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[407]Michael Dobbs, “‘Europe’s Last Dictator’ Digs In,” Washington Post , April 26, 1999.

[408]Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and General Henry H. Shelton, “Joint Statement on the Kosovo After‑Action Review,” testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., October 14, 1999.

[409]Thomas W. Lippman and Bradley Graham, “Yugoslavs Fire on U.S. Troops; 3 Missing,” Washington Post , April 1, 1999.

[410]Bob Deans, “Pentagon Mum About Air Mission,” European Stars and Stripes , April 27, 1999.

[411]Michael R. Gordon, “Allied Air Chief Stresses Hitting Belgrade Sites,” New York Times , May 13, 1999.

[412]General Wesley Clark, USA, testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1999.

[413]John A. Tirpak, “The First Six Weeks,” Air Force Magazine , June 1999, pp. 27–29.

[414]Dana Priest, “Target Selection Was Long Process,” Washington Post , September 20, 1999.

[415]Comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAFE/SA, April 6, 2001. As a rule, the 19 individual allies did not deliberate over every new target added to the list. True enough, the NAC–that is, all 19 members, from the United States to Luxembourg–had to agree to move from one phase in the air war to the next. On January 30, 1999, for example, the NAC authorized NATO’s secretary general to commence Phase I (attacking the IADS and some command and control targets) whenever diplomatic efforts had been deemed exhausted (as it turned out, on March 24, when Solana finally ordered Clark to begin the bombing). The NAC also approved moving to Phase II on March 27, thereby allowing NATO to strike against military targets north of the 44th parallel. Although it never approved Phase III, which entailed strikes against military targets throughout the former Yugoslavia, the NAC gave de facto approval to entering this phase on March 30. From that point on, aside from Britain, France, and the United States, no NATO country ever reviewed, let alone approved or vetoed, any individual weapon aim point. France insisted on reviewing targets in Montenegro; Britain, France, and the United States all demanded the right to review any target that had high political significance or was located in or near civilian areas where the risks of collateral damage were significant. But the remainder of the allies only got to vote on proposed new target categories. Moreover, targets struck by U.S. aircraft operating outside NATO but within USEUCOM were not subject to outside review unless they met these two criteria.

[416]This problem will only get worse as the low‑observable F‑22 and Joint Strike Fighter begin coming on line in significant numbers toward the end of this decade. Should the United States intend to use these third‑generation stealth aircraft in a coalition context, as seems to be most likely, a dual ATO arrangement of the type used in Allied Force will not work. New standardized tactics, techniques, and procedures will need to be perfected and employed regularly in routine allied and combined peacetime training. I am grateful to my RAND colleagues James Schneider, Myron Hura, and Gary McLeod for this important insight.

[417]John A. Tirpak, “Short’s View of the Air Campaign,” Air Force Magazine , September 1999.

[418]For the pertinent details of that controversy, see Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power , Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 130–138.

[419]26 General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat , New York, Public Affairs, 2001, pp. 241, 243–244. As for charges of “alleged micromanagement,” Clark said only that he many times “found [himself] working further down into the details than [he] would have preferred, in an effort to generate the attack effectiveness against the ground forces that [he] knew we needed.” Ibid., p. 245. Short’s countervailing take on all this is presented in candid detail in Lieutenant General Michael C. Short, USAF (Ret.), “An Airman’s Lessons from Kosovo,” in John Andreas Olsen, ed., From Maneuver Warfare to Kosovo , Trondheim, Norway, Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, 2001, pp. 257–288.

[420]Of these initial approved targets, 35 were IADS‑related, seven entailed VJ and MUP facilities, seven involved command and control nodes, and two were industrial. Comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAFE/HO, May 10, 2001.

[421]William M. Arkin, “How Sausage Is Made,” Washington Post , July 17, 2000. Clark himself later affirmed in a backhanded way that he regarded General Short more as a subordinate to be managed than as a source of trusted counsel on air employment matters, and that he looked instead to Short’s immediate Air Force superior, General Jumper, for the latter: “My real window on the operation was going to be provided by the senior American airman in Europe, John Jumper. Although he wasn’t in the NATO chain of command for this operation, as the senior American airman he was my adviser and had all the technology and communications to keep a real‑time read on the operations. As Mike Short’s commander in the American chain of command, he also had a certain amount of influence in an advisory capacity.” Clark, Waging Modern War , p. 195.

[422]Tirpak, “Short’s View of the Air Campaign.”

[423]Interview with Lieutenant General Michael Short, USAF, PBS Frontline , “War in Europe,” February 22, 2000. Short also later indicated his belief that the use of VTCs “improperly allowed senior leadership to reach down to levels they did not need to be involved in.”

[424]In one reported exchange during a daily video teleconference, Clark insisted that NATO air power remain committed against enemy fielded forces in Kosovo, and Short countered that such missions were a waste of assets and should be supplanted by missions against downtown Belgrade. Noting that U.S. aircraft were about to attack the Serbian special police headquarters in Belgrade, Short said: “This is the jewel in the crown.” To which Clark replied: “To me, the jewel in the crown is when those B‑52s rumble across Kosovo.” Short: “You and I have known for weeks that we have different jewelers.” Clark: “My jeweler outranks yours.” Dana Priest, “Tension Grew with Divide in Strategy,” Washington Post , September 21, 1999.

[425]Richard K. Betts, “Compromised Command: Inside NATO’s First War,” Foreign Affairs , July/August, 2001, p. 126.

[426]During a 10th‑anniversary retrospective featuring Schwarzkopf’s principal deputies in Desert Storm, Horner was emphatic on the crucial importance of the ability of those key deputies to work together harmoniously in producing the war’s successful outcome: “The one thing you need to understand if you’re going to understand Desert Storm is that the relationship among the four people at this table–[Admiral Stanley] Arthur, [General Walter] Boomer, [Lieutenant General John] Yeosock, and me–was highly unusual. Such a relationship probably has never existed before, and it probably won’t exist in the future. The trust and respect we had for one another was unbelievable. This was a function of personality as much as a desire to get the job done. Unless you understand our relationships, then you really won’t understand what went on in Desert Storm, all the good and bad–and there was plenty of each.” “Ten Years After,” Proceedings , January 2001, p. 65.

[427]R. W. Apple, Jr., “With Decision to Attack, a New Set of U.S. Goals,” New York Times , March 25, 1999.

[428]“Stumbling into War,” The Economist , March 27, 1999, p. 17.

[429]James Gerstenzang and Elizabeth Shogren, “Serb TV Airs Footage of 3 Captured U.S. Soldiers,” Los Angeles Times , April 1, 1999.

[430]Jonathan Foreman, “The Casualty Myth,” National Review , May 3, 1999, p. 40.

[431]Short, interview on PBS Frontline .

[432]Ibid.

[433]Ibid.

[434]“Verbatim Special: The Balkan War,” Air Force Magazine , June 1999, p. 50.

[435]Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “No War,” Washington Times , April 16, 1999.

[436]“Verbatim Special: The Balkan War,” p. 51.

[437]Charles Babington, “Clinton Sticks with Strikes as Poll Shows 51 Percent in U.S. Approve,” Washington Post , March 30, 1999.

[438]Richard Benedetto, “Support Not as High as for Other Strikes,” USA Today , April 2, 1999.

[439]Humphrey Taylor, “Win in Kosovo and the Public Will Approve,” Wall Street Journal , June 3, 1999.

[440]James Cox, “Poll: Mission Isn’t Seen as U.S. Victory,” USA Today , June 15, 1999.

[441]Ignatieff, Virtual War , p. 99.

[442]Elaine M. Grossman, “U.S. Military Debates Link Between Kosovo Air War, Stated Objectives,” Inside the Pentagon , April 20, 2000, p. 7. According to one Allied Force participant, Clark would press his operators down the line to propose target candidates. They would reply, “Give us the targets and we will take them out,” to which Clark countered: “You don’t get it. You develop the targets.” Quoted in Ignatieff, Virtual War , p. 99. Clark himself later justified 2,000 as “a large round number, large enough to get us past the daily struggle over the number of targets approved for that day.” Clark, Waging Modern War , p. 250.

[443]William M. Arkin, “Smart Bombs, Dumb Targeting?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , May/June 2000.

[444]Ibid.

[445]Personal communication to the author, August 23, 1999.

[446]Grossman, “U.S. Military Debates Link Between Kosovo Air War, Stated Objectives,” p. 8.

[447]Comments at an Air Force Association Eaker Institute colloquy, “Operation Allied Force: Strategy, Execution, Implications,” held at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, Washington, D.C., August 16, 1999. When asked about effects‑based targeting applications in Allied Force, the former commander of the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, which provides senior warfighters with the principal analytical support for such targeting, remarked, “the campaign was more like random acts of violence than true effects‑based targeting. The legal restrictions and political constraints in the target approval process were inexplicably given as excuses not to do effects‑based targeting. Achieving the desired effects while minimizing the undesired effects, particularly under the restrictions and constraints that were placed on SACEUR, is precisely why effects‑based targeting should have been applied. Anything else is just high‑tech vandalism.” Conversation with Captain C. J. Heatley, USN (Ret.), Arlington, Virginia, June 21, 2000.

[448]John A. Tirpak, “Kosovo Retrospective,” Air Force Magazine , April 2000, p. 31.

[449]Grossman, “U.S. Military Debates Link Between Kosovo Air War, Stated Objectives,” p. 6.

[450]Tirpak, “Kosovo Retrospective,” p. 33.

[451]Quoted in Grossman, “U.S. Military Debates Link Between Kosovo Air War, Stated Objectives,” p. 7.

[452]General Krulak later remarked that even had it been an unstated goal, it was a “nonstarter,” because it would never have gained the backing of NATO.

[453]James B. Steinberg, “A Perfect Polemic: Blind to Reality on Kosovo,” Foreign Affairs , November/December 1999, p. 131.

[454]This official further claimed that Clinton had never intended to take the ground option off the table but “downplayed” it at first on the grounds that any public mention of it could have prompted a bruising debate in Congress and premature pressures to invoke the War Powers Act. He added that by April, the administration felt compelled to change that perception when it had become clear that important audiences had concluded that the president had flatly ruled out any ground option. That attempt to shift perceptions, he said, included asking Solana to initiate a review of the forces that would be required and encouraging Clark to accelerate planning for a ground invasion, making no effort to keep this quiet. The official admitted that there was no way a ground invasion could have been imminent when Milosevic capitulated on June 3, but that any decision to proceed with an invasion most definitely would have had to be made by mid‑June so that the logistical provisions needed to support a ground offensive could be completed before the onset of winter. Interview by RAND staff, Washington, D.C., July 11, 2000.

[455]Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, “Kosovo II: For the Record,” The National Interest , Fall 1999, p. 12.

[456]Conversation by RAND staff with Lieutenant General Ronald Keys, USAF, director of operations, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany, March 8, 2000. Clark himself was clear on this point in his subsequently published memoirs. Although he acknowledged that “there was a spirit of hope at the political levels [going into the bombing] that Milosevic might recognize that NATO was actually going to follow through with its threat and then quickly concede in order to cut his losses,” he, for his own part, suspected all along that it was “going to be a long campaign.” Clark, Waging Modern War , pp. 177, 201.

[457]Elaine Sciolino and Ethan Bronner, “How a President, Distracted by Scandal, Entered Balkan War,” New York Times , April 18, 1999.

[458]John M. Broder, “How to Lay Doubt Aside and Put the Best Face on a Bad Week in the Balkans,” New York Times , April 1, 1999.

[459]David A. Fulghum, “Lessons Learned May Be Flawed,” Aviation Week and Space Technology , June 14, 1999, p. 205. Even deeper than the problem of slow target approval, however, was the problem of positive target identification, given the exceptional stringency of the prevailing rules of engagement. For example, Joint STARS could not distinguish a column of refugees from a column of military vehicles loaded with enemy troops, a performance shortfall far more difficult to fix than streamlining the approval process. I am grateful to my colleague Bruce Pirnie for pointing this out.

[460]Jane Perlez, “For Albright’s Mission, More Problems and Risk,” New York Times , June 7, 1999.

[461]Bradley Graham and Dana Priest, “‘No Way to Fight a War’: Hard Lessons of Air Power, Coalitions,” Washington Post , June 6, 1999.

[462]Hugo Gurdon, “U.S. Admits Milosevic Spies Are Inside NATO,” London Daily Telegraph , April 15, 1999.

[463]Roberto Suro and Thomas E. Ricks, “Pentagon: Kosovo Air War Data Leaked,” Washington Post , March 10, 2000.

[464]Hugo Gurdon, “France Kept in Dark by Allies,” London Daily Telegraph , April 9, 1999.

[465]“NATO Chief: Targeting Goals Leaked to Yugoslavia,” Pacific Stars and Stripes , August 13, 1999.

[466]Tom Raum, “Cohen: NATO Process Prolonged Air Strikes,” Philadelphia Inquirer , July 21, 1999.

[467]Other examples of such self‑inflicted wounds, in Ellis’s view, were excessively high standards for limiting collateral damage, NATO’s self‑suspension of the use of cluster munitions, the aversion to casualties and ground combat, and the reactive as opposed to proactive public affairs posture, all of which slowed allied response time and reduced allied control over the air war’s operational tempo.

[468]Quoted in Lieutenant Colonel L. T. Wight, USAF, “What a Tangled Web We Wove: An After‑Action Assessment of Operation Allied Force’s Command and Control Structure and Processes,” unpublished paper, no date, p. 1. Colonel Wight was a member of the C‑5 Strategy Cell at the CAOC.

[469]Although the USAF’s still‑embryonic Air Expeditionary Forces were not available for participation in Operation Allied Force, the AEF concept was exercised at Aviano when the reinforced 31st Fighter Wing was designated a provisional air expeditionary wing for the air war’s duration.

[470]Complicating matters even further was the added confusion created by having Task Force Hawk and JTF Shining Hope functioning as separate command entities within the joint operating area.

[471]Wight, “What a Tangled Web We Wove,” p. 7. As a case in point, the Joint Chiefs, despite their formal status as advisers to the NCA, issued directives as though they were part of the warfighting chain of command, for instance, ruling out the use of CBUs by U.S. forces and placing certain targets on “JCS withhold.” Likewise, JTF Noble Anvil was often placed in a position of providing direction and guidance to NATO operational units, even though it nominally exercised operational and tactical control over U.S. assets only.

[472]Air Commodore A. G. B. Vallance, RAF, chief of staff, NATO Reaction Forces (Air) Staff, Kalkar, Germany, “After Kosovo: Implications of Operation Allied Force for Air Power Development,” unpublished paper, p. 3. Although Clark did, by numerous eyewitness accounts, sometimes treat Jumper as though he were the air component commander by virtue of his seniority to Short, Jumper never usurped his superior rank, never insisted that Short follow his suggestions, and frequently lent a helpful hand by quietly adjudicating the more prickly VTC sessions to good effect when Clark and Short got into their differences over targeting strategy and target priorities.

[473]Michael R. Gordon, “Allied Air Chief Stresses Hitting Belgrade Sites.”

[474]Wight, “What a Tangled Web We Wove,” p. 1.

[475]Briefing to the author by Brigadier General Daniel J. Darnell, commander, 31st Fighter Wing, Aviano Air Base, Italy, June 13, 2000.

[476]Wight, “What a Tangled Web We Wove,” p. 9.

[477]The problem was not just the absence of a land component per se, but that no component whatsoever undertook the task of IPB until far too late in the operation. What is required are clearer stipulations regarding whose responsibility it is to conduct IPB, as well as new approaches and processes for doing so. At present, only the land component is resourced and prepared to meet that responsibility. Comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAF/XOXS, July 11, 2001.

[478]Rowan Scarborough, “Kosovo Target Data Stalled in Transit,” Washington Times , July 28, 1999.

[479]As for information operations, one Allied Force participant commented that “due to the involvement of a few compartmented programs, the entire planning effort was classified at an unnecessarily high level, unreleasable to all but a very few U.S. planners. Unfortunately, implementing the overall plan was critical to the success of the operation, but because of the excessive classification, those charged with implementing it could not be told of the plan until it was too late.”

[480]The CAOC’s normal peacetime manning was around 250 assigned personnel. It had a reinforced staff of 375 on March 24, the night the air war began, which was finally ramped up to more than 1,400 as Allied Force peaked at more than 900 sorties a day.

[481]Conversation with Major General P. J. M. Godderij, deputy commander in chief, Royal Netherlands Air Force, Scheveningen, the Netherlands, June 7, 2000.

[482]Brigadier General Randy Gelwix, USAF, “Oral Histories Accomplished in Conjunction with Operation Allied Force/Noble Anvil.”

[483]During an after‑action presentation by the USAREUR battlefield coordination element, Hq USAFE’s AWOS study team learned that JTF Noble Anvil had prepared a memorandum of agreement for USAREUR coordination expressly stipulating that TF Hawk would provide the CAOC with processed intelligence data from the TPQ‑36 and TPQ‑37 counterbattery radars. In the ensuing coordination process, the USAREUR intelligence directorate reportedly excised pertinent language from the text. Comments on an earlier draft by Hq USAF/XOXS, July 11, 2001.

[484]Amplifying on this point a year after the air war ended, Ellis further remarked that because air power had been the only force element actively used in Allied Force, the JFACC naturally had a heavy air emphasis. Yet, he added, the planning and execution system badly needed land and maritime component commanders deep in the loop as well, so they could explain to the JFACC, as authoritative equals, what their services were able to bring to the planning table. Noting how the “J” in JFACC was all too often silent, Ellis recalled that the contributions of other services were not invariably made the best use of. For example, he said, the EA‑6B, TLAM, and F‑14 TARPS all brought good capabilities to the fight and the JFACC needed to know about those capabilities directly from their most senior operators. TARPS, in particular, offered excellent potential value, but the Air Force, now out of the manned tactical reconnaissance business, sometimes gave the impression of believing that if the information did not come from space, it did not have an obvious use. Ellis’s overall point was that the services have not yet become sufficiently joint‑minded at the operational and tactical levels, let alone the strategic level. Interview with Admiral Ellis, May 30, 2000.

[485]Conversation with Vice Admiral Daniel J. Murphy, USN, 6th Fleet commander, aboard the USS LaSalle , Gaeta, Italy, June 8, 2000.

[486]Briefing by Admiral James O. Ellis, USN, commander in chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, and commander, Allied Forces Southern Europe and Joint Task Force Noble Anvil, “The View from the Top,” 1999.

[487]Wight, “What a Tangled Web We Wove,” p. 10.

[488]Ibid., p. 11.

[489]Interview with Air Marshal Sir John Day, RAF Innsworth, United Kingdom, July 26, 2000. Rather more bluntly, retired USAF General Chuck Horner, the JFACC during Desert Storm, commented that had he been SACEUR during Allied Force, he would have shot every TV monitor in sight. The biggest problem with VTCs, Horner said, is that one does not know who is present and listening, even as a videotaped record of the proceeding is being made. That, he added, inclines participants to pull their punches and speak “for the record,” rather than to speak their mind in a manner that only privacy can ensure. Conversation with General Horner at Farnborough, United Kingdom, July 27, 2000.

[490]Lisa Hoffman, “U.S. Taxpayers Faced with Mounting Kosovo War Costs,” Washington Times , June 10, 1999.

[491]Bradley Graham, “Air Power ‘Effective, Successful,’ Cohen Says,” Washington Post , June 11, 1999.

[492]That was the final assessment of an unofficial post–Allied Force bomb damage survey conducted in Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro by a team of inspectors representing Human Rights Watch. A U.S. Air Force analyst who was later briefed on the study commented that Human Rights Watch had “the best on‑the‑ground data of anyone in the West.” “A New Bomb Damage Report,” Newsweek , December 20, 1999, p. 4. A later report, however, indicated that Human Rights Watch had identified 90 separate collateral damage incidents, in contrast to the acknowledgment by NATO and the U.S. government of only 20 to 30. Bradley Graham, “Report Says NATO Bombing Killed 500 Civilians in Yugoslavia,” Washington Post , February 7, 2000.

[493]Mark Thompson, “Warfighting 101,” Time , June 14, 1999, p. 50. Regarding Odom’s first charge, General Jumper categorically declared after the bombing effort successfully ended that “no airman ever promised that air power would stop the genocide that was already ongoing by the time we were allowed to start this campaign.” Quoted in The Air War Over Serbia: Aerospace Power in Operation Allied Force , Washington, D.C., Hq United States Air Force, April 1, 2000, p. 19. One of the few detractors of air power who was later moved to offer an apologia for having been wrong was military historian John Keegan, who acknowledged a week before Milosevic finally capitulated that he felt “rather as a creationist Christian… being shown his first dinosaur bone.” John Keegan, “Modern Weapons Hit War Wisdom,” Sydney Morning Herald , June 5, 1999. Keegan, long a skeptic of air power’s avowed promise, wrote on the eve of Milosevic’s capitulation that the looming settlement represented “a victory for air power and air power alone.” Quoted in Elliott Abrams, “Just War. Just Means?” National Review , June 28, 1999, p. 16.

[494]William Drozdiak and Anne Swardson, “Military, Diplomatic Offensives Bring About Accord,” Washington Post , June 4, 1999.

[495]Paul Richter, “Air‑Only Campaign Offers a False Sense of Security, Some Say,” Los Angeles Times , June 4, 1999.

[496]Thomas E. Ricks and Anne Marie Squeo, “Kosovo Campaign Showcased the Effectiveness of Air Power,” Wall Street Journal , June 4, 1999.

[497]Serge Schmemann, “Now, Onward to the Next Kosovo. If There Is One,” New York Times , June 16, 1999.

[498]Andrew Krepinevich, “Two Cheers for Air Power,” Wall Street Journal , June 11, 1999.

[499]Pat Towell, “Lawmakers Urge Armed Forces to Focus on High‑Tech Future,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly , June 26, 1999, p. 1564. Actually, the air effort proved no such thing with respect to VJ forces operating in Kosovo.

[500]Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and General Henry H. Shelton, “Joint Statement on the Kosovo After‑Action Review,” testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., October 14, 1999.

[501]Bradley Graham, “Joint Chiefs Doubted Air Strategy,” Washington Post , April 5, 1999.

[502]Quoted in “Verbatim Special: The Balkan War,” Air Force Magazine , June 1999, p. 47.

[503]“Reporters’ Notebook,” Defense Week , July 19, 1999, p. 4.

[504]William Drozdiak, “Allies Need Upgrade, General Says,” Washington Post , June 20, 1999.

[505]Most others as well were caught off guard by the sudden ending of the Kosovo crisis. See Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret.), “The Council on Foreign Relations Report on the Kosovo Air Campaign: A Digest of the Roundtable on the Air Campaign in the Balkans,” Council on Foreign Relations, New York, July 27, 2000. One notable exception was USAF Brigadier General Daniel J. Leaf, commander of the 31st Air Expeditionary Wing at Aviano Air Base, Italy, who confidently told his aircrews on the eve of Milosevic’s capitulation that he could “smell an impending NATO victory in the air” (conversation with the author in Washington, D.C., November 16, 2000).

[506]John F. Harris and Bradley Graham, “Clinton Is Reassessing Sufficiency of Air War,” Washington Post , June 3, 1999.

[507]William M. Arkin, “Limited Warfare in Kosovo Not Working,” Seattle Times , May 22, 1999.

[508]General Michael E. Ryan, “Air Power Is Working in Kosovo,” Washington Post , June 4, 1999.

[509]It bears noting here that the December 1972 bombing of Hanoi was also an example of successful coercive bombing, albeit with a very limited objective and in the context of a much larger war that ended in defeat for the United States. For more on this, see Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966–1973 , Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institute Press, 2000, pp. 255–280.