[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?