Army War College: Clark/Kosovo Air Campaign

Army War College, Parameters, Spring 2000, pp. 13-29. ^ | May 2000 | TIMOTHY L. THOMAS

[Robert A Cook PE]

Funny.

The national press corpse is promoting Clark based on his "stunningly" successful use of NATO against the infrastructure and innocent civilians in Kosovo/Serbia.

Hillary used the Kosovo campaign to show "she cares" about the downtrodden innocents (artfully using her TV cameras to link the refugee trains to the Nazi extermination trains in WWII as she looked for liberal/Jewish votes in New York.

Bill Clinton artfully used the Kosovo campaign to avoid GOP criticism after impeachment, to link "patriotism" & "our boys are at war" to HIS legacy in the hearts of the average American.

Clark is now using the Kosovo campaign as HIS sole justification for his campaign for the White House.

The Soviet Union is (justifiably!) using the Kosovo campaign against an "innocent" Slavic people to "prove" that NATO was an agressive force that was ALWAYS directly aimed at invading Russia in the Cold War.

(But the only reason NATO was dragged in was because Clinton?Clinton/Albright COULDN'T get the UN to provide diplomatic cover. We had direct control over NATO through the military (Clark) and they (Germany/Belgium/Spain/Italy/Norway/etc.) couldn't argue.)

---

And yet after diligent searching four years later, Clinton/Clark's "safe" high-altitude bombing can't even be proven to have destroyed 13/20/30/300/500 (choose which report you want to believe!) enemy tanks.

The rest (trucks, AA guns, artillary, and storage) all seem to have been fakes...

Even now, the region is only getting 3-4 hours of intermitant electrictiy a day. (Iraq - only months after the war - is far more successful at restoring normal power and water!)

But the press wants Clark/Clinton/Clinton/Albright to be successful. They won't report/publicize "this" information.

[Support Free Republic]

Thank you Freepers!

[Robert A Cook PE]

This is from one of the orignal sources for th einformation tha tClark's "air campaign" was merely a spectacularly expensive failure.

There is even more damning info in the entire Army War College article.

Significantly, this impartial report using international sources was written long before Clark started his press campaign for president!

[RussianConservative]

only 93 tanks and 153 armored personnel carriers were destroyed

And in end it something like 7 tank and 13 carriers.
Whoops.

[RussianConservative]

The article concluded that it was not air power but Russia's withdrawal of support for Serbia that probably brought an end to the air war in Kosovo. The article noted that in future conflicts, the most merciful way to end them may be to conduct them swiftly and violently instead of by the trial-and-error, phased approach used in Kosovo.[

Main part of article is what really ended this. As for ground war in Serbia...Serb would bury a couple NATO division...just ask Wehremacht, it loose 750,000 KIA/WIA/MIA in Serbia in 4 years.

[Robert A Cook PE]

You know, we STILL don't know how many were actually killed (and by which sides!) in the "ethinic cleaning" that was the sole justification for NATO to attack.

We know absolutely that the initial "hundreds of thousands" of refugees (which became "bodies killed" in the media) is/was false ...

Now, they can't even find evidence of any of the smaller murder sites.

There were murders - absolutely. But we don't know how many, where, and by who.

We don't know when the people were murdered, nor where the bodies now lie.

[RussianConservative]

The Soviet Union is (justifiably!) using the Kosovo campaign against an "innocent" Slavic people to "prove" that NATO was an agressive force that was ALWAYS directly aimed at invading Russia in the Cold War.

Ummm, news flash 13 year in coming...Soviet Union DEAD...I repeat Soviet Union DEAD...lets see if we get it right, ok?

[Robert A Cook PE]

Right.

The Soviet Union is (now) dead.

But in 1919-1921 - Germans were reduced to scrambling in garbage piles to find coal scraps to burn.

13 years later, Hitler had re-created large parts of their Army and Air Force despite the treaty, and was rebuilding their arms industry.

16 years later, beginning from nothing and during the depression, he had them strong enough that England could not effectively oppose his occupation of Sudenland, then C-Slovakia, then eventually Poland.

Don't count out the international socialists in Russia.... yet. Reagan stopped them, but they want power back.

[Little Bill]

The whole thing was BS, the Serbs were only trying to defend their country from Albanian outlaws. The toon used this to cover his sorry a##, and the socalists in the EU went along with it.

You don't win wars by bombing from 15,000 feet, as anyone who has been in one can testify. The Russkis are the only ones that didn't come out of this smelling like merde, and that was only by a margin.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[RussianConservative]

Communist party official card holders 500,000 strong, that less then half one percent population. They in frenzy of joy when 18K peoples sign up this year. Also Russia 6th largest economy of G-8 (in front Italy, Canada) and grow faster then other G-8 combined. No "Hitler" come to Russia.

[Gunrunner2]

BDA is always exceptionally difficult to assess. . .especially when you have different people doing the assessment and using different criteria.

Clark was right in only one aspect: The French actively worked against us (leaked ATO).

Clark allowed 16 nations tinker with the ATO, thereby rendering it's synergistic effect non-effective. Strategic air campaign planning is an art and a science, and involves thousands of planners as they assess target lists and identify strategic Centers of Gravity (COG). In addition, when you have something like Kosovo, finding meaningful COGs is hard, but doable. However, Clark allowed 16 different screwdrivers, wielded by 16 different nations, to tinker with the air power engine. Not good.

As far as BDA, there are many ways to measure it.

If a tank is hit and can't move, it is a "M-Kill." M-Kills mean the thing can still shoot, but as a tank, it is no more, nothing but stationary artillery.

If the tank has its turret hit, it is an F-Kill, meaning it can move but not shoot. O

f course, then there is the K-Kill, catastrophic destruction.

So, is an F-Kill a "kill?" Yes and no, depending upon who is doing the asking.

Another factor to consider is the "B-Kill."

A B-Kill is a "Beltway-Kill." What qualifies as a kill inside the Beltway usually makes no sense and is in excess of what a kill actually is. For example, a SAM site is peppered through with shrapnel and the radar and electronics shot to heck, but the structure still stands. For everyone this would be a kill. However, for the Beltway types this is not a kill, as it still "stands." Also if a tank is hit by a, say, Maverick missile, and is a burning hulk, it is a kill for all except for the Beltway types. The Beltway types want the turret off the chassis before they will call it a kill.

You get the idea.

Oh, Clark is an idiot.

Clark asked for a specific number of targets, not a desired effect. This in and of it tells you he knows nothing but attrition warfare and wasted time, money, material and men.

Oh, did I say Clark is an idiot?

He is.

[Robert A Cook PE]

In this case, the BDA investigators could get to each of the target spots directly: they knew what was targettted and where the bomb (should have) landed.

GPS is a many splendored thing .... and the remote targetted weapons had an explicit target for those expensive weapons.

So they could look at just about every hole ...... and only found 13 destroyed tanks. No evidence of tanks being dragged out of the hole and repaired either.

Only 13 tanks can be confirmed killed. That's all. The rest were never there.

See the other Kosovo thread today on more explicit cover-up details.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Here, Newsweek reports the actual damage; but, then again, that was before Clark had to be "presented" by the national media as a "national hero" and "tremendous general" of a "tremendously successful" air campaign.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1001752/posts

[RussianConservative]

What country you sell to?

[yoswif]

Near as I can tell, Clark was in charge of "military strategic planning" for the Joint Chiefs in August 1995 when the Croatian Army, with co-ordinated NATO/US close air support and fighter cover, ethnically cleansed 100,000 Serbs from enclaves in Croatia.

Wall St. investment banks got $22 billion from the Socialist Security Slush Fund as a result of Balkan co-operation (debt relief) with Clark and the Clinton Adminstration in the Kosovo campaign. The same Wall St. investment banks that employed Clark after his retirement from the military. The same Wall St. banks that pump millions into his, Bill, and Hillary's campaigns. Kosovo was a "blood for debt relief" war.

[Pubbie]

This is what happens when people vote Democrat.

[Gunrunner2]

I do not do business over the internet

[Gunrunner2]

Funny how Gulf War I and Gulf War II air campaigns were successful, but yet the Kosovo campaign was not.

Difference?

Clark did not understand strategic air power.

As Dr. Schlesinger, Former US Secretary of Defense, said, “Airpower is no longer ancillary to ground war, it too can destroy enemy ground forces.”

I'd add the caveat that this is true IF employed properly. In Kosovo it wasn't used properly and in a dis-jointed manner---and with a LEAKED ATO. (Leaking the ATO gives the bad guys the info they need to avoid attack.)

Clark is an idiot.

[Robert A Cook PE]

"Funny how Gulf War I and Gulf War II air campaigns were successful, but yet the Kosovo campaign was not.

Rather,

Funny how the media LABELS Clinton/Clinton/Clark's entire Kosovo campaign (initiation, setup, political, logistical, airware, ground (movement & occupation), and (lack of) withdrawal, and restoration) "successful and impressive"

.............

Yet labels W's Gulf War II as "an unsuccessful quamire" only months after its successful offensive.