Afghanistan - are we repeating the mistakes of Kosovo?

[Jackonicko]

I read a fascinating and thought-prooking article about the air war in Kosovo.

Entitled 'Douhet Is Not Enough', it was by one Wg Cdr Edward Stringer, who may or may not be one of the infamous Jaguar-flying Stringer brothers.

The intro begins:
"This paper was written by a student attending the Canadian Forces College in fulfillment of one of the communication skills requirements of the Course of Studies. The paper is a scholastic document, and thus contains facts and opinions which the author alone considered appropriate and correct for the subject. It does not necessarily reflect the policy or the opinion of any agency, including the Government of Canada and the Canadian Department of National Defence. .....

"The germ of an idea from which this essay sprang was that Allied air forces in Kosovo in 1999 could not achieve militarily what their ancestors had in Normandy in 1944. That is, the domination of the battlespace to the extent that enemy ground movement was virtually stalled. After much research this simple comparative idea mushroomed into a critique of current NATO air power employment. The essay examines the evolution of current USAF doctrine, which drives NATO doctrine, and concludes that it now over-concentrates on the strategic level of war. Procurement has followed doctrine, and Western air forces are now configured such that they are predisposed to fight strategic bombing campaigns. Unfortunately, strategic bombing is not usually effective when used in isolation. Nor is it always politically possible to wage an intense strategic campaign in a limited conflict short of general war. Western air forces should re-examine their doctrine to ensure that it allows them more options than strategic bombing."

It's at:
http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/papers/csc26/htmlcsc26/stringer.html

If Kosovo's mistakes were that it was conducted at too slow a pace (giving too long for opposition and doubts to build and grow, and exacerbating refugee/relief problems), and that it ignored tactical targets (allowing the enemy to carry on their military operations), and that there was insufficient linkage between targets and objectives, are we not repeating those same mistakes in the current operation.

Two days ago, on what must have been the eighth day of the air war, I saw LANTIRN footage taken that day of the USN finally getting around to destroying Su-17s on the ground. Shouldn't these have 'gone up in smoke' on Day 1 or Day 2?

A Radio 4 journalist out there yesterday opined that the Air War so far has 'achieved virtually nothing' and hinting that the operation may be politically driven - conducted over a deliberately extended period to give the impression of doing something.

Why not commit larger forces to this campaign, and get this phase over more quickly, before coalition support crumbles? Could it be that by committing larger forces future defence cuts would be harder to justify? Two carriers? Ten B-52s? It's hardly Desert Storm, is it?

Am I alone in feeling slightly uncomfortable about this?

[Low and Slow]

A couple of Points:

1. The US got this effort together in less than three weeks with virtually no targeting Intelligence on the ground.
2. Desert Strom, Bosnia and Kosovo had months of planning and tons of targeting Intelligence.
3. There are over 300 airframes in various states of repair, lying around on Airfields in Afghanistan.

[pana]

About article:conclusion almost good , political and historical premises wrong and not neccessary for this kind of article. He didn't have to justify that war, he was supposed to explain mistakes and give conclusions. Jamie Shea, CNN, Solana etc. already did it (or it was pangs of conscience).
Quite good manipulation with facts, all in all 8 of 10.
He will work himself to general. Russians would say: aparatchik. :rolleyes:

[Reichman]

Dear Jackonicko

I've read many of your previous posts and thought, on the whole, that you gave quite a well balanced tone to most of them. However, with this one you seem to be jumping on the "Why don't they do this/It's blatantly obvious to all of us" bandwagon.

How do you know when the footage of the SU17s being destroyed was taken?

What does some jumped up Radio 4 reporter know about the Air War? And do WE really care that HE thinks we have "achieved virtually nothing"?

"Why not commit larger forces to this campaign?" Brave words from a man sat in the comfort of his own safe study.

You are beginning to sound like that whining ar$e Jeremy Bowen, who almost looked triumphant standing next to a bombed out bunker in the Gulf war, telling the whole world that, in HIS opinion, there were only innocent civilians killed in that raid.

Be a good journo Jacko. Observe, report, and, when it's all over, then stick the knife in/pat us on the back.

Rant off.

Love, Reichman

[Jackonicko]

Low&Slow,

All good points. But if (and I stress, 'if') the current pace of ops is too slow, and if dragging on is a bad idea for all the reasons alluded to above, then what was the rush. Why didn't we wait until we could do something more effective at a greater scale and faster pace. That might even have given more time to get shaky members of the coalition more firmly on board?

Roll roll,

I'd be amazed if a Montenegran Super Galeb pilot agreed with a NATO Wing Commander's analysis of the historical and political background in the former Yugoslavia, but how refreshing and welcome that you should contribute to this debate! I just wish you'd been more specific in detailing which facts you felt had been 'manipulated'.

Reichman,

On this occasion, at least, I don't pretend to know the answers. I just read the piece and thought "By golly, this all seems familiar".


That's why I began with a question:

If Kosovo's mistakes were.... are we not repeating those same mistakes in the current operation?

A question.

With regard to the footage of the 'Fitters', I'm guilty of believing what the Pentagon described it as, and believing my sources - some of whom are actually in theatre, and even on the boats involved. And even then, the comment was a genuine question. People have carped on about there having been insufficient targets to go after, so surely it's legitimate to ask "Shouldn't these have 'gone up in smoke' on Day 1 or Day 2?" But if I thought the answer were blatantly obvious I wouldn't ask the question. Personally I've wondered whether a shortage of recce assets may have driven the pace of ops (why else would they need the PR9s?), and wondered what other explanations there might be.

With regard to the Radio 4 journalist, he's a specialist defence chap, with a good reputation, and I made it clear that this was merely a bit of anecdotal evidence - stressing that it was 'opinion'.

And I think that it's both valid and interesting to question whether a shorter duration application of greater force might have been better, in terms of keeping a fairly fragile coalition together, and even in keeping our own domestic public opinion on-side. Pictures of starving Afghan babies and Israeli and Palestinian atrocity and counter atrocity are beginning to threaten things now, and I think it's valid to ask whether the modest sortie total so far could (and even should?) have been achieved very much more quickly by using a larger force?

I'm disappointed that you should choose to talk about 'Brave words from a man sat in the comfort of his own safe study'. Anyone who is not actually out there doing it is inevitably open to that kind of cheap jibe. And again, I was asking a question (Why not larger forces...) rather than pressing for a bigger effort. And that question is surely legitimate, if only because the politician's language before the op began suggested that this was going to be a massive, rather uncomfortable, enduring crusade against terrorism. Naively, perhaps, many of us took this to indicate that a much larger military effort would be launched.

And I'm not being in any way triumphant, and unlike "that whining ar$e Jeremy Bowen", I haven't actually formed a definitive opinion yet, because I don't yet feel that I've had sufficient input to work on.

You urge me to "Be a good journo..." and to "Observe, report, and, when it's all over, then stick the knife in/pat us on the back."

A good journo reports news as it happens. I generally don't (not a Daily hack), and won't be doing on this occasion. But I will be asking questions and doing my research now, in the confident expectation of kicking the usual @rses, and patting the usual backs, when it is all over.

And the @rses are, I suspect going to be the politicos' and the less vertebrate senior officers, and the backs will be those brave souls who actually have to go out there and do the job (and those who support them), however well conceived it may or may not have been.

[K52]

The "unscrupulous" Jackonincko

I DO NOT agree with you 100% but I do agree that there should be a debate.

At the moment there is a danger of this being seen as a US/UK conflict supported by the "Anglo Saxon" Dominions.

UN support must be forthcoming or we face the possibility of inter demoninatoinal fratricide.

I HOPE I AM WRONG!!!

[Reichman]

Jacko,

Good replies. As I said earlier your posts are, in the main, well balanced.

Whether the Radio 4 reporter is "a specialist defence chap" or not is irrelevant. There are many people who will take the opinion of a "specialist" to be fact. Reporting what happens as it happens should never be discouraged; however, adding opinion, speculation or anecdotal evidence just lessens the reporter's, and the report's credibility.

Obviously, we all have our opinions as to how the war should be fought/won (being able to get the proper kit from stores would help - I'm a dreamer), but you are probably far more influential with your opinions as you have a wider audience than our crewroom banter.

[Jackonicko]

Simply reporting facts would be very dull and very boring for journo and reader alike, and, I think, would result in us all being rather less well informed.

We don't, for example, want to know only that Railtrack is going down the tubes - we want to know why, and if an informed, fairly expert journo can give us his opinion on why this is happening (perhaps indirectly reporting a synthesis of expert opinions he's been exposed to) then our understanding is likely to be higher. This is especially important if the Railtrack movers and shakers and Government MInisters were to refuse to put across their sides of the argument.

The only caveat is that the good journo should make it abundantly clear what is fact and what is opinion, and, if the latter, should also aim to give balance (reporting the substantive arguments within the debate) and preferably give some indication of the reasoning and justification behind his opinion.

With regard to the effectiveness of bombing, how likely is it that a strategic campaign - focused against traditional C3I targets - will have much effect on what is a regime based upon what was until recently a lose band of guerrillas. One cannot help but wonder whether they rely very heavily on a formalised structure, and whether destruction of the 'MoD building', or the Secret Police HQ or whatever has much meaning, even if you can positively identify such buildings in the wreckage of Kabul. Unfortunately none of us know or understand how much reliance there is on the targets which we are attacking, so it's a question that can only hang in the air. Again, I'm not criticising, I'm thinking aloud and questioning.

The Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue (Secret Police) lads seem to meet where convenient before jumping in their Land Cruisers to go and intimidate and frighten anyone they find who's practising Islam differently from them.

There may be a central command, with Mullah Omar and his Ministers, but one can't imagine that the Taliban fighters on the frontline would be unduly worried by their loss. They all know what they are fighting for and would doubtless continue to do so, while finding replacements for Omar and his inner circle would not be difficult. The prospects of a decapitation campaign producing some kind of moderate Taliban leadership which would then hand over BL seems to be pie-in-the-sky, and ignores the high degree of control that BL (with his private army) has over his own destiny, and how little control is exercised over him by the Taliban.

I just wonder whether a highly selective 'Kosovo' type air campaign is going to materially affect what the Taliban and Al Q do on the ground - especially while we're constrained by not wanting to do anything that might help the Northern Alliance in their puiish on Kabul. WHICH MAY BE THE RIGHT AND WISE DECISION, I'M NOT EXPRESSING AN OPINION, HERE!

[Samuel]

Jacko, as you know I'm not in the UK; would you care to tell me any publications for which you write? I presume also that you don't write under the same name?

[fobotcso]

Jacko, I'm prompted to contribute because at last we agree about something; Jeremy Bowen is the pits. (But try John Simpson's latest book, A Mad World, My Masters. He actually met OBL who was upset because he couldn't kill him.)

But the two campaigns can't be compared because the objectives are entirely different. The Kosovo objectives were:
http://www.kosovo.mod.uk/account/objectives.htm

Quite specifically aimed at one man - Milosevic.

The War Against Terrorism has got to be done at a quite different pace because this is only the beginning of a very long war - not against a Nation but against the organisations that it and other Nations harbour. That the winter will make the task harder and costlier in humanitarian terms is tragic but there is no alternative. Blair's answer in the HOC on today's TV was brilliant. But it's easy to be brilliant when there is only one option and all but a very few agree with you.

I, also, believe that there should be wider involvment and don't know why NATO hasn't been called on yet. Maybe it's because the theatre is not target rich, as has been said, so there is probably no need yet for more Air Power. But there could be more for the battlefield support people to do once the surface campaign starts.

And, as I write the Canucks are on their way and even Japan is looking to re-mobilise to join the struggle.

Success in this war won't be signalled by the signing of a surrender document nor by the arrest of one man. We won't know it's been won until we realise gradually that we can go back to a life with freedom of movement without fear.

Now this isn't the stuff of neatly wrapped Staff Papers or magazine articles. And there has never been a war like this before so there are certain to be mistakes. But we won't know what they were until much, much later - with the benefit of hindsight.

[ 18 October 2001: Message edited by: fobotcso ]

[Mmmmnice]

Jacko - sorry for the late arrival but this seems as good a place as any to have my rant!
What's all this "are we making the same mistakes" - like me you are tapping away well clear of the action. What drives me up the wall is the stated intention of the "gentlemen/women of the press" to try and not give the game away by raking over what the next move will be and then put pen to paper to lay out how the SF ops will pan out. I know that it doesn't take the brains of an Archbishop to work out the likely options but it isn't exactly constructive to speculate either. I know that these instant military experts will be the first to bemoan the whole thing if the body bags start to turn up - irrespective of the possibility that the press may well help out with the OBL int gathering effort. I know it sells papers but couldn't you all find something more jolly and less destructive to write about - rant over - Good Night :(

[fobotcso]

Mr Nice, if you do your homework before posting and read around this Forum you will find that I am 100% with you about avoiding speculation that might help The Taliban. (Stuff OBL, he's out of it by now). So I don't take kindly to your remarks.

Discussing broad Strategy here can't do any harm. All The Taliban have got to do to find out what the Allies plans are is look out of the window of whichever hospital the evil sods are sheltering in. But discussing Tactics, equipment development and deployment of machines or manpower is a NO NO.

We must be aware that our enemies are reading this stuff right there in Kabul; moreover, the cleverer ones have infiltrated this community and can easily convince the less intellectually gifted Military PPRuNers of their bona fides. Read the Britney Spears Threads if you doubt me.

I, like you, will continue to jump on any thread that seeks to identify aircrew, their locations or aircraft movements. Please be there to help me when I get flamed.

[ 18 October 2001: Message edited by: fobotcso ]

[Jackonicko]

Mmmmnice

I agree absolutely on the need not to forewarn the enemy about tactics, but broad strategy must be something we can discuss.

Not least as foreign nation support and domestic concerns begin to threaten the cohesion of the coalition.

Fobotsco,

Hadn't realised that Kosovo was about one man. Had assumed it had something to do with the Serb army in Kosovo, stopping the ethnic cleansing, etc.

Samuel,

To list them all would identify me. Would you be content with two of the UK's Broadsheet dailies, the BBC's Radio 4 and World Service, and many of the aviation magazines available in your country and mine?

And I write under a variety of names, one of them being my own.

[Flatus Veteranus]

A war against guerillas in mountainous desert struck me from the outset as an unfavourable scenario for modern attack aircraft and weapons. I could not see for the life of me employment for the mass of hardware that the broadsheets said had been deployed to the region, once the Taliban air defences had been been eliminated. And that should not have taken more than 48 hours. I rather go along with Jack Straw's argument on Radio4 yesterday that the media have a voracious appetite for news, which means ACTION! A bit more patience is needed from the media and a bit less frantic activity from the air forces. :cool:

[pana]

Maestro Jackonico,
first, I will have to correct you: I'm not a Montenegrin pilot, I'm Yugoslav pilot. Yugoslavia still exists and you cannot neglect that fact.
Second, I have to correct myself: when I wrote "good manipulation with facts" I thought of positive meaning of that word in sense of "good assembly, handling, managing" or whatever". Probably, it's the problem with my English.
Third, I have to apologize to Wg Cdr Stringer. I didn't pay attention on title at all and was led behind by word "student" in introduction, so my comment was unappropriate, considering relations in mil hierarchy.
I'll be back soon with more detailed view of his and yours article.

[fobotcso]

"Hadn't realised that Kosovo was about one man. Had assumed it had something to do with the Serb army in Kosovo, stopping the ethnic cleansing, etc"

Jacko, poor use of irony. Wars are almost always either about one man or an oligarchy that focuses on one man.

The link I referred you to was by Lord Robertson, who, you will recall, was head honcho at the time of Kosovo. I always thought that it was safe to take the word of someone as highly regarded as he was.

But you believe you understand the situation better than Robertson. What was that about arrogance again...?

[Jackonicko]

Fobotsco,

Chill out for goodness sake!

I wasn't attempting 'irony', merely pointing out that allied war aims in Kosovo were wider than toppling one man, whatever the Great Robertson might say. And that's not my 'arrogant' opinion, and I don't pretend to understand a situation as complex as that in the Balkans. I doubt that anyone does, although some, including Postman Pat, understand it better than I do. But (especially with Milosovic in the dock answering for his crimes) we might remember that Robertson is a consummate political operator, and has his own agenda. Your summary of NATO's war aims is slightly simplistic, I believe. You only have to look back at any of the public pronouncements by the Western leaders at the time. They were keen to avoid having the conflict seen as a war against the Serb people (naturally) and preferred to have an evil enemy 'bogeyman' in order to be able to 'personalise' and simplify the war for the voters. Don't they always? Isn't that why WWII was a war against Hitler, Mussolini and (until it was over) Hirohito? Desert Storm was about Saddam Hussein, etc. Yes these tyrants bear a disproportionate degree of rresponsibility and blame, but they are seldom 'solely responsible' since even dictators tend to be representative of broader political and/or interest groups within their consitituency. The limited aim of stopping ethnic cleansing in K'vo and of forcing a military withdrawal was stressed again and again.

I'd doubt whether Kosovo was about Milosovic any more than this little op is purely about Bin Laden. Isn't it about what Bin Laden represents, and about the organisation he leads, and the threat which he and that organisation (and perhaps even radical Islamic Fundamentalism) poses to us?

Even your own link says:

"NATO'S OBJECTIVES... were (for President Milosevic to):

* Ensure a verifiable stop to all military action and the immediate ending of violence and repression in Kosovo;

* Withdraw from Kosovo his military, police and paramilitary forces;

* Agree to the stationing in Kosovo of an international military presence;

* Agree to the unconditional and safe return of all refugees and displaced persons, and unhindered access to them by humanitarian aid organisations; and

* Provide credible assurance of his willingness to work for the establishment of a political framework agreement based on the Rambouillet accords."

Yes they wanted Milosovic to ensure all this was done, as his country's President, but to say that the war was about 'just one man'?

Incidentally, setting aside the genocide in which he was implicated - would we have felt compelled to act against Milosovic? Was ethnic cleansing and a total unwillingness to cede territory to people who wanted independence (including using harsh military action against those who aspired to nationhood) sufficient to put him 'beyond the pale'? Just wondering.....

[fobotcso]

Okay, Okay, Okay! Who is it needs to chill out? That was quite a rant.

As it offended you, I'm sorry I accused you of irony. Irony is commonplace and useful in debate and it is no great shame to be accused of it. All I said was poor use of...

But enough already. I join you in not understanding the Balkans but I would argue strongly that the moving forces behind major historical events are those who become "men of their time". But we can't do that here.

Just a couple of points; you said:

Your summary of NATO's war aims... Not mine, Guv, SoS for Defence of the day's.

...Robertson is a consummate political operator, and has his own agenda... Now, I vote for the other Party but I respect Blair and Robertson and Blunkett and Straw (yes, I agree FV) enough to believe that their own political agendas are not paramount when the world is rushing towards the abyss. They are "men of their time" and I believe that they know it.

Reflect on our good fortune that Blair finds himself in this hot seat in his second
term and not in the first few months of his first term. I think we would not see the competent, confident world statesman we have now.

[skua]

But do we need a "competent"??? and confident world statesman, who is prepared to over-promise on UK support, with a military he has emasculated in his term of office? He has pretentions to leading a world superpower, without the will to commit the resources to creating/sustaining one.

FV
The issue is how long it has taken the alliance to achieve air supremacy, when the enemy assets would appear to have been minimal from the outset. There can have been few conflicts recently where the strategy was so constrained by the need to cement and support a political alliance.

Perhaps the real reason for the procrastination in committing ground troops or full-on tactical assets like Apaches, is the overwhelming desire to avoid US casualties. Allied to uncertainty amongst our leaders about how much they want to progress the aims of the Northern Alliance.


But God speed all our forces in theatre.

[fobotcso]

Skua, Yep he ain't perfect nor necessarily the best if we had the luxury of time to choose. But he's the one we've got and we're stuck with him.

We start from here. Got to look foward not back with hindsight and regrets.

[pana]

Maestro Jackonico,
even I find that article pretty good, and correct I have some objection:
data objections:
- endnote no.38 is incorrect. It operates with YU population of 22 milions. It was population of ex-YU. Present population is arround 10 milions (including Kosovo). It makes "collateral damage" more then twice larger in percentage.
-41. Milosevis had no need to manipulate with public attitude. There was strong willingness for struggle even without him. To be honourest, I think that the most of the people wanted him to be in his bedroom when NATO hit it, but that wouldn't affect military operations, on the contrary, it would boost efforts at Kosovo and even drive military actions out of borders of Yugoslavia, as it was previously decided.So, this put "decapitation theory" in serious troubles.
Principle objections:
His mentioning "war of Serbia against Kosovo" is unappropriate; Kosovo is integral part of Serbia and ,thus, Yugoslavia. Accepting that attitude is prejudicement of final result and create wrong impression about causes of the conflict. Yugoslavia didn't attack some other country, it intervened against terrorists (KLA was on terrorist organisations list, as I know) on its own teritory to prevent forcible separation of that teritory. The real war was NATO aggression. Here I must say that USA broke its own constitution by not proclaiming war after two months of continuous warfare.Furthermore, they cynically named it "humanitarian action" and ,actually, boosted that conflict, escalating it to a struggle of two nations for a territory.
Use of airforces makes me to think that proclaimed aim to save "helpless Kosovo Albanian from Serb's attacks" wasn't the real one.They didn't want to lower minimum altitude for their crews which was the only way for precise targeting of field troops and to detere them from combat actions. That targeting from high altitudes (even with PGM) caused mistakes as killing 60 refugees, hitting the train on railway bridge... IF those were mistakes (I hope they were or I can't imagine that some pilot could do that intentionally-except bombing of the centre of Nis with cluster bombs).
That use of a/f logically leads to conclusion that general aim was to conquer the last territory which is not under NATO control at Balkans and not protection of Albanians. The most of actions were pointed to brake population's willingness for struggle (graphite bombs despite they knew that nothing vital in YU armed forces is powered by electric power, Pancevo refinery despite they knew it's empty-but bombing of tank with pyralen...!) and to accept demands from Rambouillet which are unacceptable for any normal country.
Very interesting observing is that bombing of Bosnian Serbs and bombing of Yugoslavia started after very specific events which finally convinced the average peanut-eating-beer-drinking-TV watcher USA voters for need to bomb some other country.For bmbing of Bosnian Serbs initial reason was "massacre" at marketplace Markale in the center of Sarajevo. But final results of three independent member commission (one Canadian, one Polish and one...I can't remember) was that there was no chance that granades came from Serb's positions at that moment, "but operation started, and it was not wise to abort it , due to political reasons"(words of one Holland UN Airfield Monitor Officer at Podgorica airport,1995,unofficial beer-chat).
Very similar situation was with "massacre in Racak", Kosovo. As I know there was no final results by Finnish autopsy team.
For a difference from YU campaign, USA(NATO) are in diferent position:
Politically, there is no need to convince average PEBDTVW-voter of need for action, NATO is strongly united (for a difference of YU campaign), they have support of whole world.
Military, they are in troubles, because there is no clear targets, not enough time for action preparations,strategic airpower doctrine is not so applicable in this case.All in all it seems that it was really unexpected for them and I think it's time for Eagle to turn his head to another side, to arrows.A/f sorties will be at tactical level and presence of field troops will be neccessary which will, no doubt, cause losses and troubles at internal political scene. Due to all of this, opening of far-East theatre is expected.