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NATO attack on Yugoslavia gave Iraq good lessons (MUST READ!)
The Globe and Mail ^ | 10:41 AM EST Wednesday, November 20 | Associated Press

Posted on 11/20/2002 9:33:16 AM PST by Destro

The Globe and Mail

POSTED AT 10:41 AM EST Wednesday, November 20

NATO attack on Yugoslavia gave Iraq good lessons

Associated Press

Belgrade — As the U.S. administration considers going to war with Iraq, concerns are emerging that Baghdad has been studying the low-tech countermeasures that Yugoslavia used to foil U.S. airstrikes against its military in 1999.

"That's a matter of serious and legitimate concern," said retired General Wesley Clark, who, as NATO commander, led the 78-day bombing campaign aimed at expelling Yugoslav forces from the mainly ethnic Albanian region of Kosovo, where they were engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

NATO prevailed by destroying infrastructure and government buildings in Yugoslavia — but it did little real damage to the Yugoslav military in Kosovo.

Before he was ousted in October, 2000, president Slobodan Milosevic co-operated closely with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime. Yugoslav advisers helped revamp Baghdad's air-defence system, and officers of Iraq's Air Defence Command toured Yugoslav bases to study the Kosovo war.

"The war (in Kosovo) proved that a competent opponent can improvise ways to overcome superior weaponry, because every technology has weaknesses that can be identified and exploited," said Cedomir Janjic, an air force historian.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade confirmed that a group of U.S. military experts was in Yugoslavia to determine what benefits Mr. Hussein's military had derived from its co-operation with the Milosevic regime.

Gen. Clark identified several ways in which Yugoslav experience could prove valuable to the Iraqis.

The most significant, he said, was the ability of Yugoslavia's air defences to foil NATO electronics by using different radar frequencies and profiles, and by using "passive tracking" systems that do not give off radiation.

Despite NATO's air supremacy, it never succeeded in knocking out the air defences. They remained a potent threat throughout the conflict, forcing attacking warplanes to altitudes above 15,000 feet, where they were safe from surface-to-air missiles but far less effective in a ground-attack role.

"We were always aware we were being tracked and monitored by them," Gen. Clark said.

NATO won the war in June, 1999, following Mr. Milosevic's decision to withdraw his largely intact army from Kosovo, and after the extensive destruction of bridges, government buildings and other infrastructure targets throughout Yugoslavia.

In contrast, the effects of heavy bombing on the Yugoslav forces in Kosovo were minimal. British ordnance experts who inspected the battlefields after the war determined that only 14 tanks and a handful of armoured vehicles were destroyed in nearly three months of bombing.

The Yugoslavs had dispersed their heavily camouflaged units, thus conserving their assets for the expected alliance ground assault, and used decoys and other mock targets to deceive the attackers.

Iraq was quick to pursue insight from that conflict.

Teams of Iraqi intelligence officers rushed to Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the war to visit command centres and air-defence sites. Many toured Belgrade's Aviation Museum, inspecting destroyed drones, cruise missiles and the remnants of U.S. F-16 Falcon and F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters.

"Although they wore civilian suits, it was obvious they were Iraqi military," curator Drasko Kostic said.

Meanwhile, Yugoslav technicians were reportedly upgrading Iraq's fibre-optics communications network, allowing commanders real-time control of all units. They modified launchers of SA-6 surface-to-air missiles with optical tracking equipment to allow them to hit targets without using ground guidance radars, and added fuel cells to SA-3 missiles to extend their range to reach high-flying U-2 spy planes.

Over Iraq, U.S. and British pilots enforcing no-fly zones soon noticed a new aggressiveness in the air defences, which began challenging them on a daily basis. Although numerous command bunkers and missile batteries were hit in retaliatory strikes, the Iraqis also managed some successes by downing reconnaissance drones and damaging a U-2.

Gen. Clark said that Yugoslav advisers had enabled the Iraqis to reduce the "effects of weaponry" and passed on "what works and what doesn't in the art of camouflage."

He noted that the Yugoslavs had demonstrated great skill at hiding their armour, guns and infantry in towns and villages.

"That will certainly be of great interest to the Iraqis," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised to find Iraqi forces in mosques, schools and homes."

The White House is said to have settled on a war plan calling for massive air strikes on air defences and key military facilities. But this could quickly unravel if Mr. Hussein's commanders — like Mr. Milosevic's — shield their forces from the strikes and engage the invaders in a long and bloody ground war in cities.

Analysts say the parallels with Kosovo are far more relevant to a possible conflict than the much-touted victory against the Taliban, arguably the most primitive army in the world.

"We realize that a conflict with Iraq will not be like ... Afghanistan," said retired Rear Admiral Stephen Baker of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "Our tactics should be driven by what we learned in Kosovo."

Yugoslav tactics that worked

An overview of tactics employed by the Yugoslav army to limit the effectiveness of the NATO air strikes:

*Yugoslav air defences tracked U.S. stealth aircraft by using old Russian radars operating on long wavelengths. This, combined with the loss of stealth characteristics when the jets got wet or opened their bomb bays, made them shine on radar screens.

*Radars confused precision-guided HARM and ALARM missiles by reflecting their electromagnetic beams off heavy farm machinery, such as plows or old tractors placed around the sites. This cluttered the U.S. missiles' guidance systems, which were unable to pinpoint the emitters.

*Scout helicopters would land on flatbed trucks and rev their engines before being towed to camouflaged sites several hundred metres away. Heat-seeking missiles from NATO jets would then locate and go after the residual heat on the trucks.

*Yugoslav troops used cheap heat-emitting decoys such as small gas furnaces to simulate nonexistent positions on Kosovo mountainsides. B-52 bombers, employing advanced infrared sensors, repeatedly blasted the empty hills. The army drew up plans for covert placement of heat and microwave emitters on territory that NATO troops were expected to occupy in a ground war. This was intended to trick the B-52s into carpet-bombing their own forces. Dozens of dummy objectives, including fake bridges and airfields were constructed. Many of the decoy planes were so good that NATO claimed that the Yugoslav air force had been decimated. After the war, it turned out most of its planes had survived unscathed. Fake tanks were built using plastic sheeting, old tires, and logs. To mimic heat emissions, cans were filled with sand and fuel and set alight. Hundreds of these makeshift decoys were bombed, leading to wildly inflated destruction claims.

*Bridges and other strategic targets were defended from missiles with laser-guidance systems by bonfires made of old tires and wet hay, which emit dense smoke filled with laser-reflecting particles.

*U.S. bombs equipped with GPS guidance proved vulnerable to old electronic jammers that blocked their links with satellites.

*Despite NATO's total air supremacy, Yugoslav jets flew combat missions over Kosovo at extremely low altitudes, using terrain to remain undetected by AWACS flying radars.

*Weapons that performed well in Afghanistan — Predator drones, Apache attack choppers and C-130 Hercules gunships — proved ineffective in Kosovo. Drones were easy targets for 1940s-era Hispano-Suisa anti-aircraft cannons, and C-130s and Apaches were considered too vulnerable to be deployed.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News
KEYWORDS: balkans; campaignfinance; iraq; kosovo; nato; yugoslavia
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To: Destro
Any attack on Iraq should begin and concentrate upon taking out the top levels of leadership. This refusal to go after the top is a hangover from the old days of kings, entertaining each other while the peasants fought and died for them. Every palace, office, and home of Saddam and his top men should be destroyed in the opening salvo.
21 posted on 11/20/2002 10:35:35 AM PST by per loin
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To: spetznaz
Spoils of war.
22 posted on 11/20/2002 10:48:35 AM PST by Destro
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To: Mind-numbed Robot
Comparing the morale and will of Serbian fighters to those of Iraqi soldiers is a key missed point.

Another significant difference is that airpower is always less effective against dug-in forces, regardless of camoflage. The Iraqis will presumably have to maneuver their forces to counter a US ground attack, and this will expose their forces to the destructive effects of airpower (ie. Khafji & "the Highway of Death"). It's called combined arms.

23 posted on 11/20/2002 1:09:38 PM PST by Tallguy
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Comment #24 Removed by Moderator

To: InfiniteAutomata
Motiviation counts for a lot of it. The Yugoslav army was fighting al-Qaeda linked Muslims and NATO both and the Yugoslav army was ready for death struggle over Kosovo until, as this article states we started to bomb Serb civilians.

Clinton stained more than a dress in the Oval Office.

25 posted on 11/20/2002 1:25:10 PM PST by Destro
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To: Destro

Did Wesley Clark plan the Waco assault?

26 posted on 11/20/2002 1:37:36 PM PST by Howie
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To: Howie; Destro
In what I feel is a War Crime, we bombed the Serbs back to WWII. However, we did almost negligible damage to their armed forces.

This is good. The Serbs and their big brother Russians will soon be called upon to put the Albanians back on the reservation, while NATO politely looks the other way.

There is also a good deal of controversy simmering on how well we did in Desert Storm. Apparently Iraqi casualties, although locally severe in many places, weren't all that great. Some saying 50-60,thousand MAX! That's opposed to the half a million or so we thought we killed.

Anyone have a well-founded thought on this?

27 posted on 11/20/2002 1:46:49 PM PST by Francohio
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To: spetznaz
US of A general not some NATO euro-trash commander who led caused US deaths (I am sure if it wree a 100% US thing, with no NATO intermediaries, that we woudl not have lost the Stealth Fighter or the other planes downed ...however NATO likes set patterns henc ei was easy for the slavs to know the flight patterns of the F-117s and it was just a matter of time before something bad happened).

There were no US or NATO deaths due to combat. During the early part of the campaign the northern areas, and particularly around Belgrade, were US only targets. No non-US bombers dropped ordnance onto targets in this area during this period. It was US planners solely who controlled these missions and who organised their ingress and egress routes. The only non-US pilot flying bombing missions during this period in this US only operation zone was RAF Squadron Leader Alastair Monkman. Monkman was on exchange with the USAF flying F-117s.

Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton Accord and Vienna Document at the end of 1999. They revealed the losses that they suffered during Allied Force as a confidence building measure between the signatories. During the implementation meeting held during September 1999 the Yugoslavs exchanged the information in compliance with agreed limits. Although submitted in confidence the figures revealed leaked like a sieve.

The Yugoslavs declared that 136 Armoured Combat Vehicles had been lost along with 18 Battle Tanks. Insignificant really when you consider that some 850 ACVs were in the inventory holdings revealed in January 1999 before the conflict. The significant losses were to the Yugoslav Air Force. Yugoslavia was limited to 155 combat aircraft and revealed that it had lost 50 of those. Of those 11 out of 16 MiG-29s were lost leaving, post conflict, 4 Fulcrum A and one Fulcrum B in the 127th Fighter Squadron. Six of those were lost flying combat missions, four destroyed in NATO bombing attacks on the ground, and one lost due to pilot error while repositioning. Due to the M-18 (MiG-29 decoys) it had been thought that 14 were destroyed out of the 16. The largest losses were suffered by the MiG-21 fleet on the ground which was kept out of combat with NATO forces by the JRV i PVO. Yugoslavia also declared 11 helicopters destroyed bringing the total to 61. Other miscellaneous transport and training types brings this '61' figure up to between 70-80 aircraft destroyed. The embargoed Iraqi MiG-21 and MiG-23 were not included in the tally of aircraft destroyed.

The heavy losses suffered by the JRV i PVO were revealed in two interviews given in 2001:

Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic:

The lone exception, he said, was the Yugoslav air force, which “suffered considerable losses.

Col. Radovan Rakovic (250th Rocket Brigade)

The Yugoslav air force, he said, lost about 30 percent of its combat equipment and 40 percent of its combat systems.

28 posted on 11/20/2002 2:49:39 PM PST by Tommyjo
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To: Tommyjo
don't know where you got this, but it directly conflicts with the on the ground MEAT assesment by the US Military which reached a very different conclusion.

The MEAT assesment even found 37 decoys which had been repeatedly attacked but never damaged.

I think I'll trust the US military assesment before anything

29 posted on 11/20/2002 3:19:41 PM PST by vooch
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To: Destro
If you have very rough terrain and your own troops scattered on the ground, you can do these things. When there is no practical cover and we have our own Special Forces on the ground, very few of these things will work.

So9

30 posted on 11/20/2002 3:46:13 PM PST by Servant of the Nine
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To: Destro
Question for Clark: "Would you please explain your role in Waco, TX during March/April of 1993 that led to your promotion as Yugoslavia-theater command?!"

There are many reasons to hang Clark...
31 posted on 11/20/2002 5:10:57 PM PST by ApesForEvolution
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To: ApesForEvolution
AND the CLINTONS!
32 posted on 11/20/2002 7:17:39 PM PST by Howie
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To: Howie
No doubt. What a tangled web...
33 posted on 11/20/2002 7:31:10 PM PST by ApesForEvolution
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To: spetznaz
"NATO prevailed by destroying infrastructure and government buildings in Yugoslavia — but it did little real damage to the Yugoslav military in Kosovo."

As I recall, Clinton's concern over the possibility of a pilot being shot down was so great that pilots were ordered not to fly below 10,000 feet (in order to avoid shoulder launced missles).

Its kinda hard to tell if your target is real from ten thousand feet. Those dummy tanks and things are standard Soviet battlefield deception techniques. We have that too. PsyOp units engage in the same type of deception techniques and they work quite well. Hell we have dummy tanks that will fool optical sights at a couple hundred yards, and both IR and laser at any range.

The reason we didn't destroy more tanks was because we didn't really try. It was all for show by clinton.
34 posted on 11/20/2002 8:34:06 PM PST by PsyOp
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To: vooch
Vooch,
Consider that equipment was also destroyed outside of Kosovo. It all added up. The figures declared by the Yugoslavs also include destroyed equipment used by MUP forces and at Research and Development facilities. Heavy aircraft losses were also suffered at Golubovci, Montenegro. The officer in charge lost his command for allowing a blast door to have remained partially open during an attack.
35 posted on 11/21/2002 5:02:00 PM PST by Tommyjo
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To: Tommyjo
Only 9 flyable Mig-29's were destroyed, 6 in air to air combat and 3 on the ground. An additional two were purposely placed as decoys because they had been cannibalized, so that brings the total to 11. In addition, 9 Mig-21's, 5 G-4's, 2 J-21's, and 1 An-26 were destroyed. That amounts to 28 aircraft, of which approximately half were in extremely bad condition before Allied Force and were placed as decoys. In other words NATO destroyed only about 14-15 flyable aircraft. I got this information directly from someone in the JRViPVO. Where do you get your figure of 50 from?

I can also provide an exact list of army losses but that will take a while, but I do know that NATO's claims of hundreds of MBT's and APC's is false.

If you're trying to convince anyone that NATO's bombing was successful from a military point of view, you might as well save yourself the effort and give up. NATO bombed a small weak country for 3 months at a cost of billions of dollars and tens of thousand of sorites, and inflicted relatively few losses to the Yugoslav Army, with the exception of the integrated air defence network.

Even if the airforce had lost 70-80 planes as you seem to want everyone to believe, it would still be pathetic on NATO's part. Considering the difference between Yugoslavia and the world's most powerful military alliance, the fact that Yugoslavia still has an airforce proves NATO's incompetence. Also don't forget that NATO never managed to fully destroy Yugoslavia's air defences, and due to that they were forced to remain above a certain height for the entire duration of the bombing, and the Apache helicopters could never be used.

By the way, 155 is the maximum number of combat aircraft Yugoslavia is permitted to have under the Florence agreement. They do not necessarily have that much.

36 posted on 11/22/2002 12:43:13 PM PST by Ungrateful
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To: Ungrateful
Yugoslav aviation enthusiast Mark Nixon has been back to Yugoslavia and compilied info about those 11 MiG-29s destroyed. This was in conjunction with the 127th Fighter Squadrons combat and accident reports. With his contacts within the RV i PVO Nixon revealed all in his tribute to the "Gallant Knights". This was published in Air Forces Monthly, January 2002 issue. Of the 6 destroyed in the air a seventh was combat damaged. The pilot, Major Dragan Ilic, managed to put his crippled MiG-29 down with an emergency landing at Nis airfield. From Ilic's combat report from 24th March 1999:

I had the signal that I was locked on by an enemy missile. A fireball pushed the plane and the aircraft shook. The cockpit glazing cracked and fogged. I didn't feel any changes in engine performance and I was thinking how to save the plane. I pointed the plane to my home airfield at low speed, around Mach 0.5. All would have been different if the cracked glazing failed, I would have to had to eject and sacrifice the MiG.

Subsequently USAF F-16CJ, serial 90-0830, had its MiG-29 kill removed while stationed in Italy.

Major Illic's combat damaged aircraft, serial 18104, was later stripped and pushed out as a decoy and subsequently destroyed on the 11th May 1999 in a cluster munition strike. The cockpit imagery of this was released on the 19th May and can still be found at The Federation of American Scienctists website and NATO website.

Of the other MiG-29s destroyed on the ground the following was revealed by Nixon. MiG-29UB 'Fulcrum B' serial 18302 was damaged at Batajnica and later pushed out as a decoy. The following MiG-29B 'Fulcrum A' serials were destroyed on the ground: 18103, 18104, 18107.

A further MiG-29B, serial 18110, crashed due to pilot error on the 26th March 1999. Major Slobodan Tesanovic admitted full responsibility for stalling his aircraft while on approach to Ponikve. Tesanovic made a successful ejection from 18110.

The MiG-29 survivors were single-seaters 18101,18102, 18105 and 18108. The sole two-seat trainer is 18301

The 50 is the number of combat aircraft destroyed that the Yugoslavs revealed to the signatories of Dayton Article. In January 1999 Yugoslavia revealed that they had 152 combat aircraft in units. On rejoining they declared in October 1999 under Article IV that they now had 102 in units. The largest losses by type was suffered by the MiG-21 Fishbed/Mongol fleet on the ground. This is the reason why the 83rd Fighter Wing (2 Squadrons) , which was based at Slatina, no longer exists. Out of this wing only 11 MiG-21s survived in the bunker and were flown out under the Technical Agreement with NATO. A total of 24 MiG-21s were destroyed during the bombing campaign. A substantial number of G-2 Galeb and G-4 Super Galeb were destroyed at Podgorica, Montenegro. The officer in command was relieved of his duties due to the fact that so many aircraft were destroyed due to a blast door having not been properly secured. Aviation journalists Aleksandar Radic and Vladimir Jovanovic also revealed the destruction of 50 combat aircraft during the campaign. This 50 does not include the other non-combat types that were destroyed or damaged and subsequently written off from the inventory. Yugoslav General Pavkovic (Chief of VJ General Staff) was not mincing his words when he revealed in interview during 2001 that the Air Force had suffered considerable losses.

Pavkovic believes the Yugoslav military was successful overall because it suffered relatively few casualties and managed to hold on to many of its weapons systems. The lone exception, he said, was the Yugoslav air force, which “suffered considerable losses.

RV i PVO Col Rakovic also revealed during 2001:

All our airports on the ground suffered great damage,” Rakovic said…The Yugoslav air force, he said, lost about 30 percent of its combat equipment and 40 percent of its combat systems.

Although 155 was the combat aircraft limits Yugoslavia was allowed to maintain in excess of this number, but had to declare them. These were in such units as Research and Development units. In January 1999 Yugoslavia declared 171 combat aircraft total, but within combat units 152.

Dragan Kostadinov served in the 243 Mechanised Brigade post conflict and compiled a website. In it he details the losses suffered by the RV i PVO and the current OrBat.

http://solair.eunet.yu/~kost/aggression.htm

http://solair.eunet.yu/~kost/orbat.htm

37 posted on 11/30/2002 3:37:25 AM PST by Tommyjo
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To: PsyOp
Beware of NATO 'Imperialism'.......a New World Order Empire?
38 posted on 11/30/2002 3:59:41 AM PST by maestro
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To: spetznaz
Your comment on the differences between bombing Iraq and bombing Yugoslavia reminds me of the idea of bombing Vietnam back to the Stone Age...After the Gulf War and the sanctions..Iraq is back to the Stone Age. What good can it do to bomb a desert? Although Yugoslavia was in bad condition due to the sanctions..it was still a country of European oriented people..with that sort of view of the world...yet, at the same time...after so many years of punishment from the West they felt they had little to lose...I just wonder how much the Iraqis feel they have to use...Bombing a desert is less effective than bombing a suburb
39 posted on 12/28/2002 5:17:52 PM PST by Ciganina
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To: Destro
So Saddam's best hope is a Gotterdammerung in Baghdad.

Using camouflage and deception techniques to draw infantry into a bloodbath in urban areas instead of the natural terrain. Unless something happens first.
40 posted on 12/28/2002 5:31:32 PM PST by swarthyguy
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