cat-and-mouse game. The AFAC “cats” took off daily trying to anticipate the moves of the Serb “mice.” The Serbs adapted their tactics daily to improve their chances of shooting down an allied aircraft and their own probability of survival, while continuing the ethnic cleansing.
Although it might seem that as AFACs we had all the best cards, we knew the Serbs held a trump card—but a card they could not play unless we first provided the opportunity. If we made a serious tactical error, we could give them a huge strategic or political advantage that might weaken some allies’ resolve. This could happen in several ways. By taking unnecessary risks (even within the ROEs), we could provide the Serbs an A-10 and a POW to parade in front of the media. By failing to find and engage Serb forces, we could prolong the conflict beyond the patience of NATO political authorities. Finally, if we rushed or became frustrated, we could inadvertently kill civilian refugees and destroy the homes and villages of noncombatants. Any or all of these situations could unravel the popular support the campaign enjoyed.
This chapter examines some of the actions Serb forces took to counter allied operations in the KEZ. Those actions included Serb attempts to shoot down NATO aircraft, camouflage and conceal forces, and entice us to make mistakes by misleading our intelligence and interfering with our operations—mistakes that could weaken political and public support for our air campaign.
Attempts to Shoot Down NATO Aircraft
It took a while for the Serb ground-based air defenses to react to being attacked. They didn’t shoot at us until our second day of KEZ operations. The Serb air-defense weapons employed in Kosovo consisted of the full range of low- to medium-altitude radar- and IR-guided SAMs and 20 mm to 57 mm AAA. Our SEAD aircraft and crews (F-16CJ, EA-6B, and Tornado ECR) earned healthy respect from the Serbs only a couple of weeks into the campaign. Although the Serbs had very lethal mobile SAM systems roaming around Kosovo, we rarely detected a radar lock-on or radar-guided-missile launch. SEAD forces (as well as the air-to-air fighters) orbiting in the KEZ everyday made it possible for us to attack with impunity. Even though they rarely had either the need or opportunity to employ ordnance, they fulfilled their mission, and we never crossed the border without them.
On average, Serb antiaircraft missiles and AAA engaged each 40th EOG pilot about six times—several pilots were shot at much more often. Although some missions were very quiet, on others we spent much of our time reacting to and destroying surface-to-air threats rather than searching for hidden armor. Of course, targets designated with a CAOC-assigned priority were always attacked first. One A-10 AFAC point of pride was that, even though we often took aimed fire in daylight, none of the hundreds of strikers whose attacks we controlled were ever hit, and practically none were shot at. It was our job to ensure that incoming strikers had the safest ingress, attack, and egress routes.
The Serbs quickly learned that opening fire on Hogs with AAA or SAMs made them both obvious and high- priority targets. Serb air defenses attempted to plan their missile and AAA shots to maximize the chances of hitting an A-10 while minimizing their own risks. The “SAM bush” was one such tactic. The Serbs would first fire AAA to make the A-10 jink. When they thought they had the pilot’s attention focused, they launched one or more SAMs in the hopes of scoring a hit. The SAM-bush had zero success, and often the A-10s made the Serbs regret they tried it.
Camouflage and Concealment of Forces
After the first week of KEZ strikes, the Serbs rarely drove military vehicles in the open during the day. They became masters of hiding during the day and making full use of night or bad weather. They also built and deployed ingeniously simple decoys to impersonate mortars, artillery, trucks, APCs, and tanks. After noting that the APCs they parked in revetments would often be blown up when discovered by A-10s, they sometimes put a decoy in the revetment and then camouflaged the real vehicle outside. They also parked vehicles in agricultural fields and painted them the same color as the growing crops. They built tunnels, some real and some not.
Nevertheless, they made mistakes and were sometimes caught with their troops and vehicles in the open— usually when bad weather cleared up rapidly, as documented in a couple of the stories in this book. On one occasion, as 36 hours of heavy rain ended, I spied something very unusual through a small hole in the clouds. I soon understood the scene below me—a series of dark, metallic shapes and several bright-white tents of varying sizes in an area that included an asphalt road 500 meters long, bordered on either side by 10 to 20 meters of clearing and enclosed by woods. Using my binoculars I picked out mortars and artillery pieces in neat rows of revetments. Small, taut white tents covered the three revetments on one side of the road, and the three on the other side were in the open. A couple of APCs were visible, one of which was under a large, white tent. Other such tents were pitched in the trees. Taking extra time to rule out collateral damage, I made sure there were no civilian vehicles and no vehicles painted any other color than camouflage green. Why would a professional army use bright-white tents to cover camouflaged vehicles? The strange scene suddenly made sense. Evidently I had found them just as they were breaking camp after the deluge. This was one of the few times I saw a large group of military vehicles unaccompanied by civilian vehicles. They had apparently used the white tents not only to protect their equipment from the rain but also to pass themselves off as civilians to avoid attacks from anyone who might discover them.
It is easier to visually camouflage a professional army than it is to disguise its disciplined routines and habits. When moving, professional armies tend to drive their convoys at a constant speed with military spacing; when encamping, they tend to pitch their tents in neat, military rows. Today, that latter habit betrayed their attempt at disguise.
The hole in the clouds was closing and I reckoned that my airburst Mk-82s would be the most useful weapons to employ. Luck was with me as I rippled two bombs on an imperfect dive angle, on an axis that overlaid the most targets, hitting an APC in the open and another covered by a tent.
All pilots encountered similar situations when, with a little perseverance, they were able to figure out what was real and what wasn’t in the pictures they could see. Of course, that savvy improved with experience and after destroying a number of decoys. I certainly blew up my share of fake tanks.
Forcing NATO Mistakes
The Serb-escorted Kosovar refugee convoys comprised a mix of civilian and military vehicles and were a familiar sight from the very first day the weather allowed us to operate in Kosovo. As time went on, we were convinced that the Serb army and Interior Ministry police moved about in the large, white buses we saw everywhere. What Kosovar Albanian civilian would charter a bus to speed north on the highway towards Serbia? However, we never attacked the white buses because we couldn’t be sure there weren’t civilians in them.
Serb forces used many other unethical tactics to try to fool us and cause us to bomb noncombatant civilians and villages. They parked armored vehicles next to churches and other locations, many of which are too sensitive to mention here. Suffice it to say that the rigorous AFAC discipline in the KEZ precluded the Serbs from gaining much advantage from their efforts to trick us into bombing innocent civilians and other inappropriate targets.
Hit by a SAM
