The personal stories in this book are reflective of the challenges, frustrations, and triumphs experienced by dedicated warriors—combatants who exhibited human emotions as they did their best in the crucible of combat. We wrote this book with the humble understanding that our success in OAF was built on the contributions and sacrifices of aviation giants. Those giants—pilots, maintainers, and support personnel—faced greater personal discomfort and family sacrifice during their service in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf than we did during OAF. The heroes that today’s A-10 community holds high include the Raven, Misty, and Nail FACs, as well as the Sandy CSAR warriors of previous wars.
Our objective in this book was to help document the A-10’s contributions to achieving US, NATO, and UN objectives in Kosovo. The primary application of force in the KEZ flowed through the AFAC’s direct control of all NATO’s attack missions, which helped terminate Serb ethnic cleansing and defeat the Serbian Third Army in the field—one of Slobodan Milosevic’s main centers of gravity. In OAF’s charged international environment, combat operations were complicated by many diverse political concerns, which led to our units’ being constrained by numerous and ever-changing operational limitations. In spite of that, skilled and experienced A-10 pilots—with hundreds of hours spent looking at the ground—demonstrated their ability to discern what was actually going on in the hills, trees, and villages of Kosovo. We are convinced that the A-10 made a significant contribution to defeating the Serbs on the ground in Kosovo.
The level of tactical information available to the operational and strategic decision makers reached an all-time high in OAF. This book recounted a few of the countless times the CAOC actively participated in the decision to attack individual targets. On some of those occasions, AFACs found and positively identified groups of moving targets and requested CAOC approval to attack. All too often, by the time the approval came, the targets had found sanctuary in the forests or villages. The increasing use of data links and unmanned air and space reconnaissance vehicles (such as Predator) has made much real-time information available to command-level staffs and has fueled the temptation to direct even individual attacks. One last OAF story follows as an example.
The operator of a Predator on station over Kosovo located a tank and simultaneously transmitted its video image to the CAOC at Vicenza, Italy, and to SHAPE headquarters in Mons, Belgium. Both Lt Gen Mike Short and Gen Wesley Clark were able to watch this tank in real time while personnel in the CAOC attempted to help the AFAC visually acquire the tank by relaying directions through the ABCCC.
General Short’s son, Capt Chris “Junior” Short, was an 81st FS flight commander and the AFAC on duty at that location. The Predator’s optics provided a highly magnified image of the tank, but one with a very narrow field of view—similar to what one would see through a soda straw. Unfortunately, Junior had a very wide field of view from his ROE altitude. The officer in the CAOC had difficulty relating the Predator image to what Junior could see. Junior could not find the tank. General Clark called the CAOC to make sure they understood that he wanted the tank killed. The CAOC called ABCCC to ensure that Junior understood that the CAOC wanted the tank dead. Junior still couldn’t find it. Finally, to put more pressure on Junior, ABCCC transmitted, “[General Short’s call sign] really wants you to find and kill that tank.” Junior replied, “Tell Dad I can’t find the [expletive deleted] tank!”
The ability to prevail and achieve a favorable political outcome in future warfare is critical. In a highly integrated joint and coalition environment, success in asymmetric warfare will likely depend on the ability of flexible and capable offensive airpower to control the ground situation from the air. One of the command and control difficulties in that environment will be the development and application of appropriate ROEs in the rapidly changing tactical, strategic, and political environment. While many of these factors contributed to the complexity of the air campaign over Kosovo, OAF was not the most problematic of possible scenarios. Its complexity would have been greatly exacerbated had friendly troops been mixed with civilians in contact with the Serb Third Army and in need of air support. In future conflicts, these and other considerations could combine with real-time battlefield reconnaissance and lead to an increased desire by higher echelons of command to inappropriately control fluid tactical situations. Our hope is that future air and space leaders will resist that temptation and choose to provide clear, centralized guidance that will enable the tactical war fighters to achieve our political leaders’ objectives through decentralized execution.
Hog folks remain a humble breed of fighter jocks and wrenchturners in a high-tech Air Force where standoff munitions, computer-released weapons, laser- and GPS-guided munitions, advanced medium range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM), drones, and sophisticated electronic warfare are the norm. They don’t mind hearing the thousandth joke about the lack of speed and sophistication of the A-10; they just quietly go out and make a difference in the air and on the ground. We believe that the A-10 Warthog and its highly trained professionals offer the nation a robust ground-attack capability that can rapidly adapt to the challenges, threats, and objectives in a joint and coalition combat environment. We hope that Air Force leaders remain committed to such a capability and support regular and appropriate weapon-system upgrades for this aircraft. The nation needs warriors—like those who fly the A-10—warriors who are able to search the battlefield with the Mk-1 eyeball, locate the aggressor and the victims, go toe-to-toe with the enemy, look him squarely in the eye, and shoot with malice.