away sometime during the last couple of weeks of the war. That change led to the most frustration I experienced during any mission of the conflict.
My wingman and I were on an AFAC mission. We were proceeding from the tanker track into the KEZ when we got a call from a flight of A-10 strikers. They were searching for targets about five or 10 miles north of Prizren, and the flight lead said he had found what he thought were four APCs. Someone next to the APCs had just fired a handheld SAM at his aircraft. He was running low on fuel and wanted to hand the target off to someone before he departed. I led my flight to the target area to take control. A thin, wispy trail of smoke still indicated the missile’s flight path, from where it had been launched to where its motor had burnt out. After receiving a good hand-over brief, I used my binos to check out the area. I had some bad news and some good news for the departing flight lead. The bad news—he had found only one APC; the good news—the other three were tanks, and relatively modern models at that. What a find! I began the coordination process for an attack.
We were near the end of the conflict, the ROEs had changed, and we were required to get permission before we could direct attacks on any target. We had operated with these rules for the past couple of days and found that the approval process could be either quick or take many minutes. We soon learned that the best course of action was to find a target, call in the request to strike, and then search for other targets while waiting for approval. At any given time we would have several attack requests in the process of being approved or denied. When we received permission to strike, we had to figure out which of the targets had been approved and then relocate it— hoping to find it where we had last seen it. I was sure that the details of these targets would cause the process to be more responsive. It was a large group of tanks, in the open and far away from any man-made structure. I was excited and decided to stay overhead to monitor their activity while waiting for approval.
I had submitted my target to the ABCCC guys orbiting south of the border, who passed it to the CAOC in Italy. The CAOC, I was told later, had to phone someone even farther removed from the fight. That person would look at a map and decide either to grant or refuse permission to attack. That person was probably away from his desk when the call with our request came in; my wingman and I waited. There was activity down below. The tanks were about 100 feet from a paved road, and a small white car was parked on the side of the road. We suspected that the occupants of the white car were part of the Serb forces associated with the tanks. The Serbs’ favorite mode of travel appeared to be stolen Kosovar cars. Their early OAF experience had taught them that civilian vehicles survived when convoys were attacked. At about this time a small civilian flatbed truck arrived from the town located about a kilometer down the road. It stopped near the car, and its occupants proceeded to unload whatever it was carrying.
After five or 10 minutes had passed, I radioed the ABCCC folks to see if they had any news. I told them of the new developments and asked that they check with CAOC to see if more information was needed. From the radio traffic that we could hear, KEZ didn’t sound very busy, but one never knew what might be happening in the CAOC. While we waited, I continued to prepare for the attack. I determined the target coordinates and elevation, and checked the winds at our attack altitude. I rechecked our location on a large-scale map and planned where I could hold strikers, if and when they arrived. I wanted to avoid holding a striker directly over a known radar SAM area— that was poor form. I made sure my flight would be ready to attack when the word came down. We spun up our weapons and briefed a plan of action. And we waited.
A flight of A-10 strikers checked in on frequency. They had been released by their AFAC in the west since he did not have any targets for them and had heard that we had tanks. They were each carrying two CBU-87 combined-effects munitions, which were perfect weapons for my group of four armored vehicles parked right next to each other. I brought the strikers in and held them south of the target, briefing them on the situation and asking how much time they had. The flight lead said they had enough fuel to stay on station about 20 to 25 minutes. I told them the approval process was taking longer than usual and asked that they conserve as much fuel as possible. To prepare them for their attack, I deconflicted our altitudes and had them fly over and take a look at the target. This would enable them to attack as soon as the approval came down. We confirmed that we were dealing with three of the newer tank models the Serbs had in Kosovo. We discussed attack plans, munitions placement, and local threats. I then called ABCCC for an update. And we waited.
I sent the strikers south a few miles to resume holding. I scouted the surrounding area for more targets but didn’t stray more than a mile or two from the tanks. It had been over 30 minutes since we requested approval to strike, and I was beginning to worry about our fuel state. We could spend between 45 minutes and an hour over Kosovo. This relatively short onstation time would leave us with enough fuel to fly to the tanker track, attempt refueling, and—even if we could not refuel—still be able to return to Italy. We were conserving fuel while we were waiting, but how much longer would it take? Movement on the ground brought me back to the main target. One of the civilian vehicles was departing, and, as I flew overhead, it appeared that the armored vehicles were starting their engines. I excitedly called ABCCC to say it was now or never and told them to tell the CAOC that these vehicles would soon be gone. We waited a few minutes more.
Then things started to come apart. The lone APC moved out onto the road and sat there for a few moments. The three tanks started to move in the opposite direction, through the fields, and deployed in a column formation. I called ABCCC with my last message: “They’re moving, they are moving. I’m losing this target.” It took a few moments for them to answer, and I assumed that delay was caused by a call to the CAOC. Finally, 40 minutes after my first request, I got what I wanted—clearance to attack. The tanks were now moving slowly through the fields, but the APC was speeding down the paved road towards the nearest town. I decided that I would try to stop the APC first and then bring the fighters up from the south to deal with the tanks. I was sure the tanks could not get far in the time it would take to make one Maverick attack on the APC. It was probably less than a minute from the time I got permission to attack till I rolled in on the APC. I had the right weapons mode set, Maverick video on the screen, and green ready lights. I was ready to kill something.
As I rolled out, pointed at the APC moving down the road, I looked at the TV screen and watched the picture change from crisp and clear to a wavy-lined mess. I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe just the one missile had gone bad and had thrown the switches that called up the missile on the other wing. The picture there was just as bad—the 1960s technology in my TV monitor had failed; maintenance guys say this has been a problem for years. The Maverick pass had taken me too low to be able to switch to the gun, continue the attack, and recover before busting the ROEs’ minimum-altitude limit. However, I had developed plenty of speed during that long dive and was able to pull the plane up to near vertical to gain altitude while I set the switches for a gun attack. I was still below the minimum altitude that I generally used for starting attacks—especially for consecutive attacks in a handheld SAM area—but I was mad. I pulled the jet out of its steep climb and pointed its nose at the APC rolling down the road. It was moving faster than any target I had ever tried to attack (moving targets are hard to come by in training). I aimed in front of the APC by a distance I thought would work, and planned to walk my rounds down the road to make sure I got some hits. Because each round from a 30 mm Avenger cannon weighs three quarters of a pound, it doesn’t take many hits to destroy an APC. I squeezed the trigger and heard the gun rotate—something was wrong—no rounds came out. I held the trigger down for a while longer, thinking there might be a blank spot in the shell train. I got nothing and was now far lower than I wanted to be. I pulled off target—again trading airspeed for altitude. I was beside myself. I rechecked switches—all were correct. I could not believe what had just happened. All the effort that had gone into this sortie and all the time it took to get approval for the attack would not matter, it seemed, for today was not going to be my day to kill armor.
I had bled off too much energy, so it took a while to climb back to altitude. That gave me time to cool off and decide that, even though I couldn’t get a kill today, I could make sure that others would. By this time the APC had escaped. It made it to the safety of the town and was off limits. I started looking for the three tanks that I had last seen moving slowly to the northeast. They were gone. I cursed myself for not assigning the job of watching those tanks to the A-10 strikers holding in the south. Too late now—I had to find them. I did not think they could have gotten far, but the area to the north and east was heavily wooded. I searched for a while before finding one. It had pulled about 20 feet off a dirt road and into some trees. I called the strike leader to bring his flight forward. He told me they were low on gas and had only a little time before they had to depart. I quickly deconflicted our flights and brought him to a point over the target while I worked out a new target elevation. It took a few minutes for the strikers to get their eyes onto the target. They were near their bingo (required recovery fuel), so I told them that my wingman and I could cover their attack. That would allow them to roll in, one after the other, and save time. The leader agreed. He rolled in from the west, and his CBU pattern impacted the ground just short of the target. I passed the correction to the wingman as he rolled out in his dive. His two CBU cans also hit a bit short. The tank appeared to be just in the edge of the bomblet pattern. This was certainly not our best day.
