Posted on 11/20/2002 9:33:16 AM PST by Destro
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.
Clinton stained more than a dress in the Oval Office.
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?
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.
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
So9
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.
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
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