Posted on 11/20/2002 9:33:16 AM PST by Destro
The Globe and Mail
POSTED AT 10:41 AM EST Wednesday, November 20
NATO attack on Yugoslavia gave Iraq good lessons
Associated Press
Belgrade As the U.S. administration considers going to war with Iraq, concerns are emerging that Baghdad has been studying the low-tech countermeasures that Yugoslavia used to foil U.S. airstrikes against its military in 1999.
"That's a matter of serious and legitimate concern," said retired General Wesley Clark, who, as NATO commander, led the 78-day bombing campaign aimed at expelling Yugoslav forces from the mainly ethnic Albanian region of Kosovo, where they were engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
NATO prevailed by destroying infrastructure and government buildings in Yugoslavia but it did little real damage to the Yugoslav military in Kosovo.
Before he was ousted in October, 2000, president Slobodan Milosevic co-operated closely with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime. Yugoslav advisers helped revamp Baghdad's air-defence system, and officers of Iraq's Air Defence Command toured Yugoslav bases to study the Kosovo war.
"The war (in Kosovo) proved that a competent opponent can improvise ways to overcome superior weaponry, because every technology has weaknesses that can be identified and exploited," said Cedomir Janjic, an air force historian.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade confirmed that a group of U.S. military experts was in Yugoslavia to determine what benefits Mr. Hussein's military had derived from its co-operation with the Milosevic regime.
Gen. Clark identified several ways in which Yugoslav experience could prove valuable to the Iraqis.
The most significant, he said, was the ability of Yugoslavia's air defences to foil NATO electronics by using different radar frequencies and profiles, and by using "passive tracking" systems that do not give off radiation.
Despite NATO's air supremacy, it never succeeded in knocking out the air defences. They remained a potent threat throughout the conflict, forcing attacking warplanes to altitudes above 15,000 feet, where they were safe from surface-to-air missiles but far less effective in a ground-attack role.
"We were always aware we were being tracked and monitored by them," Gen. Clark said.
NATO won the war in June, 1999, following Mr. Milosevic's decision to withdraw his largely intact army from Kosovo, and after the extensive destruction of bridges, government buildings and other infrastructure targets throughout Yugoslavia.
In contrast, the effects of heavy bombing on the Yugoslav forces in Kosovo were minimal. British ordnance experts who inspected the battlefields after the war determined that only 14 tanks and a handful of armoured vehicles were destroyed in nearly three months of bombing.
The Yugoslavs had dispersed their heavily camouflaged units, thus conserving their assets for the expected alliance ground assault, and used decoys and other mock targets to deceive the attackers.
Iraq was quick to pursue insight from that conflict.
Teams of Iraqi intelligence officers rushed to Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the war to visit command centres and air-defence sites. Many toured Belgrade's Aviation Museum, inspecting destroyed drones, cruise missiles and the remnants of U.S. F-16 Falcon and F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters.
"Although they wore civilian suits, it was obvious they were Iraqi military," curator Drasko Kostic said.
Meanwhile, Yugoslav technicians were reportedly upgrading Iraq's fibre-optics communications network, allowing commanders real-time control of all units. They modified launchers of SA-6 surface-to-air missiles with optical tracking equipment to allow them to hit targets without using ground guidance radars, and added fuel cells to SA-3 missiles to extend their range to reach high-flying U-2 spy planes.
Over Iraq, U.S. and British pilots enforcing no-fly zones soon noticed a new aggressiveness in the air defences, which began challenging them on a daily basis. Although numerous command bunkers and missile batteries were hit in retaliatory strikes, the Iraqis also managed some successes by downing reconnaissance drones and damaging a U-2.
Gen. Clark said that Yugoslav advisers had enabled the Iraqis to reduce the "effects of weaponry" and passed on "what works and what doesn't in the art of camouflage."
He noted that the Yugoslavs had demonstrated great skill at hiding their armour, guns and infantry in towns and villages.
"That will certainly be of great interest to the Iraqis," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised to find Iraqi forces in mosques, schools and homes."
The White House is said to have settled on a war plan calling for massive air strikes on air defences and key military facilities. But this could quickly unravel if Mr. Hussein's commanders like Mr. Milosevic's shield their forces from the strikes and engage the invaders in a long and bloody ground war in cities.
Analysts say the parallels with Kosovo are far more relevant to a possible conflict than the much-touted victory against the Taliban, arguably the most primitive army in the world.
"We realize that a conflict with Iraq will not be like ... Afghanistan," said retired Rear Admiral Stephen Baker of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "Our tactics should be driven by what we learned in Kosovo."
Yugoslav tactics that worked
An overview of tactics employed by the Yugoslav army to limit the effectiveness of the NATO air strikes:
*Yugoslav air defences tracked U.S. stealth aircraft by using old Russian radars operating on long wavelengths. This, combined with the loss of stealth characteristics when the jets got wet or opened their bomb bays, made them shine on radar screens.
*Radars confused precision-guided HARM and ALARM missiles by reflecting their electromagnetic beams off heavy farm machinery, such as plows or old tractors placed around the sites. This cluttered the U.S. missiles' guidance systems, which were unable to pinpoint the emitters.
*Scout helicopters would land on flatbed trucks and rev their engines before being towed to camouflaged sites several hundred metres away. Heat-seeking missiles from NATO jets would then locate and go after the residual heat on the trucks.
*Yugoslav troops used cheap heat-emitting decoys such as small gas furnaces to simulate nonexistent positions on Kosovo mountainsides. B-52 bombers, employing advanced infrared sensors, repeatedly blasted the empty hills. The army drew up plans for covert placement of heat and microwave emitters on territory that NATO troops were expected to occupy in a ground war. This was intended to trick the B-52s into carpet-bombing their own forces. Dozens of dummy objectives, including fake bridges and airfields were constructed. Many of the decoy planes were so good that NATO claimed that the Yugoslav air force had been decimated. After the war, it turned out most of its planes had survived unscathed. Fake tanks were built using plastic sheeting, old tires, and logs. To mimic heat emissions, cans were filled with sand and fuel and set alight. Hundreds of these makeshift decoys were bombed, leading to wildly inflated destruction claims.
*Bridges and other strategic targets were defended from missiles with laser-guidance systems by bonfires made of old tires and wet hay, which emit dense smoke filled with laser-reflecting particles.
*U.S. bombs equipped with GPS guidance proved vulnerable to old electronic jammers that blocked their links with satellites.
*Despite NATO's total air supremacy, Yugoslav jets flew combat missions over Kosovo at extremely low altitudes, using terrain to remain undetected by AWACS flying radars.
*Weapons that performed well in Afghanistan Predator drones, Apache attack choppers and C-130 Hercules gunships proved ineffective in Kosovo. Drones were easy targets for 1940s-era Hispano-Suisa anti-aircraft cannons, and C-130s and Apaches were considered too vulnerable to be deployed.
Another significant difference is that airpower is always less effective against dug-in forces, regardless of camoflage. The Iraqis will presumably have to maneuver their forces to counter a US ground attack, and this will expose their forces to the destructive effects of airpower (ie. Khafji & "the Highway of Death"). It's called combined arms.
Clinton stained more than a dress in the Oval Office.
This is good. The Serbs and their big brother Russians will soon be called upon to put the Albanians back on the reservation, while NATO politely looks the other way.
There is also a good deal of controversy simmering on how well we did in Desert Storm. Apparently Iraqi casualties, although locally severe in many places, weren't all that great. Some saying 50-60,thousand MAX! That's opposed to the half a million or so we thought we killed.
Anyone have a well-founded thought on this?
There were no US or NATO deaths due to combat. During the early part of the campaign the northern areas, and particularly around Belgrade, were US only targets. No non-US bombers dropped ordnance onto targets in this area during this period. It was US planners solely who controlled these missions and who organised their ingress and egress routes. The only non-US pilot flying bombing missions during this period in this US only operation zone was RAF Squadron Leader Alastair Monkman. Monkman was on exchange with the USAF flying F-117s.
Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton Accord and Vienna Document at the end of 1999. They revealed the losses that they suffered during Allied Force as a confidence building measure between the signatories. During the implementation meeting held during September 1999 the Yugoslavs exchanged the information in compliance with agreed limits. Although submitted in confidence the figures revealed leaked like a sieve.
The Yugoslavs declared that 136 Armoured Combat Vehicles had been lost along with 18 Battle Tanks. Insignificant really when you consider that some 850 ACVs were in the inventory holdings revealed in January 1999 before the conflict. The significant losses were to the Yugoslav Air Force. Yugoslavia was limited to 155 combat aircraft and revealed that it had lost 50 of those. Of those 11 out of 16 MiG-29s were lost leaving, post conflict, 4 Fulcrum A and one Fulcrum B in the 127th Fighter Squadron. Six of those were lost flying combat missions, four destroyed in NATO bombing attacks on the ground, and one lost due to pilot error while repositioning. Due to the M-18 (MiG-29 decoys) it had been thought that 14 were destroyed out of the 16. The largest losses were suffered by the MiG-21 fleet on the ground which was kept out of combat with NATO forces by the JRV i PVO. Yugoslavia also declared 11 helicopters destroyed bringing the total to 61. Other miscellaneous transport and training types brings this '61' figure up to between 70-80 aircraft destroyed. The embargoed Iraqi MiG-21 and MiG-23 were not included in the tally of aircraft destroyed.
The heavy losses suffered by the JRV i PVO were revealed in two interviews given in 2001:
Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic:
The lone exception, he said, was the Yugoslav air force, which suffered considerable losses.
Col. Radovan Rakovic (250th Rocket Brigade)
The Yugoslav air force, he said, lost about 30 percent of its combat equipment and 40 percent of its combat systems.
The MEAT assesment even found 37 decoys which had been repeatedly attacked but never damaged.
I think I'll trust the US military assesment before anything
So9
I can also provide an exact list of army losses but that will take a while, but I do know that NATO's claims of hundreds of MBT's and APC's is false.
If you're trying to convince anyone that NATO's bombing was successful from a military point of view, you might as well save yourself the effort and give up. NATO bombed a small weak country for 3 months at a cost of billions of dollars and tens of thousand of sorites, and inflicted relatively few losses to the Yugoslav Army, with the exception of the integrated air defence network.
Even if the airforce had lost 70-80 planes as you seem to want everyone to believe, it would still be pathetic on NATO's part. Considering the difference between Yugoslavia and the world's most powerful military alliance, the fact that Yugoslavia still has an airforce proves NATO's incompetence. Also don't forget that NATO never managed to fully destroy Yugoslavia's air defences, and due to that they were forced to remain above a certain height for the entire duration of the bombing, and the Apache helicopters could never be used.
By the way, 155 is the maximum number of combat aircraft Yugoslavia is permitted to have under the Florence agreement. They do not necessarily have that much.
I had the signal that I was locked on by an enemy missile. A fireball pushed the plane and the aircraft shook. The cockpit glazing cracked and fogged. I didn't feel any changes in engine performance and I was thinking how to save the plane. I pointed the plane to my home airfield at low speed, around Mach 0.5. All would have been different if the cracked glazing failed, I would have to had to eject and sacrifice the MiG.
Subsequently USAF F-16CJ, serial 90-0830, had its MiG-29 kill removed while stationed in Italy.
Major Illic's combat damaged aircraft, serial 18104, was later stripped and pushed out as a decoy and subsequently destroyed on the 11th May 1999 in a cluster munition strike. The cockpit imagery of this was released on the 19th May and can still be found at The Federation of American Scienctists website and NATO website.
Of the other MiG-29s destroyed on the ground the following was revealed by Nixon. MiG-29UB 'Fulcrum B' serial 18302 was damaged at Batajnica and later pushed out as a decoy. The following MiG-29B 'Fulcrum A' serials were destroyed on the ground: 18103, 18104, 18107.
A further MiG-29B, serial 18110, crashed due to pilot error on the 26th March 1999. Major Slobodan Tesanovic admitted full responsibility for stalling his aircraft while on approach to Ponikve. Tesanovic made a successful ejection from 18110.
The MiG-29 survivors were single-seaters 18101,18102, 18105 and 18108. The sole two-seat trainer is 18301
The 50 is the number of combat aircraft destroyed that the Yugoslavs revealed to the signatories of Dayton Article. In January 1999 Yugoslavia revealed that they had 152 combat aircraft in units. On rejoining they declared in October 1999 under Article IV that they now had 102 in units. The largest losses by type was suffered by the MiG-21 Fishbed/Mongol fleet on the ground. This is the reason why the 83rd Fighter Wing (2 Squadrons) , which was based at Slatina, no longer exists. Out of this wing only 11 MiG-21s survived in the bunker and were flown out under the Technical Agreement with NATO. A total of 24 MiG-21s were destroyed during the bombing campaign. A substantial number of G-2 Galeb and G-4 Super Galeb were destroyed at Podgorica, Montenegro. The officer in command was relieved of his duties due to the fact that so many aircraft were destroyed due to a blast door having not been properly secured. Aviation journalists Aleksandar Radic and Vladimir Jovanovic also revealed the destruction of 50 combat aircraft during the campaign. This 50 does not include the other non-combat types that were destroyed or damaged and subsequently written off from the inventory. Yugoslav General Pavkovic (Chief of VJ General Staff) was not mincing his words when he revealed in interview during 2001 that the Air Force had suffered considerable losses.
Pavkovic believes the Yugoslav military was successful overall because it suffered relatively few casualties and managed to hold on to many of its weapons systems. The lone exception, he said, was the Yugoslav air force, which suffered considerable losses.
RV i PVO Col Rakovic also revealed during 2001:
All our airports on the ground suffered great damage, Rakovic said The Yugoslav air force, he said, lost about 30 percent of its combat equipment and 40 percent of its combat systems.
Although 155 was the combat aircraft limits Yugoslavia was allowed to maintain in excess of this number, but had to declare them. These were in such units as Research and Development units. In January 1999 Yugoslavia declared 171 combat aircraft total, but within combat units 152.
Dragan Kostadinov served in the 243 Mechanised Brigade post conflict and compiled a website. In it he details the losses suffered by the RV i PVO and the current OrBat.
http://solair.eunet.yu/~kost/aggression.htm
http://solair.eunet.yu/~kost/orbat.htm
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