fairly high when we fly more than 30,000 combat sorties and we don’t lose one pilot. It makes it look as if air power is indeed risk free and too easy a choice to make.” Amplifying on the same point, retired RAF Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason observed that seeking to minimize one’s losses is both admirable and proper up to a point, yet it can lead to self‑deterrence when efforts to escape the costs of war are pursued to a moral fault. Although force protection “must be a major concern for any force commander,” Mason added, “my own view is that if Saint George’s first priority with tackling dragons had been force protection, I don’t think he would now be the patron saint of England.”[553]

The Kosovo experience further suggested some needed changes in both investment strategy and campaign planning. The combination of marginal weather and the unprecedented stress placed on avoiding collateral damage made for numerous days between March 24 and mid‑May when entire ATOs had to be canceled and when only cruise missiles and the B‑2, with its through‑the‑weather JDAM capability, could be used. That spoke powerfully for broadening the ability of other aircraft to deliver accurate munitions irrespective of weather, as well as for ensuring that adequate stocks of such munitions are on hand to see the next campaign to completion. The extended stretch of bad weather underscored the limitations of LGBs and confirmed the value of GPS‑guided weapons like JDAM that can bomb accurately through the weather.

Not surprisingly, the munitions used in Allied Force generally performed as advertised. The operation’s results, however, confirmed the need for a larger U.S. inventory of precision‑guided munitions (especially those capable of all‑weather target attack), as well as greater accuracy and more standoff attack capability. At the same time, it indicated a continued operational utility for both unguided general‑purpose bombs and cluster munitions for engaging soft military area targets deployed in the open. Other areas in which allied weapons performance showed a need for further improvement include interoperability across platforms, more multispectral sensors, higher‑gain optical sensors for UAVs, more data‑link interoperability, a wider range of bomb sizes, and weapons capable of conducting “auto‑BDA.”[554]Still other force capability needs highlighted by the Allied Force experience include better means for locating moving targets, better discrimination of real targets from decoys, and a way of engaging those targets with smart submunitions rather than with more‑costly PGMs and cruise missiles.[555]One airman later commented frankly that in being tasked by Clark to go after dispersed and hidden VJ forces, U.S. air power “was being asked to be a 21st century tactical air force… and the truth is, we’re not very good at it,” at least yet.[556]

As for the ultimate wisdom of the allied decision to proceed with the air war in the first place, the United States and NATO displayed an ability in this case to apply coercion successfully through air power from a poorly prepared battlefield at a remarkably low cost in noncombatant fatalities caused by direct collateral damage.[557]Yet there is a danger that making a habit of such displays by accepting Allied Force as a model for future interventions could easily lead to an erosion of the U.S. claim to global leadership.[558]On the contrary, Allied Force should have underscored the fact that one of the most acute challenges facing U.S. policymakers in the age of a single superpower entails deciding when, and in what manner, to intervene in humanitarian crises that do not yet impinge directly on U.S. security interests.