For some time now there has been a debate raging in the popular press as well as the halls of the U.S. government and defense establishment about the alleged failure of aerospace forces to destroy many tanks during the war with Serbia. How many were destroyed? Why where initial estimates so high? Despite the fact that initial press reports on the military "cover up" of the air campaign have proved to be unsubstantiated or exaggerated greatly, tanks have become a gauge to those who would render a verdict of military success—or failure—based on the number of smoking hulks. Advocates and opponents of air power are rushing to the battle lines to inflict maximum bureaucratic damage on the opponent regardless of national defense needs.
As one who studied this conflict for more than a year as a member of the official U.S. Air Force-sponsored study team, I wish to offer an opinion—and I want to be clear about it. Serbian tanks were never a threat; they were not participating in ethnic cleansing. Dispersed and hidden to avoid attack from the air, they were so difficult to find as to be a waste of time and effort when compared to other alternatives. The continued public grumbling is a useless exercise. The number of tanks and assorted other Serbian army equipment destroyed essentially was irrelevant to the outcome of the conflict.
So why did we do it? The requirement to attack Serbian ground forces in Kosovo came from a frustration that we did not appear to be doing anything about the ethnic cleansing that Slobodan Milosevic's henchmen were conducting so expertly. Thus, as the symbol of modern ground force might, we decided to "plink" enemy tanks one at a time, as in a shooting gallery. Of course, a major flaw in this approach was that the people who were persecuting the Kosovar Albanians were not riding in tanks. They were in very small units, walking or riding in trucks, and doing their dirty work with nothing more sophisticated than rifles and pistols. They were far harder to target than the tanks-unless the United States and its allies wished to bomb their victims, too. Dispersed and hidden, the tanks posed a threat only to those who happened to stumble over them.
Finding and attacking tanks and armored personnel carriers hidden one-by-one under trees and in the middle of villages is difficult and time consuming. If they massed in response to a ground threat—which in any case did not exist—they obviously would have been far easier to find and destroy. Nonetheless, in the face of air commanders' warnings that it would not be profitable and would expose airmen to unnecessary danger, the NATO command in Brussels directed allied forces to attack the dispersed enemy ground forces. And the persecution in Kosovo continued far longer than it should have as a result.
Air commanders offered an alternate plan that they believed would cause the Serb leader to accept NATO demands far more quickly: early, concentrated attacks on strategic centers of gravity—communications, petroleum and electrical power production, and transportation. This was done only after much wasted time and in a manner that was less than concentrated or coordinated. Although NATO's combined air operations center produced numerous plans aimed at achieving specific effects, the execution of those plans often left much to be desired. Targets received political approval after military nomination through a complex process that included the U.S. President, Secretary of Defense, and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Supreme Allied Commander, and leaders of each NATO nation involved in the campaign.
Targets survived this eight-to-ten day gauntlet on a one-by-one basis and were not approved in accordance with any desired effect on Serbian leaders. Approval was based almost exclusively on the desire to demonstrate NATO's resolve while—above all—minimizing friendly casualties and collateral damage to Serbia itself. This halting demonstration of resolve, combined with intense multinational political activity, slowly convinced Milosevic that the bombing really would not stop. The result was a war that went on much longer than it should have—78 days to subdue a third-rate tyrant.
But this discussion is about tanks, those ponderous relics of bygone wars that some of my aviator friends refer to as "targets." Aerospace doctrine holds that conducting strategic attacks against a regime's vital "innards" is the most productive use of limited and costly resources. It also notes that support for friendly ground forces can be a critical task if those forces are in danger, and discusses the synergy between ground and air forces—as when the presence of friendly ground forces causes the enemy to come out of hiding to meet the threat. If they fear air attack more than the ground threat and stay hidden, they can be overwhelmed by ground assault. However, none of this happened in the war with Serbia. There was no allied ground force and it was pretty ugly strategically, but we won anyway.
The assumption of attrition-based warfare is that friendly armies always are needed in the first place. U.S. planning has assumed traditionally that ground forces would be the core of any military response, with aerospace and naval forces in support. Mainstream military theory predicated "victory" on the destruction of the enemy army and occupation of territory because historically a military establishment had no other choice than getting to the enemy's centers of gravity by fighting through his army.
The past 50 years have brought substantial change to this basic principle of warfare. A central objective of conflict now could be termed "compellance," meaning forcing enemy leaders to alter their behavior and accept our terms. Occupation of enemy territory is rarely considered today. The enemy may have an army, but the United States no longer needs necessarily to subjugate it to achieve its aims. The speed, range, and impressive accuracy of modern aerospace systems enable U.S. force to go straight to the center of an enemy's strength without displacing major populations and ravaging the countryside. The "aerospace-dominant" conflicts of the last decade of the 20th century—the Gulf War and the two conflicts with Serbia—make the point quite well.
The United States may or may not commit ground forces to future conflicts. Notwithstanding the protests of ground force supporters, the tank as a symbol of an army's might should be targeted for aerospace attack only to the degree that it threatens attainment of an objective or the safety of friendly forces. Western populations will be reluctant to accept heavy casualties in combined-arms attrition warfare again. That is why aerospace power will play the central role in future warfare—regardless of the color of the uniforms of those wielding it.
Lieutenant Colonel Myers is a senior fellow at the Eaker Institute for Aerospace Concepts and a former senior defense analyst with Science Applications International Corporation.