AFAC and flight lead of Uzi 11, and I was his tethered fighter and overall KEZ mission commander. The AFAC’s job was to find valid targets and then control the fighters while they attacked those targets. The wingman’s responsibilities were to provide visual lookout for the flight, communication backup, and firepower support, as well as assist the AFAC in any other way necessary. The tethered fighter could immediately attack targets if the planned strikers were either not available or too far away.
We flew an uneventful 45-minute vul period over Kosovo and then headed southwest for the tanker orbiting in Albania. After topping off, Moonbeam (ABCCC) told us to head to a certain village north of Pristina to search for targets that had been reported earlier. Once in the area, Moonbeam gave us a talk-on to a specific L-shaped building that had a bus parked alongside it and directed us to strike the building. This was highly unusual, since most ROEs prohibited us from hitting permanent structures for fear of harming innocent people and causing collateral damage. The idea of a talk-on from Moonbeam was also unusual, but I didn’t think much about it since other fighters could have passed on the target description earlier in the day. We surveyed the area with our binoculars and, while we saw no movement, we were convinced that this was the correct target. We each dropped three Mk-82 500 lb bombs on, or in the immediate vicinity of, the building and saw it and the bus begin to smolder. We reported the effects of our attack to Moonbeam and moved on to look for other valid targets in the area.
I had been near this area several days earlier and wanted to check some potential targets that I had seen, so we proceeded about 15 miles north of the smoking building. We found what looked like tracked vehicles in a tree line and mortar pits along a road, and were just about to employ our remaining ordnance when Moonbeam called again.
“Uzi One-One, do you still have contact with the L-shaped building?”
“No,” Slobee replied, “We have another potential target and are just about to strike it.”
“Well, we’d like you to go back to the L-shaped building. There are enemy soldiers walking around outside of it now, and we want you to strike it again.”
After several seconds of silence, Slobee said “Uzi copies.”
I don’t know what was going through my flight lead’s mind, but it was plainly obvious to me that
We flew back to the building, which was just barely burning, and each dropped our last Mk-82 and fired a Maverick missile into it. It quickly erupted into a raging inferno, and the bus was completely destroyed.
Moonbeam then said, “That looks like it’ll do the trick. Now we want you to proceed northeast by about 10 miles to these coordinates [UTM coordinates provided], and there should be at least 20 pieces of armor in a field.”
By this time we were sure there was someone on the ground directing our attacks, but for some reason we weren’t talking directly to him. Incompatible radios? Fear of compromise? We didn’t know.
We flew directly to the coordinates and spent 10 minutes looking for armor. All we could see were open fields with some barns located in and around them. We asked Moonbeam to repeat the coordinates, and when it did so, they confirmed that we were in the right place. Then Moonbeam said that there should be a large, U-shaped pole barn at the end of an eastwest dirt road. We already had that in sight—since it was the largest reference in the area.
Moonbeam then said, “The tanks and APCs are inside that barn; you are cleared to strike it.”
Well, thanks for telling us. We now had to rush the attack because gas was getting low and becoming a factor. We each shot our remaining Maverick into separate corners of the “U,” made three high-angle strafe passes using two to three trigger pulls per pass. I shot about 700 rounds into the barn, and Slobee shot about 400. We did not see any large explosions as the barn began to burn, but I did see what appeared to be smaller secondary explosions from inside and yellow-green smoke rising from the burning barn. Moonbeam told us that we had direct hits and had destroyed many of the armored vehicles; we still couldn’t figure out how he knew that. We then egressed the target area for the tanker air-refueling track about 100 NM to the south. All in all, it had been a very successful day—much more satisfying than others, since we had found and destroyed or damaged tasked targets. We cautiously discussed our information “source,” vaguely speculating about who or what it could be and hoping that it wouldn’t be compromised. We did not learn the real story until later that evening.
That day Col Alan Thompson, 40th EOG commander, and two of our fellow Panthers had been in CAOC’s battle-staff room when our strikes occurred. The battle-staff room resembles a
Through Predator, and possibly other intelligence sources, the CAOC had identified the L-shaped building as a makeshift Serb army command post. Our first attack had seriously damaged the building, but the Predator operators had still seen activity in and around the building, so we were directed to strike it again. During the second strike, the Predator had been in position to allow its operator to witness the impacts and assess the damage. The operator passed the BDA to the CAOC, who in turn immediately passed it to us. The Predator operators had also determined that armored vehicles were stored in the U-shaped barn. So as soon as the CAOC was convinced the command post had been destroyed, we were directed to find and strike that barn. Our pilots at the CAOC watched real-time transmissions from the Predator as Slobee and I attacked the barn. They said the Maverick impacts were devastating but were really surprised to see CBU bomblets exploding on and very near the buildings. We were also confused by what they had seen—we not only had not dropped any CBUs, but we weren’t even carrying CBUs. We finally figured out from the sequence of attacks that they had actually seen our high-explosive incendiary 30 mm cannon rounds exploding on impact. While we were strafing the building, they watched as one whole side of the barn was blown away, exposing many burning hulks.
The evolution of airpower has brought our tactics a long way—from the days of flying bailing-wire and fabric airplanes and hand-dropping 10 lb bombs into enemy trenches to using UAVs to provide air-strike coordination to a pair of fighters. While this concept had been discussed on many occasions, to the best of my knowledge this was the first time that it was actually attempted in combat. On this occasion it was unplanned “pickup CAS,” which probably contributed to its success and made the results seem even more impressive. From that day forward, we tasked our squadron intel to brief when and where Predator would be flying. We were unable to repeat that real- time coordination but still tried to use its information to find fielded forces on future sorties. Unfortunately, information was usually hours old, and it often turned out that the targets had moved or had inaccurate coordinates. None of the Predator’s efforts during the rest of our OAF missions were as successful as that first “trial mission.” With some dedicated work, the concept of using UAVs for target search and talk-ons could become a viable tactic in future conflicts in which AFAC assets are too limited to cover all required areas. Even so, there is no substitute for putting a set of Mk-1 eyeballs on a potential target before unleashing lethal airpower against it.
Fear, Luck, and Divine Intervention
The operation had entered its third week, but having to wake up in the middle of the night had not yet become routine. Today’s operation would be our third in daylight, and everyone was optimistic because yesterday afternoon’s forecast had projected good weather. Weather in the KEZ had frustrated our attempts during the first two days, preventing us from finding any targets. We hoped that today we would finally get to do our job.
At a 6,000-foot elevation in the mountains north of Aviano, we found that our hotel was covered with a wet
