In a widely noted operations management “first,” the use of video teleconferencing communications was pioneered in Allied Force, with VTC sessions taking place daily at the most senior level because of the wide geographic spread of the key players. Sometimes as many as three or four VTCs were conducted in one day among the most senior principals. Admiral Ellis later characterized them as a powerful tool if properly used, owing to their ability to shorten decision cycle times dramatically, to communicate a commander’s intent clearly and unambiguously, and to obviate any requirement for the leading commanders to be collocated. But he cited the propensity of VTCs to be voracious consumers of leadership and staff working hours (often involving time wasted composing flashy but unnecessary—and even at times counterproductive—briefing graphics) and poor substitutes for rigorous mission planning and written orders. Decisions made in the VTC were all too readily prone to misinterpretation as key guidance was successively handed down to lower staff levels.[93]
Indeed, in contrast to Desert Storm, the ad hoc nature of the initial planning, the absence of collocation of senior commanders, the highly distributed nature of the bombing effort, the compartmented and often overclassified planning, and an overreliance on email, VTCs, and other undocumented communication resulted in a notable lack of integration of many of the key staff elements in Allied Force. Typically the only time General Clark was able to speak to his subordinate commanders was via the daily VTC, a limitation that one observer said “made it extremely difficult for the senior leaders to develop a useful working relationship where they possessed the necessary trust and confidence to issue and execute ‘mission-type’ orders without the need to provide detailed tactical guidance.”[94] Clark’s VTC guidance was never written down or distributed in any systematic way. In the absence of such formal documentation, most cell chiefs did their best to debrief their staffs. Yet the time-pressures of combat frequently made doing that nigh impossible, with the result that “rumor guidance” tended to predominate throughout the course of Allied Force.[95]
After the war ended, criticism of the VTC approach by many senior officers was quite vocal. In a characteristic observation, the UK Ministry of Defense’s director of operations in Allied Force, RAF Air Marshal Sir John Day, remarked that for all its admitted efficiencies when its use was properly disciplined, the VTC mechanism was highly conducive to “adhocracy” of all sorts, sometimes resulting in a lack of clarity regarding important matters of both planning and execution. For example, he observed that because of the federated nature of the operation’s planning and the extensive use of VTCs involving a large number of U.S. and NATO headquarters, many agencies had full knowledge of the planning details. That generated initial confusion among the UK participants as to who precisely was running the air war, since, until it was confirmed (as suspected) that it was indeed General Short, they could obtain the same information from any headquarters that was involved in the VTC. Consistent with others who reflected on the many negatives of VTCs with the benefit of hindsight, Air Marshal Day suggested that participation in highlevel VTCs should henceforth be limited exclusively to those directly in the chain of command and that the commander in chief should devote careful thought beforehand to the following: (1) the appropriate participants and viewers; (2) a prior agenda, so that essential participants would not hesitate to raise an item out of fear that an item might already be on the CINC’s checklist; (3) diligent minutetaking; and (4) a summary of command decisions taken, so that the commander’s intent would always be unambiguous.[96]
Chapter Eight
NATO’S AIR WAR IN PERSPECTIVE
Operation Allied Force was the most intense and sustained military operation to have been conducted in Europe since the end of World War II. It represented the first extended use of military force by NATO, as well as the first major combat operation conducted for humanitarian objectives against a state committing atrocities within its own borders. It was the longest U.S. combat operation to have taken place since the war in Vietnam, which ended in 1975. At a price tag of more than $3 billion all told, it was also a notably expensive one.[1] Yet in part precisely because of that investment, it turned out to have been an unprecedented exercise in the discriminate use of force on a large scale. Although there were some unfortunate and highly publicized cases in which innocent civilians were tragically killed, Secretary of Defense William Cohen was on point when he characterized Allied Force afterward as “the most precise application of air power in history.”[2] In all, out of some 28,000 high-explosive munitions expended altogether over the air war’s 78-day course, no more than 500 noncombatants in Serbia and Kosovo died as a direct result of errant air attacks, a new low in American wartime experience when compared to both Vietnam and Desert Storm.[3]
After Allied Force ended, air power’s detractors lost no time in seeking to deprecate NATO’s achievement. In a representative case in point, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Odom charged that “this war didn’t do anything to vindicate air power. It didn’t stop the ethnic cleansing, and it didn’t remove Milosevic”—as though those were ever the expected goals of NATO’s air power employment to begin with.[4] Yet because of the air war’s ultimate success in forcing Milosevic to yield to NATO’s demands, the predominant tendency among most outside observers was to characterize it as a watershed achievement for air power. One account called Operation Allied Force “one of history’s most impressive air campaigns.”[5] Another suggested that if the cease-fire held, the United States and its allies would have accomplished “what some military experts had predicted was impossible: a victory achieved with air power alone.”[6] A Wall Street Journal article declared that Milosevic’s capitulation had marked “one of the biggest victories ever for air power,” finally vindicating the long-proclaimed belief of airmen that “air power alone can win some kind of victory.”[7] And the New York Times called the operation’s outcome “a success and more—a refutation of the common wisdom that air power alone could never make a despot back down.”[8] These and similar views were aired by many of the same American newspapers that, for the preceding 11 weeks, had doubted whether NATO’s strategy would ever succeed without an accompanying ground invasion.
Similarly, defense analyst Andrew Krepinevich, a frequent critic of claims made by air power proponents, conceded that “almost alone, American air power broke the back of the Yugoslav military and forced Slobodan Milosevic to yield to NATO’s demands. What air power accomplished in Operation Allied Force would have been inconceivable to most military experts 15 years ago.” Krepinevich further acknowledged that unlike earlier times when air power was considered by other services to be merely a support element for land and maritime operations, that was no longer the case today, since air power had clearly demonstrated its ability in Allied Force to “move beyond the supporting role to become an equal (and sometimes dominant) partner with the land and maritime forces.”[9]
93
Briefing by Admiral James O. Ellis, USN, commander in chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, and commander, Allied Forces Southern Europe and Joint Task Force Noble Anvil, “The View from the Top,” 1999.
69
Interview with Air Marshal Sir John Day, RAF Innsworth, United Kingdom, July 26, 2000. Rather more bluntly, retired USAF General Chuck Horner, the JFACC during Desert Storm, commented that had he been SACEUR during Allied Force, he would have shot every TV monitor in sight. The biggest problem with VTCs, Horner said, is that one does not know who is present and listening, even as a videotaped record of the proceeding is being made. That, he added, inclines participants to pull their punches and speak “for the record,” rather than to speak their mind in a manner that only privacy can ensure. Conversation with General Horner at Farnborough, United Kingdom, July 27, 2000.
1
Lisa Hoffman, “U.S. Taxpayers Faced with Mounting Kosovo War Costs,”
2
Bradley Graham, “Air Power ‘Effective, Successful,’ Cohen Says,”
3
That was the final assessment of an unofficial post–Allied Force bomb damage survey conducted in Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro by a team of inspectors representing Human Rights Watch. A U.S. Air Force analyst who was later briefed on the study commented that Human Rights Watch had “the best on-the-ground data of anyone in the West.” “A New Bomb Damage Report,”
4
Mark Thompson, “Warfighting 101,”
5
William Drozdiak and Anne Swardson, “Military, Diplomatic Offensives Bring About Accord,”
6
Paul Richter, “Air-Only Campaign Offers a False Sense of Security, Some Say,”
7
Thomas E. Ricks and Anne Marie Squeo, “Kosovo Campaign Showcased the Effectiveness of Air Power,”
8
Serge Schmemann, “Now, Onward to the Next Kosovo. If There Is One,”