The Risks Of Air Power

By Mark Thompson/Washington

It seemed for a brief moment like it was going to be such an antiseptic war: invisible fighters and bombers sneaking through Yugoslav defenses and bringing back proud videos of their kills. But on Saturday night, the antiseptic evaporated. Flying into one of the few hornet's nests of surface-to-air missile activity, a U.S. Stealth F-117A fighter ended up near Belgrade at that most dreaded of air-combat locations: the wrong place at the wrong time.

The quick rescue of the pilot gladdened Pentagon hearts, but the downing remained a reminder that air power, despite its omnipotent, high-tech gloss, does have stark limits. Whether it was the sleek $2 billion radar-eluding B-2 Stealth bomber or the hulking, duct-taped $74 million B-52 pulverizing Serbian targets last week, the essential character of air warfare didn't change: air power, old or new, can always punish a foe but can rarely force him to change his mind. And like any kind of combat, it has mortal risks.

The fury of the initial strikes--the Air Force's use of two types of heavy bombers against Milosevic in the first night of attack last week is something that never happened in the Gulf War--was designed to force Milosevic to buckle. He hasn't, and as America is learning, the easy part is over.

During the weekend, Operation Allied Force pivoted from blasting the Serbs' air-defense network to the dirtier--and far more deadly--mission of hunting down and destroying Yugoslav tanks, artillery and other small military assets. Immediately, the odds began to shift against NATO's pilots.

In coming days, they'll be going after more targets, many of them mobile. That will require more planes. Last week most allied planes did their bombing from about 25,000 ft. And much of the opposition was easy to handle: on five occasions, NATO planes downed Yugoslav MiG-29s. "These were modern dogfights, with the planes a couple of miles apart and moving at high speeds," says a U.S. Air Force officer.

This week, however, as they try to ferret out tough-to-hit targets, NATO flyers will go down, says an officer, "as low as they can get." That concerns Pentagon planners because Serbia's air defenses may spring to life at any moment. While NATO officials suggested that the early knockout punches disabled Milosevic's air-defense network, planners are betting that most of it is being held in reserve.

Despite severed communications links, each SA-6 missile battery--known as "the three fingers of death" for its trio of missiles--remains lethal. The missiles can be targeted by sight, which means the electronic emissions that would betray their positions will occur only just before launch. The last U.S. warplane previously downed in combat--Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady's F-16 over Bosnia in 1995--was brought down using the technique.

Even military experts disagree on how dangerous these missions will be. "Plinking his tanks will be a piece of cake," predicts Merrill ("Tony") McPeak, the retired general who ran the Air Force during the Gulf War. "Plinking," perfected during the Gulf War, used the contrast between sun-warmed tanks and cooler desert sand to help pilots target the tanks with infrared equipment. How well that will work in the forested Balkans remains to be seen. But retired Navy Admiral Leighton Smith--who ordered NATO's first-ever bombing raid, against Bosnian Serb targets in 1994--thinks the tactic may be deadly for pilots: "It would be absolutely stupid."

Here's why. Guided munitions, while more accurate, require pilots to fly in straight and predictable patterns before releasing them. That makes pilots more vulnerable to enemy fire. And SAMs may not be the most dangerous threat: Baghdad downed four times as many planes with antiaircraft guns and portable missiles as with radar-guided missiles. The Serbs have close to 2,000 of the smaller weapons.

The most recent U.S. air war was over Bosnia in 1995. It helped drive Milosevic to Dayton, Ohio, where he signed a peace accord. An Air Force study concluded that the key lessons were to hit hard and use precision weapons. "Precision weapons gave NATO airmen the ability to execute a major air campaign that was quick, potent and unlikely to kill people or destroy property to an extent that would cause world opinion to rise against the operation," the study concluded.

But that air campaign was reinforced by a strong ground offensive launched against the Serbs by the Croatians. It was the combination that forced Milosevic to capitulate. The Gulf War taught the same lesson. "It took ground forces to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait," says Army Secretary Louis Caldera. "There are limits to what one can do with bombing and cruise missiles." But Bill Clinton has pledged that the U.S. military will be restricted to just those weapons this time. If the Army Secretary knows that grunts on the ground are needed to force the Serbs to stop killing Kosovars, it's a safe bet Milosevic knows it too.

--With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON