Support personnel had to accomplish many tasks while the pilots flew their missions. Being in charge of the comings and goings of more than 900 folks was no easy feat, but the Air Force has a deployable computer system designed for just such a task. Of course, in the 100-plus days we were there, we never received all the parts required to make the system operational. We didn’t have to resort totally to stubby-pencil tracking, but I did have to design a database to meet our needs. Support folks fixed thousands of such problems as this with equal ingenuity.
When I wasn’t trying to track our people, I was getting ready to host our many visitors. One might think Gioia del Colle was too small for most people to find, but we had our share of “very important people.” Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters and Lt Gen Michael Short, joint forces air component commander, were two of the highest ranking US people to visit. Our visitors were not limited to Americans. The British were on the bottom floor of our dorm/office building, an arrangement that prompted Prince Andrew to pay us a visit as well during his tour of RAF operations. He appreciated the chance to see an A-10 up close and to talk to some of our members. Rock star Joan Jett also made a support appearance at Gioia, puting on a wonderful concert for the troops.
As an executive officer, I tried to deal with the minuscule things that go unnoticed to the untrained eye, such as storing mattresses, allocating office space, and playing peacemaker between operations and support personnel when they didn’t understand each other. I also dealt with all the administrative paperwork that goes hand in hand with any organization.
There were big problems to deal with and not-so-big problems. One of the funny inconveniences of our deployment was the lack of a place to wash our clothes. The Italians didn’t have Americanstyle laundromats, and the hotels charged ridiculous fees to wash even a shirt. The extra money the Air Force was paying us to cover expenses like this wasn’t going to hack it. People came up with some humorous solutions to the laundry problem. I heard of some pilots taking showers while wearing their flight suits so they could wash them at the same time. Others discovered the additional floor-mounted sink in their bathroom (known to most European travelers as a bidet) and used that to wash their clothes. Now is that creativity, desperation, or just cheapness? A few people mailed packages of dirty laundry to their wives, who usually returned clean clothes. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of those packages! I am sad to say this little problem was never really solved.
There was definitely an upside to being deployed with this group of professionals. Walking around the area and talking to the airmen about their different jobs was enlightening. I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of the maintainers when their jet came back clean. The pride was evident: they bragged to one another, just as if they had dropped the bombs themselves. They were also concerned if a jet was late returning or if they could see the bombs still hanging as the A-10 came in to land.
After we had been in place a few months, things slowed down just enough to give the senior leadership a chance to hold a few meetings. Lt Col Chris Haave was the 81st commander, referred to as Kimos in most of this book—but support officers typically didn’t call pilots by their call signs. Colonel Haave briefed the troops on how we were doing against the Serbs and what impact the A-10s were making. He showed gun-camera videos that depicted bombs being dropped on targets, and he described a typical mission. Folks were on the edge of their seats. For the most part, these airmen had never been close to combat, and the briefing made it all the more real. Having a lieutenant colonel thank a group of enlisted and support officers, while explaining how they were really contributing to the war effort, made us feel needed and appreciated. It sure made coming to work for 12-plus hours a day more worthwhile.
Chapter 4
ENEMY ACTION
Introduction
Lt Col Chris “Kimos” Haave
The Serbs who were occupying and cleansing Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population were cunning, adaptive, flexible, and intelligent adversaries. We felt no particular animosity for the Serbian people or the unfortunate young soldiers who were perhaps pressed into serving in Kosovo. We did feel a singular animosity towards those we witnessed burning and shelling villages, and for those who tried to shoot us down.
The Serb forces’ actions and reactions to KEZ operations can be likened to a boxer with a rope-a-dope strategy: unable to defeat NATO with brute strength, they used delaying tactics to parry the allied knockout blow on fielded forces while continuing to land punches in their ethnic-cleansing efforts. Another useful analogy is that of a cat-and-mouse game. The AFAC “cats” took off daily trying to anticipate the moves of the Serb “mice.” The Serbs adapted their tactics daily to improve their chances of shooting down an allied aircraft and their own probability of survival, while continuing the ethnic cleansing.
Although it might seem that as AFACs we had all the best cards, we knew the Serbs held a trump card—but a card they could not play unless we first provided the opportunity. If we made a serious tactical error, we could give them a huge strategic or political advantage that might weaken some allies’ resolve. This could happen in several ways. By taking unnecessary risks (even within the ROEs), we could provide the Serbs an A-10 and a POW to parade in front of the media. By failing to find and engage Serb forces, we could prolong the conflict beyond the patience of NATO political authorities. Finally, if we rushed or became frustrated, we could inadvertently kill civilian refugees and destroy the homes and villages of noncombatants. Any or all of these situations could unravel the popular support the campaign enjoyed.
This chapter examines some of the actions Serb forces took to counter allied operations in the KEZ. Those actions included Serb attempts to shoot down NATO aircraft, camouflage and conceal forces, and entice us to make mistakes by misleading our intelligence and interfering with our operations—mistakes that could weaken political and public support for our air campaign.
Attempts to Shoot Down NATO Aircraft
It took a while for the Serb ground-based air defenses to react to being attacked. They didn’t shoot at us until our second day of KEZ operations. The Serb air-defense weapons employed in Kosovo consisted of the full range of low- to medium-altitude radar- and IR-guided SAMs and 20 mm to 57 mm AAA. Our SEAD aircraft and crews (F-16CJ, EA-6B, and Tornado ECR) earned healthy respect from the Serbs only a couple of weeks into the campaign. Although the Serbs had very lethal mobile SAM systems roaming around Kosovo, we rarely detected a radar lock-on or radar-guided-missile launch. SEAD forces (as well as the air-to-air fighters) orbiting in the KEZ everyday made it possible for us to attack with impunity. Even though they rarely had either the need or opportunity to employ ordnance, they fulfilled their mission, and we never crossed the border without them.
On average, Serb antiaircraft missiles and AAA engaged each 40th EOG pilot about six times—several pilots were shot at much more often. Although some missions were very quiet, on others we spent much of our time reacting to and destroying surface-to-air threats rather than searching for hidden armor. Of course, targets designated with a CAOC-assigned priority were always attacked first. One A-10 AFAC point of pride was that, even though we often took aimed fire in daylight, none of the hundreds of strikers whose attacks we controlled were ever hit, and practically none were shot at. It was our job to ensure that incoming strikers had the safest ingress, attack, and egress routes.